Cataclysm

Collapse generally comes as a surprise, even to those who predict it.

Guest post by Robert Gore at Straight Line Logic

The USSR didn’t just fail one day, as does a person who dies of a sudden heart attack or stroke. It was more like a wasting illness brought on by an unhealthy lifestyle. A physician tells a morbidly obese patient: “Your daily consumption of twelve cocktails, three packs of cigarettes, and 4,000 calories, and your refusal to engage in exercise more strenuous than walking to the refrigerator will kill you, but I can’t say when.” For both individuals and governments, certain choices are incompatible with continued existence, and the Soviet government made plenty of those.

Very few people foresaw its failure when it was imminent, even purported experts. The small group who said Soviet communism wouldn’t work because it couldn’t work were disparaged right up until it didn’t work. However, the deck is always stacked in favor of those predicting this or that government will fail. Ultimately they all do because they all come to rest on a foundation of coercion and fraud, which doesn’t work because it can’t work.

There is both a quantitative and qualitative calculus for individuals subject to a government: what the government takes versus what individuals get back. Government is a protection racket: turn over your money and it promises physical security from invasion and crime, and adjudication and restitution in the event of civil or criminal wrongs. The quantitative calculus: am I getting more back than I put in? The qualitative calculus: what activities and people does the government help or hinder?

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Protection rackets are often indistinguishable from extortion rackets, the “protector” a bigger threat to the “protected” than the threats against which they’re supposedly protected. Such is the case with the US government, as it was with the former Soviet government. Blessed with naturally defensive geographies and huge nuclear arsenals, the chances of the US being attacked are (or were, in the case of the former Soviet Union) remote. The cost for actual protection provided by those governments has been a tiny fraction of what’s been extracted by force or fraud from their citizenries, the very definition of an extortion racket.

Freedom militates against stupidity; coercion compounds it. Competitive markets and a wide-open intellectual climate either kill the worst ideas or impel their improvement. Power corrupts so completely because those who hold it rarely face negative feedback or consequences. Critics are mocked, stifled, imprisoned, or murdered. The costs of failure are borne by the victims. The perpetrators blame those failures on lack of funding or authority and receive more of the same.

Nothing succeeds like failure in coercive systems. Just look at the US governments “wars” on poverty, drugs, and terrorism. For rational people in free, competitive systems an ever-expanding gap between shining intentions and dismal reality prompts psychological turmoil. The powerful salve outbreaks of cognitive dissonance with arrogance, which expands apace with their failing programs. Just look at Obamacare, which its progenitor hails as his greatest accomplishment.

As the protection racket and its sub-rackets expand, the “protected” receive less and less, but pay more and more. By now, both the quantitative and qualitative calculuses are clear to productive Americans: they’re being reamed by people they despise, who in their arrogance and willful blindness despise them. The government steals trillions directly, but still resorts to financial sub-grifts—debt, fiat money, and central banking—to feed its insatiable money-lust. Like the government’s debt, stupidity compounds exponentially and rational people wonder how long unsustainable rackets can persist. The racketeers, if they realize their rackets can’t last, don’t care; they’re going to milk them as long as they can.

With the world’s most powerful military, largest nuclear arsenal, and most intrusive surveillance apparatus, the ostensible power of the US government is daunting. Yet, if a tenth of the US population ran up their debts, withdrew their funds from the financial system, and then stopped making debt service payments for a few months, it would propel a run on the banking system, choking the government’s financial lifeline and exposing its worthless fiat debt scam. Thus, the government is hardly invulnerable. As stupidity compounds, so too do its vulnerabilities.

The foundation of the global economy and financial system is interlinked debt. Anyone paying attention during the last financial crisis recognized that it took surprisingly few defaults—debt markdowns that marked down the value of the corresponding credit-assets—in a highly leveraged and interconnected system before that system unraveled and imploded. Anyone with a modicum of analytic ability and intellectual integrity realizes that the “solution” to that last financial crisis—more government and central bank debt—was another instance of stupidity compounding itself. Now, there’s more craziness in the debt asylum than there was in 2007.

