Something to think about: The tyrants who will shut down businesses indefinitely, and prevent you from earning a living, will have no problem doing even worse things to you. If they’re OK starving you by denying your right to work, produce and earn a living, then they will have no problem sending you to a political reeducation camp, destroying your industry, and letting millions starve. Just as the lockdowns are all rationalized in the name of “the common good”, so will the next, even worse things they do.

It has all happened before. Stalin, Hitler, Mao. It’s because collectivists, tyrants, socialists and fascists have no regard for the individual. The individual is not an end in him- or herself. The individual is a cog in a wheel, a dispensible factory part to be sacrificed — always — for one version (always the tyrant’s version) of “the common good.”

Most of us have been brainwashed into thinking the common good supercedes the individual good. Yet the entire U.S. Constitution, along with its Bill of Rights, put the INDIVIDUAL welfare at the top of the priority list. It resulted in the greatest civilization in the history of man, the civilization with the least suffering, the least poverty and despair and the greatest justice.

It’s so sad to watch this all play out. America stands poised to go the way of every civilization before it. The difference? America has so much further to fall. Our heights were unprecedented. The fall from America to the standard of living in Venezuela or Cuba will be a much more terrifying one than other declines in civilizations of the past. If people don’t wake up and understand this, it will soon be too late.

Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason

NORTH POLE—Santa Claus’s nice list is said to be run on trustworthy software, safe and secure on an unhackable server under his workshop. null

But some are questioning the legitimacy of the nice list after the tally suddenly spiked in the middle of the night, adding over 138,000 kids to the good side of the list.

After sorting kids according to their niceness or naughtiness for hours, Santa had abruptly stopped counting and gone to bed, saying he was tired and taking a break for the night, even though he is magical and does not need to sleep.

A team of unsupervised elves reportedly continued the counting against North Pole guidelines, and around 3 a.m. there was a sudden dump of over 138,000 kids put on the nice list. The software also switched kids over from the naughty to the nice list at random.

Big Tech companies quickly fact-checked the claim, assuring parents and children that the sudden jump of hundreds of thousands of kids added to the nice list is a normal part of kid sorting and that Santa’s methods are trustworthy and reliable.

Babylon Bee

What if the so-called deep state, as characterized by the recent activities of two, out of many, U.S. federal government agencies, is much deeper than we can all believe?

Of late, exceedingly troubling developments have emerged. The CIA, created under the National Security Act of 1947, was never supposed to spy on American citizens. Its mission was “to collect, analyze, evaluate, and disseminate foreign intelligence to assist the President and senior U.S. government policymakers in making decisions relating to national security.”

A Rogue Agency and Getting Worse

In recent years, in violation of the law, the CIA has spied on American citizens, undertaken domestic acts outside of its purview, and operated a rogue agency. Under the direction of John Brennan, as deep a swamp creature as has ever existed, the CIA engaged in long-term illegal operations against the Trump campaign and, even after Brennan, carried it over to the Trump Administration.

Time will tell if the CIA was involved in manipulating the 2020 election. CIA servers positioned in Germany may have received election data which was then recalibrated in some way and sent back to the US. Why does this relay even exist?

With a Biden Administration, if it were to happen, the CIA would grow ever more powerful, eventually manipulating nearly every aspect of American politics, let alone foreign policy and defense.

A Strong Drift off Course

The CIA is supposed to consist of dedicated personnel who watch out for the welfare of American citizens and American interests around the globe. Gina Haspel, the first female director, has intentionally slow-walked legitimate Freedom of Information requests and knowingly impeded lawful investigations into agency activities.

Presumably, Haspel is maintaining some sort of loyalty to staff and peers, but this is not part of her job description. She needs to be loyal to the president, the country, and her oath of office. Haspel should be fired and walked out of her office immediately, with all files, computers, and records kept out of her reach forevermore, as a thorough investigation takes place as to why she has resisted.

FBI: Unlawful, Inept, and Uncooperative

A second U.S. federal government agency, among so many others, has been unlawful, inept, uncooperative, and even diabolical. In assessing the FBI, my goodness, where can one even start? Before James Comey, going back to Robert Mueller, and even before him, the agency had gone rogue.

The FBI selectively pursues certain cases and individuals, and selectively ignores others. The agency’s allegiance to the U.S., to the Department of Justice, and to its own mission has strayed so far off course, one wonders why anyone aspires to lead the agency.

James Comey, in particular, is deceitful, cunning, and treasonous. While not on the same level as J. Edgar Hoover, Comey has flouted the law so often that he belongs in prison, now.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions didn’t have the chops to take any action. Bill Barr moves more slowly than a sloth in hibernation. Why he hasn’t acted is a mystery for the ages: Comey has already lied under oath to Congress. Yet Barr and company have done nothing.

