Perry,

My view of regulation has been a collection of experiences and thoughts gathered throughout my life by me. My view has almost always bordered on paralysis by analysis because I find knowledge to be a process rather than a fixed condition. If the border vanishes and ‘it’ becomes paralyzed then, in my opinion, we arrive at dogma. It becomes lazy, stupid, dangerous, and self-defeating. It becomes a rigid regulation beyond negotiations. It becomes falsehood in the face of fact.

My view does allow for me to conduct trans-national trading that is regulated by me so that equity is a goal in mind as I endeavor to conduct trade. Equality is a word that assumes a natural physical balance. Equity is a word describing a principled balance arrived at by calculated negotiation.

I recently purchased an upgrade for a mechanical device from someone in Australia. I paid through PayPal the exact negotiated price agreed upon. To say that Australia and America have “The Same” standards of living is hardly provable. I traded equitably with someone in Australia. I can post the e-mail exchange.

If that does not suffice to illustrate enough disparity in standards of living between communities then I can offer more examples:

I recently traded a box full of items with a box full of items to my friend in Brazil. We both agreed upon a definition of equity. The exchange was made somewhat more difficult due to disparity in relative values having nothing at all to do with standards of living and everything to do with personal choice concerning the value of the objects being traded. I can send the e-mail exchanges.

I can offer my personal experiences when trading with my friends in Mexico.

I cannot speak for anyone else as to their viewpoint on regulation and, of course, the enforcement of their viewpoints effecting the regulation of trade. I am an individual.

If the effect of all the individual viewpoints enforcing regulation on trade becomes less coercive then, as a matter of fact, the disparities between standards of living will tend to equalize. This is not simply my individual opinion. This is not dogma. This is a factual function of the economic division of cooperative labor.

My opinion is that if I stop breathing I will die. I can arrive at that point of knowledge without any further process to prove the fact. That point of knowledge has all the properties of dogma for anyone unwilling or unable to learn from past human experience. Few will reject the knowledge but some will insist upon proving it themselves.

My personal trade with everyone I know is a process of finding equity. I will not know if the fact has been found, if the process has succeeded, until my trading partner gives me that certain knowledge. Why would anyone act any different?
http://austrianforum.com/index.php?showtopic=163

Joe

I’ve just had a look at the Austrian forum.
I even registered.

Do you endorse the action taken against Deacon?
I could find no breach of forum rules in his thread.
What a shame his forthright viewpoint was trashed
and his contribution lost. A real shame. The action
indeed smacks of censorship. Unless there was a
post deleted from the thread that contained
something inflammatory.

Joe

You asked:
I do not know about a post by Deacon. Can you
elaborate on the forum posed as a question? Did the
poster fail to abide by the forum rules? Did the
moderator simply exercise a preference?

I hope these clues get you to the right place.

Austrian Economics Forum
Poster name: Deacon S. V. White
Section: About the Website
Sub-section: Trash Can
Title: Yes; You are all wasting your time.
(The thread now seems locked)
Sub-section: Censorship
Title: A thread went missing
(I have made 2 posts to this thread)

It seems he had much to proffer, in his all-too-short
contribution. Some of the points could almost have
been written by you, methinks.

Earlier, I asked:
How much trade do you engage in where such an
arrangement as you describe is not an option? Buying
clothes, buying groceries, buying petrol (if you have a
car), buying appliances, and so on.

Then you responded:
If I trade and my efforts run into a pirate of any form
then I have to assume the costs and renegotiate further
exchanges. I can buy insurance to cover some of the
costs associated with potential losses. In effect my
trade remains equitable from my perspective based
upon my efforts conducted through negotiations. I
negotiate equity. I have personal experience with this
type of exchange and can elaborate upon request. My
personal choices remain mine and it seems appropriate
before moving on to point out that personal choice is a
condition of human existence adjusted by association
with other human beings through negotiations. Nature
can demand difficult choices while aggressive enemies
demand the lesser of two choices both of which are
uncivilized.