There probably won’t be a voluntary debt payment moratorium, although for anyone asking how “we the people” can throw off the burdensome yoke of “our” government that would be a fine place to start. There doesn’t have to be; the mechanics of debt implosion guarantee the same result. Most of the world’s financial assets are debt or equity claims. Equity has a lower legal right to a debtor’s assets than debt. A debt collapse will leave the world impoverished, and so too its governments. Many real assets will be tied up in creditors’ squabbles. Governments’ and their central banks’ vaunted abilities to drive interest rates to subzero, go further into debt, and exchange their pieces of paper or computer entries for other pieces of paper or computer entries will mean little in a world submerged in debt, worthless paper and computer entries.

Those who scoff at the notion of cataclysmic collapse ignore ubiquitous signs of deterioration and recent history. Real economic growth and incomes have been trending downward since the turn of the century, even by official statistics. One has to question how much of the growth in either is the product of statistical legerdemain—government statistics leave much to be desired—and debt. If debt grows at 5 percent and the economy and incomes grow at 2, is the economy actually growing? Should some present value accounting be made of the fact that the longer debt growth exceeds economic growth, the greater the burden that debt imposes on the economy?

Some say the last financial crisis proved that governments and central banks can prevent a debt implosion. They’re drawing the wrong conclusion. It “proved” that massive injections of fiat debt defibrillated the patient, and it still serves as essential life support. However, not even life support will keep the patient alive the next time the EKG flatlines. All governments will then have are lots of weapons, worthless debt, millions of angry beneficiaries, and whatever loyalty they can still command, literally, from the police-military-surveillance complexes.

At which point, the calculus becomes intolerable for those long milked and bilked by governments, and offering them only further pain with no gain. Inevitably, they will consider their options: flight, secession, devolution, or revolution. Governments are only temporary arrangement and pendulums swing. Cataclysm should afford, for those inclined, opportunities—if they’re willing to fight for them—to live under arrangements more conducive to individual freedom and voluntary interaction.

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Mike Murray
Mike Murray

A good article, even if I have to cover the author’s last name with my thumb to get through it. (Obviously there is no close relationship to Al or Al Sr.)

CCRider
CCRider

For me; secession. I don’t want to waste anymore life trying to convince fools that there is no free shit-that it all comes out of someone’s ass and that’s theft. Let them have the west and northeast coasts to live as they wish. I’m going to where there’s maximum individual freedom. And if I get there bareass broke I’ll still be a happy man.

YourAverageJoe

Sorry, Texas is full, unless you can displace one of the California takers that are invading Austin.
Do that, and you’ll have earned your keep.

digitalpennmedia
digitalpennmedia

You may have your hands full with the riots that will take place in Houston do to the diaspora of N.O. so perhaps any like minded individuals will be of use… not to mention shifting the ever growing blue counties in that state.

Realist
Realist

You better be well armed on your way out, CC. They will never let you go peacefully since you and other like minded folk are their meal ticket.

CCRider
CCRider

The truth. But they can’t kill us all………..Can they?

old white guy
old white guy

they can try. 50 or 60 million dead in Russia should be evidence enough.

Articles of Confederation

Spot on. At this point, after healthcare costs for a special needs child, all of my productive capacity is funneled to a small orchard and various wealth preservation mechanisms (larder, multiple septic fields for redundancy, etc.)

It would be nice to start over in a non-interventionist, economically free semblance of governance. Eggs will be broken, perhaps even some of mine. But secession and its inherent risks are worth it versus the guaranteed extortion of Washington.

doug
doug

CC And where is that , exactly? I’ve looked.

CCRider
CCRider

It does not yet exist. But I am convinced if we could shake off this United States curse and have breakaway states form as they will, most would be liberty based. Listen to
HH Hoppe:
There is an interim solution. It’s called secession and political decentralization. Small states must be libertarian, otherwise the productive people will desert them. Desirable therefore is a world made up of thousands of Liechtensteins, Singapores and Hong Kongs. In contrast, a European central government—and even more so a world government—with a “harmonized” tax and regulation policy, is the gravest threat to freedom.

Austrian Peter

Here, Here! Well said, me too.
http://harrogateagenda.org.uk/

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Articles of Confederation

There are pockets here and there. Nowhere is 100% perfect. But anywhere OCONUS is, by default, much worse than those pockets in the US when economies turn down and human nature (xenophobia) kicks in. I found my little pocket.