Some pundits conclude that Barr has bigger fish to fry, but months and years have rolled by and Comey is not only walking free, he is still shooting his mouth off, collecting royalties from his book of lies, and on the faculty of the College of William & Mary teaching ethical leadership. He also has been retained by Columbia University to lead a seminar titled “Lawyers and Leaders.” Those poor students don’t have a chance!

Wray: A Study in Disaster

The FBI under Christopher Wray is not much better than under Comey. I say with kindness, Wray is a complete weasel. He has a pained look every time he’s in front of Congress: He knows he’s not telling the whole story. He is either an outright never Trumper or a secret never Trumper who is doing little to restore trust in the agency.

There’s no telling what Wray is up to, but whatever it is, it portends badly for our country. He claims, for example, that Antifa is not an organization, merely an ideology.

During the 2020 election fiasco, the FBI has been tasked to investigate. Wray promptly delayed for six to eight days, and even then, is doing about one tenth of what could be done. Like Gina Haspel, Wray needs to be fired immediately; walked out of the building; and have all his files, computers, software, thumb drives, etc., analyzed.

Other agencies are equally inept or simply rogue – the topic of future articles. For now, let’s merely say that the CIA and the FBI are not the institutions that they once were, have betrayed the U.S. badly, and will not improve without major reorganization. The rank-and-file of both agencies could still be competent and trustworthy, but the upper echelon surely is not.

Jeff Davidson

The election of 2020 is perhaps the most bizarre affair in modern American history; not since the post Civil War turmoil of reconstruction and the election of 1876 have we seen the nation divided so completely along ideological lines. Questions of states rights vs. federal power were at the forefront at that time, and the presence of federal troops in the American south was a primary voting concern. The Democrats were the party of the Confederacy, the Republicans were the party of the Union. Though they had lost the war, southerners were finding ways to strike back during the elections.

With the Republican party suffering from corruption allegations and public sentiment shifting against the federal occupation, the Democrats were gaining massive ground and a Democratic sweep was thought to be imminent. However, there were reports of ballot box fraud on BOTH sides of the aisle; in many voting districts the counted number of votes exceeded the number of people (often on the side of Republicans). Republicans sought to challenge poll results in closely contested states to stop the Democrats and former confederates from taking political power, a situation they considered to be a “potential national disaster”.

The election became a stalemate of legal battles and fraud investigations. Ultimately a deal was struck – The Republicans would take the White House and in exchange federal troops would be removed from the South (the Republicans knew that voting fraud on their side would be exposed and that another civil war could erupt in response). Ultimately, the votes did not matter in the case of a contested election; what mattered was which outcome was the most convenient for the stability of the day and the election result was maneuvered to that end.null

(Special Note: If you try to learn more about the 1876 election, I recommend searching for articles and books that are more than 5-10 years old. Anything written in the past few years on the subject is rife with spin and disinformation. Just check out this article from Time Magazine and try to swim through the propaganda! The part where they attempt to explain why democrats used to be the party of the confederacy is especially hilarious – basically, the democrats of the past were more like the “racist republicans” of today. The communist penchant for rewriting history is on full display.)

Today, we have a different dynamic and a different priority for the establishment: Which outcome will lead to the biggest disaster, and who will take the blame? In contrast to 1876, I believe that in 2020 the elites are seeking to INCREASE the level of instability, not calm the waters. The mainstream media has launched a massive fear campaign hinting at a contested election and both sides of the aisle are accusing the other of encouraging ballot fraud. I have no doubt that whichever way the election goes, millions of Americans will refuse to accept the results.

To be clear, I don’t really view modern elections from the perspective of “winning” and “losing”. It’s hard for me to say exactly what was going on behind the curtain in 1876, but today I think it is foolish to engage in election analysis without first accepting the reality that the game is rigged. Biden is a full blown globalist and is proud of it; Trump is surrounded by globalists and banking elites in his own cabinet. Regardless of who loses the election, the elites win. The only question I am here to ask is, which candidate serves the globalist agenda most effectively right now?

My original prediction for the 2020 election this past summer was that the White House would go to Donald Trump, but under sharply contested conditions. I predicted Trump’s win in 2016 based on the premise that the establishment needed a conservative scapegoat for the impending collapse of the US economy as we know it along with the civil unrest and calamity this event would inspire. I stated unequivocally on numerous occasions that Trump would preside over America’s rapid decline and that conservative ideals and principles would be blamed by extension.THE AMERICAN FRONTIER WAS HOME TO SOME PRETTY STRANGE HYGIENE PRACTICESAffluent Times

And behold, in 2020 this is exactly what is happening, with a pandemic and the implosion of the “Everything Bubble” now in full swing and the media placing it all in the lap of Trump and conservatives.