I can’t see an answer to my question in that part.

Hypocrisy is falsehood that can be easily defeated by
shining the light of truth.

Exposed, perhaps. Defeated, perhaps not. Once
exposed, who will vanquish it?

Years ago, Joe, I was engaged in a legal battle against a
nearby ‘developer.’ To this day, I’m grateful that I did,
although the trauma at the time was draining. One
aspect comes to mind from that battle. Or, more
correctly, the Tribunal’s decision. The case for t’other
side rested almost entirely on the position that asphalt
and concrete were one and the same things. The
Tribunal’s written decision accepted that there was
some small merit in that argument, in the strictest legal
sense of semantics and etymology. However, the
Tribunal said that the document (District Scheme) was
a public document and the meanings therein, unless
defined to the contrary within the document, had to
those that would be ordinarily attached to them by “the
man in the street.”

That’s the way I present my position, i.e. “All those are
costs imposed upon him by the government, elected by
the citizenry of the country. And most of those costs
are absent for sweat-shop labour economies.” So,
please, can we continue the discussion using words in a
manner that would be ordinarily attached to them by
“the man in the street?” Your street or my street.

Me:
“All those are costs imposed upon him by the
government, elected by the citizenry of the country.”

My take on that sentence, rewritten in my language, goes
like this:
“All those costs are imposed upon him by his own failure
to understand that he is dealing with enemies who have
declared economic war upon his person, his livelihood,
his family, his future generations, and his liberty.”

OK, so that’s your take. But, what now? Who engages
battle against whom? When? How?

Me:
“And most of the costs are absent for sweat-shop labour
economies.“

You:
“Some people manage to avoid doing battle with
economic enemies.”

There is no battle to avoid because the sweat shop
economy government either doesn’t know, doesn’t care
(perhaps both) or worse: actively or passively encourages
sweat-shop economics.

What Deacon White appeared to be advocating was the
KISS principle. He suggested that educating people
correctly, then getting those so educated into positions of
‘power’ and in sufficient numbers was the requisite
course of action. (I agree)

I know that all is not well with the human condition, here,
there and most everywhere. And the animal and bio-
sperical condition, also. I long ago gave up certain acts of
protest, because of their futility. I exert what influence I
have over what I can: my domain. I espouse certain
precepts to others, at times, when I feel so disposed. I
recognise that brute force and ignorance can – at times –
almost be a cultivated condition by too many.

Some of your comments perturb me, Joe. They almost
prompt the fatuous notion of a trauma team arriving at a
serious accident, then sitting down to analyse the
conditions, circumstances, states and pre-dispositions of
those lying around, wounded, distressed or dead as a pre-
condition to attending to the matter at hand. All the while,
life may be ebbing from those in need of immediate help.

A Dilbert cartoon comes to mind:
Dilbert, frame 1: Today is the three year anniversary of
our first meeting to discuss project requirements.
Dilbert, frame 2: And we’re still discussing requirements.
Does anyone else see a problem here?
Colleague, frame 3: When you’re done, can we talk about
requirements?

Substitute definitions for “requirements,” Joe. Then
Deacon’s perspective gets ever-clearer.

You:
“Since my posts are rather long and perhaps overly
oppressive, somewhat invasive, inevitably confrontational
and unfortunately insulting; . . . “

I’m not insulted, oppressed, invaded, nor confronted. I’m
dismayed. Your posts may be oppressive, (a judgement
for others), but perhaps only because the loquacity
thereof obfuscates the substance.

The man on the street does exist. So does the government.
Irrespective of the propriety of your personal definition,
or mine. On the presumption that you are domiciled in the
USA, go out into a downtown street, perhaps looking like
a pollster, and ask passers-by what they think the
(federal/state) government is. I suspect that you would
find a high percentage of concurrence. Either “them
fellahs in Washington,” or “them fellahs in [State
Capital].”