Col. B. Bunny

You say xenophobia like it’s a bad thing.

Articles of Confederation

Not at all. It’s neither bad nor good, really. It’s nature.

ragman
ragman

doug: look into SW Arkansas, truly a different place, inhabited by independent thinking White folks.

Uncola

Freedom militates against stupidity; coercion compounds it.

Power corrupts so completely because those who hold it rarely face negative feedback or consequences.

Nothing succeeds like failure in coercive systems.

The powerful salve outbreaks of cognitive dissonance with arrogance, which expands apace with their failing programs.

All quotes for the ages right there.

If pithiness could be considered as virtue, then you, sir, are a saint.

Methinks the cashless system cometh; for it is nothing less than totalitarianism’s wet dream.

EL Coyote
EL Coyote

Untedious exceeds. I try.

EL Coyote
EL Coyote

Que Sera, Sera

When I was just a candidate
I asked my daughter
What will I be
Will I be Ronnie
Will I be Jack
Here’s what she said to me

Que sera, sera
Whatever will be, will be
The decision’s not ours to make
Que sera, sera
What will be, will be

When I got elected and became king
I asked Steve Bannon
What lies ahead
Will we have battles
Day after day
Here’s what Steve Bannon said

Que sera, sera
Whatever will be, will be
The border’s not ours to close
Que sera, sera
What will be, will be

Now I have problems of my own
They ask me, Donald
What will it be
Will you lower taxes
Or build a wall
I tell them tenderly

Que sera, sera
Whatever will be, will be
Obamacare’s not ours to repeal
Que sera, sera
What will be, will be
Que Sera, Sera

Ouirphuqd
Ouirphuqd

Great read, my conclusion is that the workings of government are just compound interest, except it is all in reverse. Everything is a double down because we don’t want to starve the children, the seniors, the immigrants, or the beast that is the government. We are reaping what we sow, unfortunately what has been sown for the near future is of dubious genetics!

EL Coyote
EL Coyote

It all goes back to LBJ, FDR’s heir, who sought to sweeten the thievery by sharing a portion of the booty with the victims.

I’m not going to post the link to the appropriate video (I find it revolting) but it’s a portion of Silence of the Lambs. I’ll just comment that LBJ’s guns and butter Great Society sounds as dumb as sharing some of the victim’s cooked brain with him.

prusmc
prusmc

Strave the seniors but in no case do anything to inconvience the immigrants. We have stopped having children.

BB

Uncontrollable , Says me seeing a cashless system cometh ….,but first the elites have to make all of us poor and allow a hurricane of crime to hit us then they will have the vast majority of Americans ready to submit to their plans. Food and security from crime will be selling points for our New World order.The Planned Take Down of the World’s Economy is what will finally be our undoing as a Republic.

Socratic Dog
Socratic Dog

A “hurricane of crime” could also have the opposite effect, make people self-reliant again when it finally sinks in that the armed minions of the state aren’t there to help us. Especially when it is racially-based, that could also have the effect of making white people start thinking they need a bit of solidarity. All anathema to the Tribe-directed breakdown scenario.

BB

If any of you are interested in a strange but interesting Website.Go to

The Overlords of Chaos : ( Read) The Planned Takedown of the World’s Financial System and some of the other articles.
You just might learn a few things.

suzanna
suzanna

BB,
thanks for the link. The data on the site is obvious once one
thinks on it.
“We” have been trying to rationalize the truth away. “They”
may even enjoy breaking us every which way. Obama Care?
That last dude sure knew how to follow orders, and stuck his
(high) nose and chin up…and put a stake through our hope of
ever getting any relief.
That boot on our face? It is here and here to stay. We always knew
feudalism was just a loaf of bread away.

NickelthroweR
NickelthroweR

Greetings,

The Soviet Union fell mostly because it isn’t possible for a small group of people to run and regulate a complex system. Information on what is actually happening on the ground is next to impossible to find once you reach the apex of power. Now, our elected officials and our elites have about as much of an idea as to the mood of the people as Pepsi had when it Jumped the Shark and made that ridiculous commercial a few weeks ago. Only someone that sees our world from the backside of tinted bullet proof glass would ever green light such stupidity.

