It Is Dangerous to Be Right When the Government Is Wrong - Andrew P. Napolitano [126]
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Conclusion
It should be pretty self-evident that neither Alan Greenspan nor Ben Bernanke, or any Fed chairman, can be trusted to achieve full employment and currency stabilization. Throughout the life of the Federal Reserve, we have seen American production diminished, debt rise, inflation wreck people’s savings, the boom-and-bust cycle wreck the economy, a widening gap between the rich and the poor, and the value of the dollar drop by 93 percent.
Fed supporters have all sorts of explanations and reasons for these occurrences; but it is no coincidence that from 1870 to 1913, while on a strict gold standard and without a central bank, the American economy grew larger and more rapidly than any other economy in the history of the world, and from 1913 to the present, we have seen our economy fight through years of booms and busts, our living standards decline, and our cost of living increase. This should make it pretty clear that Alan Greenspan’s NYU education, as well as Ben Bernanke’s Harvard and MIT education, is not worth its weight in gold. When economic growth, prosperity, wealth, safety, and happiness are the goals, nothing can replace the gold standard.
If the U.S. federal government were on a strict gold standard, with a 100 percent reserve ratio, there would be absolutely no way to fund these assaults on the Natural Law, such as wars, welfare programs, and regulatory schemes. We would be forced into having a sensible foreign policy of peace, free trade, and a strong national defense that focused only on legitimate threats. The size of the government would be forced to shrink, allowing us all to keep more of our natural freedoms. People would be left to make the decisions that affect only their life, liberty, and property. We would have sound reasons why we shouldn’t go to war, instead of making excuses to go to war, and our men and women in the military would not be needlessly risking their lives. Government would also have to stop making excuses to bail out “too big to fail” corporations, and stop the excuses for why we need this social program or that social program. The government would be forced to stop its assaults on our savings, our economy, our safety, and most importantly, our natural rights and liberties.
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This is why the government must stop abusing everyone’s natural right to sound money.
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Chapter 13
Theft by Any Other Name:
The Right to Spend Your Own Money
Suppose someone with a gun approaches you as you are getting out of your car. “Your car or your life,” he demands. Of course, you give him the keys and walk away. Is this theft? Or is there something that makes it different from theft, that is, a justified violation of your inherent property rights? All of us would say that it is theft, and the person who did this should be punished by the full force of the criminal law.
Would you, however, change your answer if, instead of one, a gang of five men forcefully take your car? Now assume that ten approach you, all armed, but this time they put it to a vote, including you in the vote as well. You, however, are quickly outvoted ten to one, and only then do they take your car. Is this still theft?
What if, after taking your car, they give you a bicycle instead, and they give the car to a person who is particularly poor and needs it to get to work? What if they erected a street lamp in the parking lot, and claimed that they were justified in taking your car because you had enjoyed the benefit of the street lamp by parking there? What if there are one hundred men? Ten thousand? One or two million? What has to change before this forceful taking of your property is no longer theft?
Because taxation is compulsory, and therefore a forceful taking of your property, we may assume that it is a malum in se—an evil in itself. The question then becomes whether there is some valid justification for it. As we shall see, no such justification exists, and therefore taxation violates