Now, whether or not people believe this tripe is another matter. As it stands, the worst hit states economically are states controlled by leftist politicians that are enforcing draconian lockdown restrictions on the public. States populated predominantly by conservatives are fairing much better overall.

The bottom line is, which outcome serves the establishment narrative? Do the elites need Trump in office longer in order to crash the system completely on his watch? I believe this is the case. Like Clinton, Biden represents one of the worst possible candidates that could have been chosen as a believable opponent for Trump if the intent is to remove Trump from the Oval Office. His odd mental breaks, embarrassing gaffs, his habit of being creepily over-familiar with women and young girls and his exposure to corruption through foreign ties make him a poor contender.

To be sure, democrats and leftists will vote for him anyway out of spite, but I have a hard time seeing him rallying a wide cross section of Americans that would give him an edge. If the establishment wanted to be rid off Trump, they could have chosen better.

But what if I’m wrong and a Biden presidency is forthcoming? What if ballots are rigged to one side, as they were in 1876? What if a contested election leads to an “agreement” in which Trump steps down? What would it mean to have Biden in the White House?

Well, the US system as we know it is going to fall either way, at least in terms of the economy. This is a process that was initiated many years ago, with the impetus of financial bubbles hitting disaster proportions in 2008. Nothing has improved since then; in fact, the central bank bailouts and stimulus measures only INCREASED the likelihood of a collapse event by inflating corporate and national debt levels while simultaneously diminishing the buying power of the dollar. The only difference between Trump and Biden in this regard is how fast the collapse will happen.

With Trump, the crash will most likely happen slower and more methodically as the establishment takes its time building the narrative that conservative ideals, nationalism, sovereignty movements, etc. “caused” the calamity.

They need time to condition the masses to the idea that such philosophies are “inherently selfish” and destructive. Meaning, at least with Trump, we have a little more time to prepare for the inevitable.

With Biden in office the time frame changes completely and the crash must move faster. Why? Because the globalists cannot allow a Biden Administration (and by extension the globalists themselves) to be labeled as the culprits behind the crash. They would have to expedite the downturn in the early months of Biden’s first term so that the media can claim the crisis is an aftereffect of Trump’s presidency.

If Biden does enter the White House in 2021, expect a hard plunge in economic fundamentals almost immediately.

Another factor of a Biden presidency would be the near certainty of federally enforced pandemic lockdowns similar to those now being implemented in countries like France and Germany. Forget about the current state-by-state lockdown orders and nuances; Biden WILL attempt a national lockdown mandate because he is not held back by a need to appeal to a conservative and liberty minded constituency like Trump is. Biden will go for broke, and the economy will take another massive hit as more businesses go into bankruptcy at breakneck speed. And again, this would have to be implemented quickly so that Trump and conservatives can be blamed. They will claim harsh lockdowns “have to be pursued” because conservatives refused to accept them during the early stages of the pandemic.

In light of a Trump “win”, it is obvious that a second term would be used as an invitation for mass demonstrations and riots by extreme leftists, but, this threat doesn’t go away with Biden in office. Actually, the riots may become worse under Biden. The social justice cult will see Biden as a “malleable” and easily controlled political figure who will do anything to appease them. Biden will placate the hard left; not because he fears them, but because he has a role to play in this great Kabuki theater and it serves the interests of the globalist agenda at the moment.

Finally, if the establishment puts Biden in the White House it means they want national gun restrictions or outright confiscation within the first couple years of his term. Biden’s anti-2nd Amendment views are hardly ambiguous. With Trump, the chances of a gun grab are much slimmer (though he has voiced support for Red Flag laws in the past). Under Biden, the gun grab attempt will be swift. This threat along with Level 4 lockdowns on a national level would elicit the only logical response for conservatives – armed rebellion.

I do not think this is what the globalists want at this point in time. I do not think they have the capacity to handle it, and I do not think they would be able to get a majority of law enforcement and the military to go along with such policies. This is why I continue to believe they prefer Trump in office and that they will use economic decline and the “failure” of conservative policies as a false rationale for the “global reset” the elites seem to be so excited about.

Be warned, however, that if Biden ends up in office, this should be treated as a sign that a high speed collapse is on the way.—————————————————–

The corrupt establishment will do anything to suppress sites like the Burning Platform from revealing the truth. The corporate media does this by demonetizing sites like mine by blackballing the site from advertising revenue. If you get value from this site, please keep it running with a donation. [Jim Quinn – PO Box 1520 Kulpsville, PA 19443] or Paypal

The Anti-capitalistic Front

From the very beginnings of the socialist movement and the endeavors to revive the interventionist policies of the precapitalistic ages, both socialism and interventionism were utterly discredited in the eyes of those conversant with economic theory. But the ideas of the revolutionaries and reformers found approval with the immense majority of ignorant people exclusively driven by the most powerful human passions of envy and hatred.

