Trade war with US, Hong Kong protests showing no signs of slowing – is China on the verge of a collapse? If the collapse does come, what next? Are America’s fingerprints on the protests, as China claims? Former Reagan Administration official and former Tune in to today’s Ron Paul Liberty Report:
Reprinted from The Ron Paul Institute for Peace & Prosperity.
Asia, the largest landmass, is drawing together. The USA, having bombed various Asian countries, has been trying to break up Asia. But it’s not working. It has become obvious that the US is not worthy of trust or support. Choose China. Allow the USA to collapse.
China isn’t exactly a great country. Why would you support a country that locks up dissidents if you’re avoiding the US for being bad?
“dissidents”. Is that like “terrorists”, “insurgents”, or “rebels”?
I’ll withdraw support for China if it crosses the Pacific and bombs some third-world cities, like the US does.
Inflation is not a “hidden tax,” thus inflation is not “stealing.” You don’t own the value of your wealth; you own the physical objects. It is the market that determines your wealth when you try to exchange it there.
Although both taxation and government inflation are detrimental to one’s property, they are different economic processes:
Taxation is the government forcibly taking money from you that you then no longer have, i.e., theft. Inflation is the destruction of the value of one’s money, i.e., you still have all of your money, but now its purchasing power has been forcibly lowered because of the government monopoly on creating money out of thin air. But one does not own one’s purchasing power, i.e., the value of one’s money. Value is an intangible. One cannot own an intangible. Since one does not own the value of one’s property but only the property itself, there is no theft involved, i.e., inflation is not a “hidden tax” but, again, is merely a cause of value destruction of the money you own.
Example: (1) THEFT: You steal my car, I no longer have my car. (2) VALUE DESTRUCTION: You take a sledge hammer to my car and smash the windows and the entire body of the car, I still have my caróbut now your actions have lowered the value of my car if I try to sell it. Let’s say I could have sold the car for $10,000, but now I can only sell it for $5,000. You obviously didn’t get that “5,000” when you damaged my car, i.e., you didn’t “steal” it.
What inflation does is gradually destroy the purchasing power of your money. It is the market that determines the actual value of your property—including the value, i.e., purchasing power of your money—the moment it is sold/exchanged in the market place. You may think your house or car or whatever is worth “X amount of dollars,” but it is the final price it sells for in the market that is what the value ultimately was. In other words, you didn’t “own” the dollar value of your sold property itself to begin with, you only owned the property itself.
The fact that certain people are offering something into the market (e.g., FRNs) in and of itself is not wrong. What IS WRONG is that they are given a forced (by government guns) monopoly on this. THAT’S why the rest of us are being screwed. In a truly free market/free banking system, ANYONE could print up FRNs if they wanted to. Just like anyone could mine for gold and silver if they wanted to. And that new gold and silver entering the free market would lower the purchasing power of the gold and silver already circulating in the market. But no one would call that “theft.”
For a longer explanation of why one doesn’t own the value of one’s property but only the value itself (and, therefore, why inflation is not theft nor a “hidden” tax), I highly recommend this paper by Hans Hoppe and Walter Block on value and why you don’t own it.
On Property and ExploitationóHans Hoppe and Walter Block
https://mises.org/sites/default/files/On%20Property%20and%20Exploitation_2.pdf
“Plausible as this theory of property is, in much of contemporary political economy and philosophy confusion abounds on the issue of whether property rights concern the value of physical things or, instead, it is the physical thing themselves which are of value.
It is thus necessary to clarify why the common notion of property rights as extending exclusively to physical things is indeed correct; and why the notion of property rights in values is flawed.
First, it should be noted that these theories are incompatible with each other. It is easily recognized that every action of a person may alter the value (or price) of another person’s property. If A enters the labor or the marriage market, this may impair Bís value in these markets. And if A changes his relative evaluation of beer and bread, or if A decides to become a brewer or a baker himself, this may change the property values of the ñ other ñ brewers and bakers. According to the view that value -impairments constitute rights violations it follows that Aís actions may represent punishable offenses. Yet if A is Guilty, then B and the brewers or bakers in turn must be entitled to defend themselves against Aís actions. Their right to defend themselves can only consist in their (or their agent) being permitted to physically attack or restrict A and his property: B must be entitled to physically bar A from entering the labor or marriage market; and the brewers or bakers must be allowed to physically hinder A from spending his own money as he pleases, e.g., from using his own possessions for the operation of a brewery or bakery. Based on this theory, the physical damaging or restricting of another person’s property use obviously cannot be said to constitute a rights violation. Rather, physical attacks and physical restrictions on the use of private property then have to be classified as lawful defenses. On the other hand, suppose that physical attacks and physical property restrictions constitute rights violations. Then B and brewers or bakers are not allowed to defend themselves against Aís actions. For Aís actions ñ his entering the labor or marriage market, his changed evaluation of beer and bread, and his opening of a brewery or bakery ñ neither affects Bís bodily integrity nor the physical integrity of other brewersí or bakersí property. If they engage in physical resistance against Aís actions nonetheless, then the right to defense rests with A. In this case, however, it cannot be considered a rights violation that a personís actions impair the value of another personís property. No other, third alternative exists.
These two theories of property are not only incompatible, however. The alternative view ñ that a person may own the value (or price) or scarce physical goods ñ is also ëpraxeologicallyí impossible, i.e., it is a theory that we cannot put into effect even if we wanted to; as well, it is as argumentatively indefensible. For while every person can, in principle, have control over whether or not his actions cause the physical attributes of other personsí property to change, control over whether or not his actions affect the value of other peopleís property rests with other people and their evaluations. Consequently, it would be impossible to ever know in advance if oneís planned actions were permitted or not. One would have to interrogate the entire population to make sure that oneís planned actions would not impair the value of anybody elseís property; as well, one would have to reach a universal agreement on who was permitted to do what, with which goods. Mankind would be long dead before this was ever accomplished. Hence, the theory breaks down as non-operational.”
“For a longer explanation of why one doesn’t own the value of one’s property but only the value itself”
I have a bicycle. I own it. It’s worth about $50. You’re saying I don’t own $50 (the value of my property), but only $50 (the value itself).
Now I can see that I don’t own the $50; the money is tied up in the bicycle, which I do own.
I don’t know where this is leading.
I think it much more likely that the US is on the verge of economic collapse than China. Just because Trump is in real estate doesn’t mean he knows squat about economics. I’ve never heard of any economist saying that a trade war is good for anyone.