Some have commented on the idea of a cashless society but I do not think that is going to happen. Look at how embarrassed the elites are now that Skynet is up and running but it has been turned on them. We read their emails and we hack their systems cause, again, they do not know how to run it. A cashless system does not allow them to commit nearly as many crimes so they will not opt for it. After all, it isn’t easy being a corrupt politician when all those one’s and zero’s are traceable now is it?

chris
chris

Good job Mr Gore. I’ve looked at the future with inflation, deflation, stagflation and this is what I come up with. Until people can’t buy food with with their worthless fiat dollars it will keep moving forward.

One day we will all say it is here.

Boat Guy
Boat Guy

The Soviet system was doomed from the start as I heard a comment They pretend to pay us and we pretend to work ! That’s the way many jobs are in America now .
After surviving a near death illness I found myself disabled and applying for socialsecurity disability . 42 years of working and a detailed form from a prestigious hospital of surgeons and the checks started ! Felt bad about it for a time and then I did the math on my entire situation . Approximately 15% of every dollar I ever earned for 42 years between myself and employers was paid into that insurance program ! Got screwed out of the bulk of my steelworkers pension and I am not old enough to apply for that yet . Other companies had all sorts of pie in the sky profit share plans that never bloomed and I went for base money and bonuses for bringing projects in on time and under budget . Had to slow down after the illness so I found a part time gig doing bench repairs for a small company and wow don’t ever tell me about working for a small business is the backbone of America if so at least from my view we are in deep shit !
The repairs I perform now I complete in half the expected time and am paid a quarter of what I earned before and still hear a dose of shit to the point where I laid it on the line Mr super business owner shut his idiot mouth . In 2 years I more than doubled the output of my previous 2 mechanics and cleaned up the entire operation ! Some how his action was as if nothing is ever going to be enough . So I can see how apathy takes over and we pretend to work and they pretend to pay us .
That’s why you see the high numbers of Hispanics on construction sites they will accept the shit till they can get established but that could take them years . An American with integrity and marketable skills will tell an employer offering bull shit to shove it !
My situation is such that there was a come to Jesus moment about what a bargain I am and I proved it in dollars . So it’s cool for now . I know he is going to get in real trouble in this economic go around so I will hang with it till something else shows up . If not and the shit hits the fan I have my shooting skills back and am ready . Cannot run fast enough now so I got to stand and fight or maybe duck and cover .

Chubby Bubbles
Chubby Bubbles

Wait… So you’re working while collecting disability? Stealing from me? I put in my 15%, too. :-/

Boat Guy
Boat Guy

Chubby Bubbles you are allowed a small amount of income on disability per month . Consider the entire statement bench work sitting down under 20 hours per week . Don’t sound byte me like MSM

Brian
Brian

You paid 7.65% of your pay in SSA and Medicare taxes because you “voluntarily chose” to get paid in debt money.
Your employers paid 7.65% for the “privilege” of having you in their employment.

Title VIII imposes an “excise” tax on employers, to be paid “with respect to having individuals in their employ,” measured on the wages, and an “income tax on employees,” measured on their wages, to be collected by their employers by deduction from wages. Helvering v. Davis 301 U.S. 619 (1937)

Ed
Ed

Brian, I decided a long time ago not to be an employee because of the way the government robs an employee of a portion of the little an employer can afford to pay after regulations and taxes have whittled his income down, and the fact that a good portion of what an employer could pay if not made to match what an employee is robbed of, is also taken by government.

Working on my own gives me at least a little control over when I’m extorted and how much is taken. This is why I despise not only the politicians, but especially the government tit addicts of every description.

Boat Guy
Boat Guy

Brian you and Chubby bubbles should learn to read : between my employer and I . Or get a job with MSM where you can sound byte bits and pieces

Brian
Brian

I was merely adding some more detail to what you said. If you don’t like to know how their fucking you that’s fine. Go suck a dick.