The social philosophy of the Enlightenment that paved the way for the realization of the liberal program—economic freedom, consummated in the market economy (capitalism), and its constitutional corollary, representative government—did not suggest the annihilation of the three old powers: the monarchy, the aristocracy and the churches. The European liberals aimed at the substitution of the parliamentary monarchy for royal absolutism, not at the establishment of republican government. They wanted to abolish the privileges of the aristocrats, but not to deprive them of their titles, their escutcheons and their estates. They were eager to grant to everybody freedom of conscience and to put an end to the persecution of dissenters and heretics, but they were anxious to give to all churches and denominations perfect freedom in the pursuit of their spiritual objectives. Thus the three great powers of the ancien régime were preserved. One might have expected that princes, aristocrats and clergymen who indefatigably professed their conservatism would be prepared to oppose the socialist attack upon the essentials of Western civilization. After all, the harbingers of socialism did not shrink from disclosing that under socialist totalitarianism no room would be left for what they called the remnants of tyranny, privilege and superstition.

However, even with these privileged groups resentment and envy were more intense than cool reasoning. They virtually joined hands with the socialists disregarding the fact that socialism aimed also at the confiscation of their holdings and that there cannot be any religious freedom under a totalitarian system. The Hohenzollern in Germany inaugurated a policy that an American observer called monarchical socialism. [Cf. Elmer Roberts, Monarchical Socialism in Germany, New York, 1913.] The autocratic Romanoffs of Russia toyed with labor unionism as a weapon to fight the “bourgeois” endeavors to establish representative government. [Cf. Mania Gordon, Workers Before and After Lenin, New York, 1941, pp. 30 II.] In every European country the aristocrats were virtually cooperating with the enemies of capitalism. Everywhere eminent theologians tried to discredit the free enterprise system and thus, by implication, to support either socialism or radical interventionism. Some of the outstanding leaders of present-day Protestantism—Barth and Brunner in Switzerland, Niebuhr and Tillich in the United States, and the late Archbishop of Canterbury, William Temple—openly condemn capitalism and even charge the alleged failures of capitalism with the responsibility for all the excesses of Russian Bolshevism.

One may wonder whether Sir William Harcourt was right when, more than sixty years ago, he proclaimed: We are all socialists now. But today governments, political parties, teachers and writers, militant antitheists as well as Christian theologians are almost unanimous in passionately rejecting the market economy and praising the alleged benefits of state omnipotence. The rising generation is brought up in an environment that is engrossed in socialist ideas.

The influence of the prosocialist ideology comes to light in the way in which public opinion, almost without any exception, explains the reasons that induce people to join the Socialist or Communist parties. In dealing with domestic politics, one assumes that, “naturally and necessarily,” those who are not rich favor the radical programs—planning, socialism, communism—while only the rich have reason to vote [28] for the preservation of the market economy. This assumption takes for granted the fundamental socialist idea that the economic interests of the masses are hurt by the operation of capitalism for the sole benefit of the “exploiters” and that socialism will improve the common man’s standard of living.

However, people do not ask for socialism because they know that socialism will improve their conditions, and they do not reject capitalism because they know that it is a system prejudicial to their interests. They are socialists because they believe that socialism will improve their conditions, and they hate capitalism because they believe that it harms them. They are socialists because they are blinded by envy and ignorance. They stubbornly refuse to study economics and spurn the economists’ devastating critique of the socialist plans because, in their eyes, economics, being an abstract theory, is simply nonsense. They pretend to trust only in experience. But they no less stubbornly refuse to take cognizance of the undeniable facts of experience, viz., that the common man’s standard of living is incomparably higher in capitalistic America than in the socialist paradise of the Soviets.

In dealing with conditions in the economically backward countries people display the same faulty reasoning. They think that these peoples must “naturally” sympathize with communism because they are poverty-stricken. Now it is obvious that the poor nations want to get rid of their penury. Aiming at an improvement of their unsatisfactory conditions, they ought therefore to adopt that system of society’s economic organization which best warrants the attainment of this end; they ought to decide in favor of capitalism. But, deluded by spurious anti-capitalistic ideas, they are favorably disposed to communism. It is paradoxical indeed that the leaders of these Oriental peoples, while casting longing glances at the prosperity of the Western nations, reject the methods that made the West prosperous and are enraptured by Russian communism that is instrumental in keeping the Russians and their satellites poor. It is still more paradoxical that Americans, enjoying the products of capitalistic big business, exalt the Soviet system and consider it quite “natural” that the poor nations of Asia and Africa should prefer communism to capitalism.