That will likely be at variance from your perspective of
“the Government.” Whether or not I see your definition
or their acceptance as true is irrelevant. It’s what’s real
and tangible, for the moment, that’s valid.

You:
“The problem I am certain is falsehood. My false
perspective may be the entire problem. I suggest that at
least some of the problem involves, to a miniscule degree
perhaps, your false perspective.”

I’m a realist, Joe. In the physical sphere, I live and work
and have my being in the social, political and economic
environment that surrounds me. I interact with it in some
ways that I can choose, e.g. I don’t watch TV; and in
some over which I am compelled, e.g. tax. I still retain
some freedom of choice: I choose to use a Credit Union
(2, actually) as my preferred financial institution, instead
of a fractional reserve bank. But I can’t pretend that
social, political and economic environment that surrounds
me is not there. I’d do so at my peril.

You:
“Only the determined will vanquish falsehood. But once it
is vanquished it is very, very difficult to resurrect it in the
same form. The new Despots have to find new ways to go
about their dirty business.”

Where are they all? That’s what Deacon wanted to know,
it seems. What is being done and by whom, to change the
insidious oppression of those that have governance over
our “democracies?”

From here:

http://www.cato.org/pubs/books/money/money13.htm

Is this:

“The development of electronic money, and cash cards especially, holds out the promise that the public may one day cease to be hostage to the Fed. E-money amounts to a technological end-around play, circumventing long-standing restrictions on private bank notes.”

Note: The end around play.

From here:

http://www.fincen.gov/

http://www.fincen.gov/strategicplan2006_2008.pdf

“Under authorities granted to us by the Bank Secrecy Act and teh USA PATRIOT Act, our role is to prevent and detect terrorist financing, money laundering, and other financial crime.”

Back to here:

http://www.cato.org/pubs/books/money/money12.htm

“Neither system, data fascist not perfect anonymity, is very desirable. What is needed is an electronic payments system to create economic growth and prosperity; it must be a common system that will be able to be widely adopted. Hopefully, it will not have the drawbacks of either scenario.

Now the misunderstanding I mentioned stems from the notion that one must choose between the two scenarios. That is a fairly common way of thinking. However, my research in cryptography over the last decade and a half has taught me that cryptography is extraordinarily powerful. As an illustration, let me explain how we can actually obtain the best of both scenarios.

That result is achieved through the blind-signature technology. Systems based on it are now being launched by Deutsche Bank and other major banks in European countries, and we have it on chip cards and in electronic wallets. The essential idea is simply that instead of receiving digital money from your bank, which you withdraw just like paper money, your computer actually participates in creating the money and actually chooses the serial numbers for you at random. Those serial numbers are then hidden by your computer in a layer of blinding (a special kind of encryption) for which only your computer knows the key. Next, you submit those blinded numbers to the bank for a signature; the bank signs them, to make them worth an equivalent value that it has taken from your account; and, when you receive them back, you can remove the layer of blinding. Thus, when you spend those digital coins, everyone can see that they are signed by the bank, and the bank has to honor them (at least the first time each is spent), but no one, not even the bank, can know which account the money was withdrawn from. Thus, privacy is preserved.

But, since your computer knows the serial numbers of the coins it has created, it can always cooperate with the bank to allow tracing of a coin to the recipient’s account. This means the payer can always retroactively and irrefutably reveal the recipient of the funds. With such electronic cash, the various criminal uses–extortion, black markets, bribery–are no more likely than they are with checks today. (After all, what kidnapper would accept payment by check?)

Not only can the recipient always be traced by the payer, but the money has to be deposited into a bank account in order to be verified as valid. Thus, the total revenue received by any entity would be known almost in real time, thereby preventing the hiding of income for tax evasion and many types of money laundering.”

The elephant and the football players are playing the game. Judging by the dates in the above play book; the ball is currently held by the elephant. The football players may still have the competitive advantage; leverage of autonomy, teamwork and a common desire for liberty.