Boat Guy
Boat Guy

Detail and bull shit by your last comment about not knowing how we are being screwed by a system we supported in good faith . I know we (I) have been cheated that is self evident to anyone generally on this site . To bad you go to the childish comments “Oh ya go suck dick” perhaps you need to grow up a little more . I am not arguing with you and am aware of my situation , may you maintain your health and independence or you too may find yourself in a desperate situation after a life time of honest work and saving while educating your children and providing all the things responsible men can for their family . Good Luck Brian

Boat Guy
Boat Guy

I am afraid my choice to. Be paid in debt money in the employ of others excuse me . Served and schooled a 4 year apprenticeship studied and passed tests for state and federal licenses and was generally awarded a fine bonus which I invested . My final 20 years was with a small company 6 men and the owner sent us out as a team of 3 on projects and it was a fair split we gave our customers top notch service and work and we all did well . The owner could concern himself with bidding fresh work and he knew we would come thru . We really were a team and we all got along great and sadly 2 of us took ill age has its problems and 1 inhereted a tidy sum and he sold the company because we could not find young people interested in ROCKING AN ROLLING

Diogenes
Diogenes

“As for the cashless society, try to make whichever bank that holds your money a creditor for a larger amount (like for your mortgage). That way, when they trap your money as the banking system fails, you can offset it by not making payments on your debt.” If a bank tries to foreclose on me, and I have money in another bank to cover it, the ordertakers who try to take my house better be ready to be shot at.

suzanna
suzanna

Mr. Gore,
Great write-up as usual. Talent and knowledge do know how
to record events. Please visit Bison Prepper. He wrote what you
wrote in a basic style. The latest in a 3 part Ghetto series, (short),
and you will love it. Thanks, as always.
Suzanna

BUCKHED
BUCKHED

Robert G said:

As a creditor of the bank, if they take your funds and do not pay them back, I believe you are entitled to offset what they take against what you owe as a debtor to the bank.

Robert…I’d agree with you except that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac own 97% of the mortgages…the Banks merely service the loans and keep the profits…provided you pay the note .

Dennis Roe
Dennis Roe

The mob would be a welcome relief from the shit for brain Ivy League thinktankers. At least they grew up in the street and had a modicum of common sense. 16 years in Afghanistsan, really? If we’re so powerful, why are we mired in a half dozen clusterfucks with no end in sight. People are cashing endless checks on endless war, while this place, our home, gets overrun, corrupts and rots from the inside. We’ve been sold out, betrayed, along with our ancestors and all their sacrifices, for money. Money which soon will be worth nothing, backed by nothing but generations of debt.

uncle fester
uncle fester

thanks, Robert. Another well stated case. Keep em coming.

Penforce

I’m no dog, but I’ve been here long enough to smell some asses, see some tails wag, or not. One thing I’ve learned, is that those at TBP are no different than anywhere else, no two assess are alike. My dog friends claim that your ass is like a snowflake in that way. Here we are, you and me, two unique assess, riding a planet through space. You and I share this planet, even if we never meet, we are neighbors. What if you’re not an ass? What if I have only one neighbor, and he’s not an ass like me? What the fuck do I do now? What if my neighbor is a bitch, or colored? Oh, Jesus Christ! Oh, I should go, I can hear them dogs whining again. Fuck’n whiners

Ronnie
Ronnie

I was a undergraduate in 1977, Politics, Revolutionary History, Collapse of Empire etc…. sat in a tutorial one afternoon and proclaimed. “The USSR will collapse…centralised greed and AMERICA WILL COLLAPSE only after Ford and GM go broke!”
Well I was shocked when the Wall came down. Years later I was scared when all the car companies got bail outs and socialised Clunker handouts.
Now with the US Military in control of Foreign Policy plus Wall St. I feel sick to my stomach.
North Korea is the final over reach, while Iran is the end.

IndenturedServant
flash
flash

What’s all the fuss about…debt is just a digital construct.

http://www.truthinaccounting.org/

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Diogenes
Diogenes

No worries! We have the strongest military in the world! If we run out of money we can print more. Yeah Amerika.. USA..USA…USA!

Kathleen
Kathleen

Excellent article–thank you. I would love to share, but unable to forward to friends or post elsewhere due to the site’s ads.

starfcker
starfcker

Kathleen, just copy and paste Robert’s article into the body of an email. Presto, no ads

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