People may disagree on the question of whether everybody ought to study economics seriously. But one thing is certain. A man who publicly talks or writes about the opposition between capitalism and socialism without having fully familiarized himself with all that economics has to say about these issues is an irresponsible babbler.

Excerpted from Ludwig Von Mises The Anti-Capitalist Mentality. First published in 1956.

ALBERT Camus was the 1957 winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature for work that “illuminates the problems of the human conscience in our times.” Those times were ones where the specter of tyranny loomed large during World War II and its aftermath, until his accidental death in 1960. While best known as an existentialist and absurdist, his Nobel lecture highlighted why his insights are valuable to those devoted to liberty. Camus said the writer “cannot put himself today in the service of those who make history; he is at the service of those who suffer it.” On their behalf, “the two tasks that constitute the greatness of [the writer’s] craft [are] the service of truth and the service of liberty … rooted in two commitments, difficult to maintain: the refusal to lie about what one knows and the resistance to oppression.”

His defense of liberty against tyranny merits remembering. The real passion of the twentieth century is servitude.

The welfare of the people … has always been the alibi of tyrants, and it provides the further advantage of giving the servants of tyranny a good conscience.

The tyrannies of today … no longer admit of silence or neutrality. One has to take a stand, be either for or against. Well, in that case, I am against.

The only conception of freedom I can have is that of the prisoner or the individual in the midst of the state. The only one I know is freedom of thought and action.

Freedom is not a gift received from the State or leader, but a possession to be won every day.

Freedom is not a reward or a decoration that is celebrated with champagne.… It’s a long distance race, quite solitary and very exhausting.

Freedom is nothing else but a chance to get better, whereas enslavement is a certainty of the worse. Absolute domination by the law does not represent liberty.

Liberty ultimately seems to me, for societies and for individuals … the supreme good that governs all others.

Is it possible eternally to reject injustice without ceasing to acclaim the nature of man and the beauty of the world? Our answer is yes.

In the twentieth century power wears the mask of tragedy.

Political utopias justified in advance any enterprises whatever. Instead of killing and dying in order to produce the being that we are not, we have to live and let live in order to create what we are.

The aim of art, the aim of a life can only be to increase the sum of freedom and responsibility to be found in every man and in the world. It cannot, under any circumstances, be to reduce or suppress that freedom, even temporarily.

The current motto for all of us can only be this: without giving up anything on the plane of justice, yield nothing on the plane of freedom.

I should like to be able to love my country and still love justice. More and more, when faced with the world of men, the only reaction is one of individualism.

Man alone is an end unto himself.

Albert Camus wrote when “the barricades of freedom have once more been thrown up. Once more justice must be bought with the blood of men.” The crucial importance of defending liberty against tyranny was clear then. But unfortunately, many have forgotten that essential recognition, despite the web of softer tyrannies that increasingly surround us. That keeps Camus’s insights, particularly that liberty is “the supreme good that governs all others,” both valuable and powerful today, a half century after he wrote.

The miser has never recovered from Charles Dickens’s attack on him in A Christmas Carol. Although the miser had been sternly criticized before Dickens, the depiction of Ebenezer Scrooge has become definitive and has passed into the folklore of our time. Indeed, the attitude pervades even in freshman economics textbooks. There the miser is roundly condemned and blamed for unemployment, changes in the business cycle, and economic depressions and recessions.

In the famous — or rather infamous — “paradox of savings,” young students of economics are taught that, although saving may be sensible for an individual or a family, it may be folly for the economy as a whole. The prevalent Keynesian doctrine holds that the more saving in an economy, the less spending for consumption, and the less spending, the fewer jobs.

It is time that an end be put to all these misconceptions. Many and various benefits are derived from saving. Ever since the first caveman saved seed corn for future planting, the human race has owed a debt of gratitude to the hoarders, misers, and savers. It is to those people who refused to use up at once their entire store of wealth and chose rather to save it for a needy time that we owe the capital equipment that enables us to aspire to a civilized standard of living.

It is true, of course, that such people became richer than their fellows, and perhaps thereby earned their enmity. Perhaps the whole process of saving and accumulating was cast into disrepute along with the saver. But the enmity is not deserved. For the wages earned by the masses are intimately dependent upon the rate at which the saver can accumulate money.

There are, for example, many reasons contributing to the fact that the American worker earns more than, say, his Bolivian counterpart. The American worker’s education, health, and motivation play important roles. But a major contribution to the wage differential is the greater amount of capital stored up by American employers than by Bolivians. And this is not an exceptional case. The saver has been instrumental throughout history in lifting the pack above the level of the savage.

