Funny Money That Will Destroy Personal Liberty

4.13.23 - Funny Money That Will Destroy Personal Liberty

Gold last traded at $2,040 an ounce. Silver at $25.83 an ounce.

Central Bank Digital Currencies: Funny Money That Will Destroy What's Left Of Private Property, Free Markets, & Personal Liberty -Zero Hedge

During the Cold War, the East-West divide was commonly portrayed as pitting communism against capitalism. The Soviet Union, its satellites, and allies operated command economies in which centralized authorities directed the allocation of resources, agricultural production, and industrial manufacturing of the State. The United States and the Western Bloc championed liberal democratic norms and free markets. That division, of course, was always too simplistic. Not only did the US support third-world dictatorships when doing so would produce strategic advantages against the USSR, but also the demarcation between free and controlled markets was never so plainly cut-and-dried.

When young students learn the basics of capitalism, they are taught about markets in which people may freely bargain for the exchange of goods and services according to their personal needs and interests. They are taught that privately-owned property is the hallmark of capitalism and the key distinction separating that system from various socialist and communist economic systems in which property is variously shared among the people or owned exclusively by the State.

When young students mature, however, they realize that throughout the West, private ownership and free markets are neither quite so private nor free. Property may best be understood as a bundle of sticks tied up together with a bow. In an economic system in which what you own is yours and no-one else's, all those sticks stay bundled together tightly. However, when others have an independent claim on what you "own," then one by one, those sticks come undone.