Perhaps it will be objected that there is a difference between saving (acknowledged to be productive in the process of capital accumulation) and hoarding (withholding money from consumption spending), and that while the saver channels his money into capital goods industries where it can do some good, hoarded money is completely barren. The hoarder, it will be claimed, reduces the money received by retailers, forcing them to fire employees and reduce orders from jobbers. Jobbers in turn are forced to reduce their staff and to cut back on orders from wholesalers. The whole process, under the influence of hoarders, will be repeated throughout the entire structure of production. As employees are fired, they will have less to spend on consumption goods, thus compounding the process. Hoarding is thus seen as completely sterile and destructive.

The argument is plausible except for a crucial point that this Keynesian-inspired argument fails to take into account — the possibility of changes in prices. Before a retailer begins to lay off employees and cut back on orders because of unsold goods, he will usually try lowering his prices. He will hold a sale or use some other technique that will be equivalent to a decrease in price. Unless his troubles are due to the unsalability of his wares, this will suffice to end the vicious circle of unemployment and depression.

How so? In withholding money from the consumer’s market, and not making it available for the purchase of capital equipment, the hoarder causes a decrease in the amount of money in circulation. The amount of available goods and services remains the same. Since one of the most important determinants of price in any economy is the relationship between the amount of money and the amount of goods and services, the hoarder succeeds in lowering the level of prices.

Consider a simplistic but not wholly inaccurate model in which all the dollars in the economy are bid against all its goods and services. Thus the fewer the dollars, the greater the purchasing power of each. Since hoarding can be defined as reducing the amount of money in circulation, and other things equal, less money means lower prices, it can readily be seen that hoarding leads to lower prices.

There is no harm in lowering the level of prices. Quite the contrary: one of the great benefits is that all other people, the nonmisers, benefit from cheaper goods and services.

Nor will lower prices cause depressions. Indeed, the course of the prices of some of our most successful machinery has followed a strong downward curve. When cars, televisions, and computers were first produced, they were priced far beyond the reach of the average consumer. But technical efficiency succeeded in lowering prices until they were within the reach of the mass of consumers. Needless to say, neither a depression nor recession was caused by these falling prices. In fact, the only businessmen who suffer in the face of such a trend are those who follow the Keynesian analysis and do not lower their prices in the face of falling demand.

But far from causing an ever-widening depression, as the Keynesians contend, such businessmen only succeed in driving themselves into bankruptcy. For the rest, business continues as satisfactorily as before, but with a lower price level. The cause of depressions, therefore, exists elsewhere.1

There is likewise no substance in the objection to hoarding on the ground that it is disruptive, and continually forces the economy to adjust. Even if true, it would not constitute an indictment of hoarding, for the free market is preeminently an institution of adjustment and reconciliation of divergent and ever-changing tastes. To criticize hoarding on this ground, one would also have to criticize changing clothing styles, for they continually call on the market for “fine tuning” adjustment.

Hoarding is not even a very disruptive process, because for every miser stuffing money into his mattress, there are numerous misers’ heirs ferreting it out. This has always been the case, and it is not likely to change drastically.

Claims that the miser’s hoard of cash is sterile because it does not draw interest as it would if it were banked are also without merit. Could the money held by individuals in their wallets be characterized as sterile since it does not draw interest either? If people voluntarily forbear to earn interest on their money and instead hold it in cash balances, the money may appear useless from our point of view, but it undoubtedly is not useless from theirs.

The miser may want his money not for later spending, not to bridge the gap between expenditures and payments, but rather for the pure joy of holding cash balances. How can the economist, educated in the utility maximization tradition, characterize joy as sterile? Art lovers who hoard rare paintings and sculpture are not characterized as engaging in a sterile enterprise. People who own dogs and cats, solely for the purpose of enjoyment and not investment, are not described as engaging in sterile activity. Tastes differ among people, and what is sterile for one person may be far from sterile for another.

The miser’s hoarding of large cash balances can only be considered heroic. We benefit from lowered price levels, which result from it. The money that we have and are willing to spend becomes more valuable, enabling the purchaser to buy more with the same amount of money. Far from being harmful to society, the miser is a benefactor, increasing our buying power each time he engages in hoarding.

Author: Walter Block, Mises Institute

Contact Walter Block

Walter Block is the Harold E. Wirth Eminent Scholar Endowed Chair in Economics at Loyola University, senior fellow of the Mises Institute, and regular columnist for LewRockwell.com.

“Ambition” means the systematic pursuit of achievement and of constant improvement in respect to one’s goal. Like the word “selfishness,” and for the same reasons, the word “ambition” has been perverted to mean only the pursuit of dubious or evil goals, such as the pursuit of power; this left no concept to designate the pursuit of actual values. But “ambition” as such is a neutral concept: the evaluation of a given ambition as moral or immoral depends on the nature of the goal. A great scientist or a great artist is the most passionately ambitious of men. A demagogue seeking political power is ambitious. So is a social climber seeking “prestige.” So is a modest laborer who works conscientiously to acquire a home of his own. The common denominator is the drive to improve the conditions of one’s existence, however broadly or narrowly conceived. (“Improvement” is a moral term and depends on one’s standard of values. An ambition guided by an irrational standard does not, in fact, lead to improvement, but to self-destruction.)

Politically, the goal of today’s dominant trend is statism. Philosophically, the goal is the obliteration of reason; psychologically, it is the erosion of ambition.

The political goal presupposes the two others. The human characteristic required by statism is docility, which is the product of hopelessness and intellectual stagnation. Thinking men cannot be ruled; ambitious men do not stagnate.

I tense up inside just watching rock climbers on television. I remember looking away from a movie scene where Tom Cruise hung by one hand on the edge of a cliff with a drop of thousands of feet below him. The Lord did not equip me for such adventures (or even to watch people defy death in such a way).

When I think of our world at this moment, I picture Tom Cruise dangling on the edge of a cliff with nothing but air below him. Likewise, our world hangs on the precipice of eternity as signs of the rapidly approaching tribulation gain in intensity each day.

And if our world lies on the edge of this coming time of wrath, then how much closer must we as believers be to the rapture that happens before the tribulation begins?

I believe we live in a period of relative calm before a great storm sweeps across the planet. God’s judgment on the Christ-rejecting world is ever so close at hand. The rapidly approaching tribulation will bring people face to face with the wrath of the Lord and give them one more opportunity to turn to the Savior before they face an eternity apart from Him.

Our World is Ready to Explode

We see evidence of a world set to explode everywhere we look. I provide just a few examples of this in the paragraphs below.

The election here in America has brought our nation to the point of breaking, with ramifications for the entire world. The one claiming to be the “president-elect” has in reality not won anything yet, and President Trump remains confident that he will prove a vast amount of election fraud and thereby remain in office.

If the Supreme Court should declare President Trump the winner, and this seems at least plausible, violence will likely erupt on the streets of the United States, and a civil war may occur. If there is a lengthy delay in announcing a final outcome of the election and President Trump does not concede, we may see the left attempt to forcibly remove him from office. Joe Biden and Barack Obama have both talked publicly about this possibility, which makes it something we cannot ignore.

If Biden becomes president on January 20, 2021, he plans to put the entire United States in lockdown for up to six weeks; an action that will surely bankrupt many businesses striving to survive from the previous lockdowns and bring economic hardship upon millions who will lose their jobs as a result of Biden’s harsh COVID-19 policies.

Iran, held in check by President Trump for the past four years, has already put its neighbors on notice that with Biden in office, they will return to their violent efforts to subdue the Middle East under its power. It’s easy to imagine how civil strife in America or the economic disaster following a Biden lockdown could become a flashing green light for Russia and Iran to invade Israel, per the prophecy in Ezekiel 38-39.

Not only is the world on the precipice of calamity from these possibilities, but geologists repeatedly warn of impending natural disasters in America. They say California is long overdue for a catastrophic earthquake. The frequency and sheer abundance of earthquakes at Yellowstone Park alarm many scientists who fear a disastrous eruption of the volcano in the park would instantly kill millions of people.

The Great Reset is Coming

Once the world falls over the edge, it will fall into the false security of the coming Great Reset advocated by the World Economic Forum (WEF). In an open letter to President Donald Trump dated October 25, 2020, Catholic Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò wrote these chilling words about how those behind The Great Reset will step in to save people and businesses falling off the cliff of financial ruin:

The purpose of the Great Reset is the imposition of a health dictatorship aiming at the imposition of liberticidal measures, hidden behind tempting promises of ensuring a universal income and cancelling individual debt. The price of these concessions from the International Monetary Fund will be the renunciation of private property and adherence to a program of vaccination against Covid-19 and Covid-21 promoted by Bill Gates with the collaboration of the main pharmaceutical groups. . . . Those who do not accept these measures will be confined in detention camps or placed under house arrest, and all their assets will be confiscated.[i]

Does this not sound identical to the policies that the antichrist will enact during the tribulation? The only difference is that he will kill all those who do not worship him and refuse his mark (Rev. 13).

The World Economic Forum (WEF) hopes to implement The Great Reset in the aftermath of the worldwide emergency triggered by COVID-19. This becomes quite clear from reading quotes and articles on the WEF website. Because of this intent, they have a vested interest in the rising incidents of the virus as well as hospitalizations and deaths so as to create greater fear and the need for lengthy lockdowns that will further devastate economies in America and other nations throughout the world. After that, they will offer financial remedies that will sound lifesaving at first but will come with a horrible price that includes servitude to their tyrannical world order.

I believe that the WEF postponed their annual January meeting until late May 2021 in hopes that by then, they will be able to incorporate a weakened United States into their plans for The Great Reset.

The structure of the WEF Great Reset has been in place for a long time, but the globalists have lacked both the necessary worldwide crisis and charismatic leader to make their dream a reality. They now have the crisis they need in the widespread fear generated by the COVID-19 virus, but they still need a powerful leader to pull the world together under the banner of a one-world government.

2 Thessalonians 2:3-8 tells us that the antichrist will someday fill that gap. At some point after our departure to heaven, the rider on the “white horse,” whom I believe will be the antichrist, will leap from the pages of Scripture and gallop through the world, subduing nations with a message of unity and building a better future (Rev. 6:1). For a brief time, the world will marvel at his charm and eagerly follow him.

We may see The Great Reset start to take shape before the rapture, but it’s after our departure that the globalists’ dreams of utopia will fully materialize, albeit for a short while.

What Does This Mean for Us?

So, besides the nearness of the rapture, what does all this mean for us as New Testament saints?

The rapture will happen quickly. The beginning of events that will push the world over the edge will happen instantly and without warning, starting with the rapture. 1 Corinthians 15:51-52 tells us that the rapture will happen in the “twinkling of an eye.” The day Jesus comes for us will start out just like any other day in our lives but will end in glory (Col. 3:4). In 1 Thessalonians 5:3 we read, “While people are saying, ‘There is peace and security,’ then sudden destruction will come upon them as labor pains come upon a pregnant woman, and they will not escape.” I believe this day of the Lord “sudden destruction” will happen shortly after our departure. The tribulation, which kicks off with the peace accord between the antichrist, Israel, and others (Dan. 9:27), will likely start many months after the rapture.

Evil may increasingly prevail in our world before the rapture occurs. We know our world will soon go through a time of unspeakable evil and distress during the tribulation and that we will be in heaven before the Lord pours out His wrath during this time. What we do not know, however, is how much more of the prospering of the wicked we will see before Jesus appears to take us home. Psalm 37 assures us that God will punish the evil we see around us, but it also implies that we may see more success on the part of the wicked before Jesus steps in to judge the world (Psalm 37:7).

It’s time for the church to wake up to the nearness of its departure from this world. I will not spend much time here because I know that the great majority of those reading this post are awake. But sadly, so many believers remain oblivious to the abundance of signs that warn us of the Lord’s soon return. They do not recognize the lateness of the hour in which they live. The Importance of keeping our eyes on the prize. Those of us who are awake to the signs of the times know that a great prize awaits us. I love the words of Romans 8:23 in this regard, “And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.” Not only will we see Jesus, but He will give us immortal bodies and welcome us into His eternal family. I cannot think of a more valuable prize anywhere on earth, In Philippians 3:14 Paul wrote, “I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.” I believe we can at least apply this verse to the rapture because that is what the apostle ends up talking about (see 3:20-21). The rapture is our ultimate honor. What greater prize than to be suddenly with Jesus in glory with imperishable bodies and ultimate wholeness? (Col. 3:4).

The state of the world, combined with biblical prophecy, tells us that Jesus’ quick return for us and sudden intervention in this world is ever so close. He may not come for us this week, next month, or even during the coming year, but on the other hand, He may return for us before we place our heads on our pillows tonight or the sun rises tomorrow morning.

If there ever was a time to remain watchful for Jesus’ appearing, this is it. If there ever was a time to warn those around us of what lies ahead, this is it.

Jonathan Brentner

The creepy criminals want us to “unite”. They don’t mean unite. They mean submit. It’s not about politics. These criminals, if they get in, will not oversee a government. They will be the phony front for a cabal. Our rights are on the auction block — not just to China, but to any bidder. These career politicians use the ignorant Communists, Marxists, socialists, brainwashed young people, nasty university professors with tenure and psychotic anarchists to fuel their bid for power. Power is all they know, and all they care about.

If they get in, do not call them a “Biden administration”. Don’t dignify them with that term. They will be a Biden regime. And, before long no doubt, a Harris regime. Who’s at the top doesn’t really matter. Our rights are all that matter. These sinister fools will not protect our rights. They will violate them on a scale never before seen in American history. Anyone from a totalitarian country will tell you the nightmare of a life without freedom. Tragically, Americans of today will be the ones to relearn that repeated lesson of human history the hard way.

Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason