Balance Of Power, Globalization, And The Capitalist Peace - Friedrich: Fill & Download for Free

What is the current state of affairs after 70 years of this climate denial machine? In the US, at least 180 congressional members and senators are declared climate deniers. They’ve received more than US$82 million in campaign contributions from the fossil fuel industry and its partners.Q: How much money bribe from oil and gas industry does it take to claim that “climate scientists are in it for the money”?A: $763,331Climate scientists slam Rick Santorum's "conspiracy theory" that they're in it for the moneyWhen you have received $763,331 from oil and gas companies, I guess its mandatory to claim that "climate scientists are in it for the money" right?LOLOil & Gas: Money to CongressThe goal of the fossil fuel industry is to keep its profits rolling in without interference by government or by new, competing energy sources.To do this they need the public embroiled in doubt and suspicion; they need to degrade public confidence in science and scientists; they need to harm America’s future—and the world’s future—so that one of the wealthiest industries on Earth can engorge itself in even more wealth.https://cleantechnica.com/2016/0...The Dake Page :"Denialists know that they have no valid scientific argument; if they did they would present it in scientific journals, conferences, and debates. Their goal isn’t to demonstrate science, it is to manipulate public opinion. That is what lobbyists do, and they do it well. Their goal is to create the illusion of debate, the façade of uncertainty. By continuing the “discussion,” such as it is, in the media, they win. They know that a majority of the public won't understand the intricacies of the science, either by choice or by its complexity. Denialists know that the public will get an overall sense of whether the science is settled or not, and that it is on this vague feeling the public will make judgments as to whether immediate action is needed. Perception is more important than fact, and illusion of reality is much more powerful than actual reality. [...] What is critical in this game is not what the science tells us, it’s the fact that to the public it appears as if there are two sides arguing with each other. Two sides + arguing = not settled.THE MAIN PLAYERS: THE KOCHS AND EXXON MOBILThe Kochs are probably the main founders of the american denial machine. Their agenda is to undermine all science which comes into “conflict” with their self interests. They are mega big polluters. And they have paid politicians to “do nothing about global warming”. (Watch the video)The origin of climate denial:Mont Pelerin Society Revealed As Home To Leading Pushers Of Climate Science DenialDuke University history professor Nancy MacLean suggests some answers in her new book Democracy in Chains: the Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America.The book documents how wealthy conservatives, in particular petrochemical billionaire Charles Koch, teamed up with neoliberal academics with the objective, MacLean says, of undermining the functions of government in the United States.MacLean’s central character is the late James McGill Buchanan, a political theorist and economist who won a Nobel award in 1986 for his development of “public choice theory”.Buchanan and Koch developed and propagated their ideas through a private organisation called the Mont Pelerin Society (MPS) – an influential group known as the “neoliberal thought collective” that was established in 1947 by famed free market economist Friedrich Hayek. Buchanan was a former president and joined in 1957. Koch, who has poured millions into groups attacking mainstream climate science, joined MPS in 1970.MPS has about 500 members in more than 40 countries.In the US it has many members who also work at think tanks that push climate science misinformation and attack renewable energy.This ongoing billion dollar attack on science from polluters industry think tanks and front groups have unfortunately undermined peoples trust in science and scientists.How Exxon Mobil, Koch brothers created a culture of climate doubt.Corporate funding and ideological polarization about climate changeAbstractDrawing on large-scale computational data and methods, this research demonstrates how polarization efforts are influenced by a patterned network of political and financial actors. These dynamics, which have been notoriously difficult to quantify, are illustrated here with a computational analysis of climate change politics in the United States. The comprehensive data include all individual and organizational actors in the climate change countermovement (164 organizations), as well as all written and verbal texts produced by this network between 1993–2013 (40,785 texts, more than 39 million words). Two main findings emerge. First, that organizations with corporate funding were more likely to have written and disseminated texts meant to polarize the climate change issue. Second, and more importantly, that corporate funding influences the actual thematic content of these polarization efforts, and the discursive prevalence of that thematic content over time. These findings provide new, and comprehensive, confirmation of dynamics long thought to be at the root of climate change politics and discourse. Beyond the specifics of climate change, this paper has important implications for understanding ideological polarization more generally, and the increasing role of private funding in determining why certain polarizing themes are created and amplified. Lastly, the paper suggests that future studies build on the novel approach taken here that integrates large-scale textual analysis with social networks.https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/...__________________________________________________________________How Fossil Fuel Money Made Climate Change Denial the Word of God_______________________________________________________The shocker!!The moment when ExxonMobil admits they funded climate denier think tanks:You gotta see this to believe it. About 6 mins into video.OIL INDUSTRIES AND TOBACCO INDUSTRIES USED THE SAME METHODS TO UNDERMINE THE SCIENCETobacco and Oil Industries Used Same Researchers to Sway Public"As early as the 1950s, the groups shared scientists and publicists to downplay dangers of smoking and climate change".Merchants of Doubt is a 2014 American documentary film directed by Robert Kenner.The film traces the use of public relations tactics that were originally developed by the tobacco industry to protect their business from research indicating health risks from smoking. The most prominent of these tactics is the cultivation of scientists and others who successfully cast doubt on the scientific results.LETS LOOK AT THE MONEY SPENT:A study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggests that over the last 20 years, private funding has had an important influence on the overall polarization of climate change as a topic in the United States.Corporate funding and ideological polarization about climate changeTruth is these interests are spending billions on lobbying officials:"Lobbying is conducted away from the public eye," explained Brulle. "There is no open debate or refutation of viewpoints offered by professional lobbyists meeting in private with government officials. Control over the nature and flow of information to government decision-makers can be significantly altered by the lobbying process and creates a situation of systematically distorted communication. This process may limit the communication of accurate scientific information in the decision-making process."As the study concludes, “the environmental organization and the renewable energy sectors were outspent by the corporate sectors involved in the production or use of fossil fuels by a ratio of approximately 10 to 1.”How lobbyists buy climate change legislationThe money spent on anti science propaganda campaigns and attacks on climate science is riddicilous:AbstractThis paper conducts an analysis of the financial resource mobilization of the organizations that make up the climate change counter-movement (CCCM) in the United States. Utilizing IRS data, total annual income is compiled for a sample of CCCM organizations (including advocacy organizations, think tanks, and trade associations). These data are coupled with IRS data on philanthropic foundation funding of these CCCM organizations contained in the Foundation Center’s data base. This results in a data sample that contains financial information for the time period 2003 to 2010 on the annual income of 91 CCCM organizations funded by 140 different foundations. An examination of these data shows that these 91 CCCM organizations have an annual income of just over $900 million, with an annual average of $64 million in identifiable foundation support. The overwhelming majority of the philanthropic support comes from conservative foundations. Additionally, there is evidence of a trend toward concealing the sources of CCCM funding through the use of donor directed philanthropies.https://phys.org/news/2013-12-koch-brothers-reveals-funders-climate.htmlhttp://www.drexel.edu/~/media/Files/now/pdfs/Institutionalizing%20Delay%20-%20Climatic%20Change.ashx"Dark Money" Funds Climate Change Denial EffortExclusive: Billionaires secretly fund attacks on climate scienceSenators who urged Trump to leave Paris climate accord took millions from oil companiesHOW THE 2% RICH KEEPS THEIR 98% SHEEPLE “SATISFIED”To pander their gullible “people on the streets” its often enough to label environmental laws for “tax scams”. This will trigger their tribe into believing its about them. Thats how they have kept america polluted for 100 years.The amount of spent money has been staggering. Between 2005 and 2008, the Kochs alone spent nearly $25m on organizations fighting climate reform. One study by a Drexel University professor found 140 conservative foundations had spent $558m over seven years for the same purpose.[...] The genius of this strategy was to “turn corporate self-interest into a movement among people on the streets”."The AEI was one of dozens of the new think tanks bankrolled by hundreds of millions from the Kochs and their allies. Sold to the public as quasi-scholarly organizations, their real function was to legitimize the right to pollute for oil, gas and coal companies, and to argue for ever more tax cuts for the people who created them.Here is the method they use to pander and exploit “people on the streets”:Kochs’ “grand strategist Richard Fink:“We want to decrease regulations. Why? It’s because we can make more profit, O.K.? Yeah, and cut government spending so we don’t have to pay so much taxes. There’s truth in that.” But to the “middle third” these positions seemed motivated not by ideological principle but by greed.The rich donors who made up the Koch network, Fink said, needed to persuade moderate, undecided voters that their intent was generous. “We’ve got to convince these people we mean well, and that we’re good people,” Fink said.Fink was brutally honest about how unpopular the views of his wealthy audience were. “When we focus on decreasing government spending,” he said, and on “over-criminalization and decreasing taxes, it doesn’t do it, O.K.? . . . They’re not responding, and don’t like it.”But he pointed out that if anyone in America knew how to sell something it should be the successful business leaders in the Koch network. “We get business,” he told the audience. “What do we do? We want to find out what the customer wants, right? Not what we want them to buy!”The company’s internal research had shown that Americans wanted a clean environment, widespread good health, high standards of living, security, freedom, peace, and opportunity for both themselves and others. This posed a problem, given that the Kochs and their network opposed environmental regulation and government action on global warming, and supported privatizing Social Security and health care.But Fink had a solution. “This is going to sound a little strange,” he acknowledged. “So you’ll have to bear with me.” The Koch network, he said, needed to present its free-market ideology as an apolitical and altruistic reform movement to enhance the quality of life—as “a movement for well-being.” The network should make the case that free markets forged a path to happiness, whereas big government led to tyranny, Fascism, and even Nazism. Arguing that an increase in the minimum wage would cause higher unemployment, Fink told his audience that unemployment in Germany during the nineteen-twenties had led to the rise “of the Third Reich.”New Koch: Rebranding the Billionaire BrothersHere lies the real scam:The hysterical, polemic, paranoid conspiratorial and desperate feigned "us against them" conservative alt-right wingnut ideological free marked fundamentalist libertarian Ayn Rand anti-government anti-regulation tax alarmism demagogy junk with its mandatory and predictable attacks on unwanted (climate) science and smear against scientists and competing green energy, filtered through think tanks and astroturf orgs by their wolf pack attackers, Opinion Piece writers, fake experts and their media-accomplices, all recycled by echo chamber denier blogs and You-Tube-videos by amateur deniers and boys room conspiracy drivlers and web-trolls,-are really only asewer stream of cynical polluters industry self interests,camouflaged as a political right / left struggle -drag queened in a convulsively socialist witch hunt, posing like its about the "people on the street", the workers (their gullible sheeple) and "the poor people of the world",but the real agenda isto legitimize the right to pollute for oil, gas and coal companies, and to argue for ever more tax cuts for the free marked fundamentalists who created them so they can continue to make shitloads of money by ruining public health and add to the damages of CC.Private corporations take the profit while the environment and public health takes the bill.The amount of spent money has been staggering. Between 2005 and 2008, the Kochs alone spent nearly $25m on organizations fighting climate reform. One study by a Drexel University professor found 140 conservative foundations had spent $558m over seven years for the same purpose.[...] The genius of this strategy was to “turn corporate self-interest into a movement among people on the streets”.Dark Money review: Nazi oil, the Koch brothers and a right wing revolutionTesting Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average CitizensMultivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organised groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on US government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence.In English: the wealthy few move policy, while the average American has little power.If policymaking is dominated by powerful business organisations and a small number of affluent Americans, then America's claims to being a democratic society are seriously threatened.https://goo.gl/SX9y38America are run by the polluters and their puppet politicians.The same mighty polluters which have kept America polluted for 100 years with lead, asbestos, DDT, mercury ,nicotine and now C02.HOW DO WE RECOGNIZE THE POLLUTERS AND THEIR PUPPETS?You recognize them when they start to attack environmental laws.They always attack environmental laws.These laws are made so that you and I can enjoy clean air and waters. These same laws are called “tax scams” by the polluters. The term “tax scam” will very likely be embraced by anyone who doesn’t like “the government” in the first place.The EPA was created to protect citizens from pollutions and environmental hazards. But he EPA is now a joke in Trumps America. It’s been hijacked by fossil fuel puppets and climate deniers. FFS, their new chief is a former coal lobbyist.Trump taps former coal lobbyist to lead EPATrumps America is fossil fuels America. How proud deniers must be. Leat them eat mercury, as they did lead, asbestos, DDT, nicotine and C02, you know, those other "hoaxes" science warned about. And as usual, these environmental laws will be renamed "tax scams" by the fossil fuels front group propaganda machine, to pander their bent over tribe of gullibles who, as usual, will swallow any anti-governmental lie they design, just because they believe being pro-government makes you a socialist.The corruption knows no limits:When Mother Jones first reported in December 2017 that the Environmental Protection Agency had hired a hyper-partisan GOP opposition research firm known for its aggressive tactics to handle the agency’s news-clipping work, the politically appointed flacks in the agency’s press office insisted the decision was about saving money and the hiring had been handled through normal procurement channels. As we reported Thursday, we now know that was not the case. Internal emails obtained by FOIA show that political appointees in the EPA press office demanded career staff push through the hiring of Definers Public Affairs—best known for its work for Republican campaigns and recently for its role as Facebook’s attack dog on Capitol Hill, which included attempts to smear George Soros for his critiques of the social media network.Now, thanks to another batch of internal emails, we have even more evidence that the motivation for hiring Definers came from the top agency political appointees who were ticked off at the old service, because it was collecting too many news clips that portrayed then-EPA administrator Scott Pruitt negatively.- Russ Choma & Rebecca Leber, Politics, Mother Jones, Jan 7, 2019The EPA hired GOP oppo firm because it was sick of "fake news"And when fossil fuel interests get bogged down in the candy store alone, this is what happens:Donald Trump has announced a replacement for the Clean Power Plan, one that would create hundreds of millions more tons of carbon pollutionThe Oil Industry’s Covert Campaign to Rewrite American Car Emissions RulesPublic Citizen report on Koch-Trump connectionsMercury Limits on Coal Plants No Longer ‘Appropriate,’ EPA SaysEPA Says Limiting Mercury Pollution From Power Plants Is No Longer 'Appropriate and Necessary'Trump's New Power Plan Comes With a Deadly Price76 Environmental Rules on the Way Out Under TrumpThe Trump Administration’s War on Wildlife Should Be a ScandalNational Parks Getting Trashed During Government Shutdownhttps://www.facebook.com/yearswa...Corporate funding and ideological polarization about climate changeAmerica the pollutedLets explain how climate science became a political and ideological issue.The polluters know they dont have any science to back up their arguments. So instead they use the best defence method they can. Which is to polarize and politizise the science.Polluters industry will resist regulation that makes its operations more expensive.Thats why cynical industries and free marked fundamentalists which are dependant on polluting the environment in order to make their profit - will accuse anyone and anything and everyone, including governments, of using "politics" to try and "stop" them polluting.The Oil and coal Industry does not want to give up it’s cash cow.The polluter industries are accusing the climate science of being so "political", but they themselves have deliberately worked to make it appear as political. Because they have no science to defend themselves, this is their only defense against those who try to stop their pollution. To get a focus away from the fact that basic physics alone is 100% clear our CO2 causes climate change.It's much easier for them to defend themselves when their own interests are wrapped up in ideology and politics.The science was not politicized until the implications of doing something about it were realized by those who saw a harmful side of doing so to their particular concern. That usually involves big money but also becomes a threat to ideologies which abhor government interference into free market capitalism. Effective global warming intervention necessarily requires that the governing bodies of the world unite in the effort in a comprehensive and coordinated way.(Russel Swan)When think tanks and fossil fuel front groups started to lobby for the fossil fuel self interests 30 years ago, the first thing they did was to camouflage those interests as an anti government anti regulation anti tax ideological anti socialist "struggle".They connected their audience’s underlying ideologies to climate change: Because cutting GHG emissions requires intervention regulation or increased taxation of carbon emissions—that curtail free market economics, people whose identity and worldview centers around free markets became particularly likely to reject the findings from climate science when the logic was laid bare.How Is Climate Change Denial Still a Thing?Non-science free market lobbying groups have a long history of setting up fake front organizations and now blogger networks to saturate the public domain with intentional misinformation.Back in the late 1980s, when it became pretty clear that there was no persistent Soviet threat, conservatives needed a new bogeyman, and they found it in the environmental movement. “Green is the new Red,” became a common phrase in the conservative magazines of that era. Rather than suggesting that America strip away protections designed to keep air and water clean, commentators and pols railed against controls on less visible threats, like pesticides, ozone holes, and global warming. Cries for environmental regulation were twisted into calls for socialism and the end of economic progress.Conservative think tanks and politicians took up the mantle of climate change denial and, for more than 25 years, they’ve kept at it. Just like tobacco industry did before them.Accepting that climate change is real and bad is fundamentally harder to do for those who have benefited from industrial capitalism, which runs on cheap fossil fuels. It’s doubly hard for conservatives, who by definition tend to resist change more than liberals.Climate change is a side effect of industrial capitalism. Industrialized nations were built with energy from cheap fossil fuels, and this released enormous amounts of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere.This is what economists call an externality — a consequence that is not built into the cost. There are market solutions to externality problems, like carbon taxes or carbon trading schemes, which incentivise industries that don’t pollute as much. These are the sort of solutions that conservatives tend to like, but implementing any solution means acknowledging the problem in the first place."It’s not surprising that high-profile deniers are almost exclusively conservative white men, since they have most benefited from the industrial capitalist system, and therefore have the most skin in the game when it comes to protecting the powers that be — even if they aren’t those powers."[...] “conservative white males are likely to favour protection of the current industrial capitalist order which has historically served them well”. It added that “heightened emotional and psychic investment in defending in-group claims may translate into misperceived understanding about problems like climate change that threaten the continued order of the system.”Cool dudes: The denial of climate change among conservative white males in the United StatesHow Is Climate Change Denial Still a Thing?http://journals.plos.org/plosone...Smearing scientists and undermining "unwanted" science which comes into conflict with self interests and ideology, is all part of the denial propaganda machine:"Cynicism about the motives of public servants, including government-backed climate scientists, can be traced to a group of neoliberals and their ‘toxic’ ideas".On the origins of environmental bullshit"The concerted effort to discredit the scientific consensus over man-made global warming has been continuing for two decades in the United States, and shows no sign of weakening. It is very often described as an attempt on the part of corporate America, most notably the fossil fuel industries, to hinder governmental regulations on their activities. While emphasising this dimension of the US climate denial movement, this article also aims to show the complexity of the movement, rather than the mere defence of the narrowly-defined and short-term economic interests of the oil and gas industries, by shedding light on two additional factors which have been instrumental in blocking strong climate action. First, climate denial stems from the strong ideological commitment of small-government conservatives and libertarians to laisser-faire and their strong opposition to regulation. Second, in order to disarm their opponents, US climate deniers often rest their case on the defence of the American way of life, defined by high consumption and ever-expanding material prosperity. It is the contention of this article, therefore, that the US climate denial movement is best understood as a combination of these three trends."https://journals.openedition.org...Emails show cooperation among EPA and climate-change deniersWASHINGTON (AP) — Newly released emails show senior Environmental Protection Agency officials working closely with a conservative group that dismisses climate change to rally like-minded people for public hearings on science and global warming, counter negative news coverage and tout Administrator Scott Pruitt’s stewardship of the agency.John Konkus, EPA’s deputy associate administrator for public affairs, repeatedly reached out to senior staffers at the Heartland Institute, according to the emails.“If you send a list, we will make sure an invitation is sent,” Konkus wrote to then-Heartland president Joseph Bast in May 2017, seeking suggestions on scientists and economists the EPA could invite to an annual EPA public hearing on the agency’s science standards.Follow-up emails show Konkus and the Heartland Institute mustering scores of potential invitees known for rejecting scientific warnings of man-made climate-change, including from groups like Plants Need CO2, The Right Climate Stuff, and Junk Science.The emails underscore how Pruitt and senior agency officials have sought to surround themselves with people who share their vision of curbing environmental regulation and enforcement, leading to complaints from environmentalists that he is ignoring the conclusions of the majority of scientists in and out of his agency especially when it comes to climate-changing carbon emissions.Emails show cooperation among EPA, climate-change deniersLeak exposes how Heartland Institute works to undermine climate scienceRoger Fjellstad Olsen's answer to Do you think that some scientists have been persuaded by elements of the industrial behemoth that global warming is fake or overstated?Anthony Watts - SourceWatchDeniers favorite fossil fuel think tank front group, the Heartland Institutes view on tobacco and tobacco smoking. Sound familiar?Heartland Institute 2018:"The public health community's campaign to demonize smokers and all forms of tobacco is based on junk science".Heartland Institute 2018:"The anti-smoking movement is hardly a grassroots phenomenon: It is largely funded by taxpayers and a few major foundations with left-liberal agendas."Heartland Institute 2018:“The association between (second hand) tobacco smoke and coronary heart disease and lung cancer may be considerably weaker than generally believed.Heartland Institute 2018:"There are many reasons to be skeptical about what professional anti-smoking advocates say. They personally profit by exaggerating the health threats of smoking and winning passage of higher taxes and bans on smoking in public places."More:Anti-smoking activists give smokers a stark choice: Stop smoking or die! In fact, there is a third path: reduce the harm by shifting to less-hazardous products that provide similar enjoymentLitigation against the tobacco industry is an example of lawsuit abuse, and has “loaded the gun” for lawsuits against other industries.Smoking bans hurt small businesses and violate private property rights.Appeals to “protect the children” don’t justify the war being waged against adult smokers.Smoker's Lounge | Heartland Institute“They did everything that becomes known as the signature of the tobacco industry,” said David Rosner, who has helped anti-lead lawsuits and co-wrote the 2013 book “Lead Wars.” “In fact, they were really pioneered by the lead industries. … The (Lead Industries Association) can take credit for creating this giant doubt industry.”While evidence about the harmful effects of asbestos continued to grow, so did the influence of the asbestos companies. Between 1940 and 1980, the business expanded into a multibillion dollar industry that employed more than 200,000 people.The success of these companies hinged on keeping the health risks of asbestos a secret — but it was asbestos workers and consumers who paid the price. In order to keep the industry alive and prosperous, many companies took steps to ensure miners, factory workers and the public knew nothing about the true dangers of asbestos.http://theweek.com/captured/7307...Jeremy Grantham, the longtime investor famous for calling the last two major bubbles in the market, is urging capitalists and "mainstream economists" to recognize the looming threat of climate change."Capitalism and mainstream economics simply cannot deal with these problems. Mainstream economics largely ignore [them]," Grantham, who co-founded GMO in 1977, said Tuesday in an impassioned speech at the Morningstar Investment Conference in Chicago. "We deforest the land, we degrade our soils, we pollute and overuse our water and we treat air like an open sewer, and we do it all off the balance sheet."This negligence is due in large part to how short-sighted corporations can be, Grantham said. "Anything that happens to a corporation over 25 years out doesn't exist for them, therefore, as I like to say, grandchildren have no value" to them, he said.- Fred Imbert, CNBC, June 13, 2018https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/13/...______________________________________________________SUMMARY:The polluters industry - a timeline:1900-2000: LEADLead is good for us and not dangerous to children and if you dont bend over and enjoy it youre attacking our industry and our desire to make shitloads of money by ruining public health and your campaign to demonize LEAD is based on junk science and you are probably a leftist government communist out to tax and regulate us out of businessOIL COMPANY DUPONT AND GENERAL MOTORS KNEW LEAD GAS WAS A KNOWN POISON WHEN THEY PUT IT IN GASOLINE AS AN ANTI-KNOCK AGENT.(Ethanol couldn’t be patented and offered no viable profit for GM, so they were on the lookout for new additives to use. Marketing tetraethyl lead or TEL under the name “Ethyl” (because lead was already known to be poisonous), GM expected to rake in massive amounts of money.)For decades auto and oil companies denied that lead posed any health risks.1930s-1990s ASBESTOSAsbestos is good for us and if you dont bend over and enjoy it youre attacking our industry and our desire to make shitloads of money by ruining public health and your campaign to demonize asbestos is based on junk science and you are probably a leftist government communist out to tax and regulate us out of business."As is often the case with environmental scares, the asbestos “cure” was pushed well ahead of a complete diagnosis. Research has confirmed that asbestos workers who do not use protective breathing apparatus suffer increased health risks. For the remaining 99+ percent of the U.S. population, however, asbestos health risks are virtually nil."https://www.heartland.org/news-opinion/news/testimony-on-asbestos-litigation-1Massive Asbestos Cover-Up by World's Industrial Giants1940s-1960s: DDTDDT is good for us and if you dont bend over and enjoy it youre attacking our industry and our desire to make shitloads of money by ruining public health and your campaign to demonize DDT is based on junk science and you are probably a leftist government communist out to tax and regulate us out of business.Ruthless Power and Deleterious Politics: From DDT to Roundup1950s-1980s: NICOTINENicotine is good for us and is not addictive nor related to lung cancer and if you dont bend over and enjoy it you're attacking our industry and our desire to make shitloads of money by ruining public health and your campaign to demonize smokers and all forms of tobacco is based on junk science and you are probably a leftist government communist out to tax and regulate us out of businessTobacco industry intentionally manipulates cigarettes to make them more addictive."A federal court has ordered Altria, R.J. Reynolds Tobacco, Lorillard and Philip Morris USA to make this statement about the health effects of smoking."Then the bad news begins to flow."Smoking causes heart disease, emphysema, acute myeloid leukemia and cancer of the mouth, esophagus, larynx, lung, stomach, kidney, bladder and pancreas."Heartland Institute 2018:"The public health community's campaign to demonize smokers and all forms of tobacco is based on junk science".1990s-2018: C02C02 is good for us and not related to pollution and climate change and if you dont bend over and enjoy it you're attacking our industry and our desire to make shitloads of money by ruining public health and your campaign to demonize fossil fuels is based on junk science and you are probably a leftist government communist out to tax and regulate us out of business.The US supreme court ruled that carbon dioxide IS a pollutant is 2007.Exxon Knew about Climate Change Almost 40 Years AgoShell Knew Fossil Fuels Created Climate Change Risks Back in 1980s, Internal Documents ShowTHE END RESULTIS AMERICA NOW HAVE HALF A POPULATION WHO ARE IN DISTRUST OF SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTSJournalist Charles P. Pierce, Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free :"The rise of idiot America today represents - for profit mainly, but also and more cynically, for political advantage in the pursuit of power - the breakdown of a consensus that the pursuit of knowledge is a good. It also represents the ascendancy of the notion that the people whom we should trust the least are the people who best know what they are talking about. In the new media age, everybody is an expert."Richard Hofstadter, who won a Pulitzer Prize in 1964 for his book, Anti-Intellectualism In American Life, describes“how the vast underlying foundations of anti-elite, anti-reason and anti-science have been infused into America's political and social fabric.”Tom Nichols’ bok, “The Death of Expertise:“The culture and our educational system have created a generation that has little experience being told they are objectively wrong. Everyone feels they are entitled to be right. Combine this with the illusion of knowledge provided by Google, and everyone thinks they are their own expert in anything.”The War On Science from this administration is shameful and devastating to the United States reputation as a pioneer science nation as well as for the US's further ability to develop new technology mankind needs to progress .Antiscience attitudes and policies actively hurt science's ability to do great things.The "Best and the Brightest" no longer come to US universities to study or do research, because there is simply too little funding of the sciences,Its become tribal. Often its enough for the polluters to label environmental laws for “tax scams”, and their tribe will have another reason to hate the government.Everything about the claim, “global warming (climate change) is a scam”, can be directly linked to fossil fuel front groups, think tanks and their echo chamber denier blogs.Every singe time you follow the trail back, this is where you gonna end up. EVERY SINGLE TIME.To some nonsense about how C02, their monetary crane and Holy Grail, is “good for us”. Everything the professional climate deniers have ever written about this matter, has this one purpose; to protect C02. To portrait C02 as “ a gift from God”.They duped us with leadThey duped us with asbestosThey duped us with DDTThey duped us with nicotineAre we gonna let the mighty polluters run us all over..AGAIN?Roger Fjellstad Olsen's answer to Why is opposition to climate science more common in the United States than other countries?Roger Fjellstad Olsen's answer to How do the Koch brothers feel about global warming and pollution?

20 Common Forms of GovernmentIt’s easy to criticize “the government” in broad and indirect terms, but it’s far more rewarding to criticize the government using the proper terminology.And we’re also guessing that these terms will be a huge help as you prepare for your civics exam, write your last philosophy essay, or navigate a last-minute political science project.As you proceed, you’ll find terms commonly used to describe forms of government. Some refer to economic policy, others to political structures, and others to philosophical ideologies. Some concepts overlap while others have no immediate parallel. It can be complex stuff.One thing these terms have in common is each refers to an approach to governance and points to the complex, evolving, and often conflicting ideas for how we should live with one another and within a larger society.Read on for 20 of the most commonly noted forms of governance and a few real-world examples.Table of ContentsAnarchyAristocracyBureaucracyCapitalismColonialismCommunismDemocracyFederalismFeudalismKleptocracyMeritocracyMilitary DictatorshipMonarchyOligarchyPlutocracyRepublicanismSocialismTheocracyTotalitarianismTribalismForms of GovernmentAnarchyAnarchism refers to the absence of government, a condition in which a nation or state operates without a central governing body. This denotes an absence of public utilities or services, a lack of regulatory control, limited diplomatic relations with other nation-states, and in most instances, a society divided into different, locally-ruled settlements (or fiefdoms).Real World ExampleFollowing the outbreak of civil war in 1991, and the toppling of dictator Said Barre, Somalia entered into a state of anarchy. The nation splintered into various autonomous regions, with tribal warlords claiming authority over territorial domains. Following years of involvement from the international community, the early 2000s saw the reestablishment of a transitional government, and in 2012, the passage of a constitution, which established Somalia as a “federation,” or a union of partially self-governing states.AristocracyAristocracy refers to a form of government in which wealthy nobles are given power over those in lower socioeconomic strata. Positions of leadership are reserved for those of an elite ruling class, a status which is typically hereditary. The privileged ruling class is viewed, in this system, as possessing the education, upbringing, and genetic traits required for rulership. Aristocracy promotes an inherent class system that connects wealth and ethnicity with both the ability and right to rule.Real World ExampleAncient Greece gives us both the word aristocracy (aristos=excellent; krato=power) as well as the concept itself. In ancient Greece, a council of empowered leading citizens were viewed as offsetting the absolute power bestowed upon a monarchy. Plato viewed the concept positively, referring to the aristocracy as being comprised of “philosopher kings,” those with the knowledge and intellectual curiosity to rule as well as the requisite wealth and bloodline. But as the idea of aristocracy has become more distant from Ancient Greece, the dimensions of education and qualification have been stripped from its meaning. Today, it more largely refers to an inherently unequal form of government in which a small class of wealthy elites rules the majority population.BureaucracyBureaucracy refers to a form of government in which non-elected government officials carry out public responsibilities as dictated by administrative policy-making groups. In a bureaucracy, rules, regulations, procedures, and outcomes are formulated to maintain order, achieve efficiency, and prevent favoritism within the system. Bureaucracies rarely serve as forms of government on their own but are instead often used as mechanisms to underlie and strengthen overarching forms of government. Indeed, bureaucratic streamlining of policy implementation can take place under the rule of a dictator or a democracy.Real World ExampleBureaucracy played an essential role in formalizing and equalizing taxation in Great Britain. In the 18th century, as the United Kingdom engaged in an array of military campaigns around the world, it established an encompassing taxation administration designed to the fund the war efforts. With a focus on using improved technology and more efficient collection methodologies, the United Kingdom established what would become the largest public administration network in the world to that date. The tax collection bureaucracy — the Department of Excise — served the interests of the British monarchy but would eventually give rise to the modern English bureaucracy, Her Majesty’s Civil Service.CapitalismCapitalism refers to a form of economy in which production is driven by private ownership. Capitalism promotes the idea of open competition and extends from the belief that a free market economy — one with limited regulatory control — is the most efficient form of economic organization. Its advocates argue that capitalism promotes economic growth, improved standards of living, higher productivity, and broader prosperity, whereas critics argue that capitalism inherently promotes inequality, exploitation of the labor class, and unsustainable use of resources and land.Real World ExampleCapitalism takes various forms, from state and corporate capitalism to pure laissez-faire economy. Present-day United States may be referred to as a liberal market economy, in which firms engage in open competition within the context of existing hierarchies and market mechanisms. These hierarchies and mechanisms tend to promote greater opportunities, access, and wealth for those who already enjoy an ownership stake in the U.S. economy. It also limits opportunities for mobility and shapes participation among those who do not have an ownership stake. Political influence is also directly correlated to this ownership stake within the context of American capitalism.ColonialismColonialism is a form of governance in which a nation will seek to extend its sovereignty over other territories. In practical terms, colonialism involves the expansion of a nation’s rule beyond its borders. This often entails occupation of indigenous populations and exploitation of resources to the benefit of the ruling nation. The colonizer will also often impose its own economy, culture, religious order, and form of government on an occupied people to strengthen its own authority.Real World ExampleIn the 15th century, the European monarchies launched an age of nautical exploration. As merchants and conquerors voyaged in search of new lands, they found indigenous cultures whose technology and way of life they viewed as primitive. As was the tendency of European monarchies, British, French, Spanish and Dutch colonists spread their influence and authority throughout the New World, dismantling and sometimes eradicating entire cultures and peoples in the process. The most familiar case is the race for occupation of North America, the establishment of the original 13 Colonies, the systematic destruction of Native American culture, and the slave trade that gave way to the eventual independence, prosperity, and cultural identity of the United States.CommunismIn its purest form, Communism refers to the idea of common, public ownership of the economy, including infrastructure, utilities, and means of production. Communism, as idealized by thinkers Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, denotes an absence of class divisions, which inherently requires the subversion of the ruling class by the working class. As such, communism often incorporates the idea of revolutionary action against unequal rule. Communism often positions itself as a counterpoint to the economic stratification underlying capitalism. This resistance to stratification sometimes also takes the form of a single-state authority, one in which political opposition or dissidence may be restricted. This may manifest in some communist states as a more authoritarian form of governance, as typified by the Soviet brand of communism that swept the globe during the mid-20th century.Real World ExampleModern communism manifests as a descendant from Soviet communism — both ideologically and materially — and is sometimes identified as the Marxist-Leninist variation on communism. Countries that retain a single-party, Marxist-Leninist rulership include Cuba, Laos, Vietnam, and the People’s Republic of China. Each of these nations adopted this form of government at the height of the Cold War — between the 1940s and 1960s — under the auspices of Russian influence. While the Soviet communist government crumbled in 1991, these nations remain committed to their own version of the Marxist-Leninist ideology. Though North Korea refers to itself as communist, the singularity of its rulership hews much closer to dictatorship.DemocracyDemocracy refers to a form of government in which the people are given a direct role in choosing their leadership. Its primary goal is governance through fair representation, a system in which no single force or entity can exercise unchecked control or authority. The result is a system which requires discourse, debate, and compromise to satisfy the broadest possible number of public interests. Democracy is typified by fair and free elections, civic participation, protection of human rights, and the rule of law.Real World ExampleWhile the notion of democracy finds its roots in Greek antiquity, its practice became the particular province of settlers in the colonies of the United States. In the years leading up to the U.S. War for Independence, the philosophical impetus of governance through representation played an important role in building the case for revolt. It was also essential, as the framers of the Constitution constructed a way of life around a concept called “representative democracy.” The colonists imported the racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic inequalities of their European predecessors. But in representative democracy and the Constitution, they also forged a framework for the marginalized to fight for their representation. Today, just over half of the world’s nations self-identify as constitutional democracies.FederalismFederalism is a form of government that both combines and divides powers between a centralized federal authority and an array of regional and local authorities. This is typically a system in which a set of states, territories, or provinces are both self-governing and beholden to the authority of a broad, unifying government structure. This is considered a balance in approach that provides roughly equal status of authority to two distinct levels of government.Real World ExampleThe United States was among the first true examples of a federation, a nation comprised from a set regions, each with its own unique set of customs, laws, and demographic compositions. Today, much philosophical debate exists over what level of independent authority states have versus the level of central control that the federal government has over state laws. This debate — and the never-ending stream of constitutional and judicial questions that arise from it — keep the state and federal authority in constant and dynamic flux.FeudalismFeudalism is a social structure revolving around land ownership, nobility, and military obligation. Though not a formal way of governing, feudalism refers to a way of life in which sharp, hierarchical divisions separate noble classes, clergy, and peasantry. Opportunities for movement between these hierarchies is largely impossible. In this system, peasants typically provided labor and military service in exchange for occupancy of land and protection from outside forces under the authority of a noble lord. In turn, lordships, or fiefdoms, often engaged one another politically, economically, and militarily. Feudalism was a highly decentralized and agrarian way of life supplanted when the European monarchies created the infrastructure to impose central rule over their various dominions.Real World ExampleFrance of the 11th century is particularly noteworthy for the decentralization of power and the splintering of rulership into many smaller entities. During this period, travel through France would take one through a series of fiefdoms in which small, ruling families would charge various fees for passage, participation in trade, or use of the woodlands. Though feudalism would become largely extinct with the rise of the monarchy, this brief revolution in France would represent a moment of evolution for the ideas of private ownership and personal power.KleptocracyKleptocracy is a form of government in which the ruling party has either come to power, retained power, or both, through means of corruption and theft. This is not a form of government that a ruling class would ever self-apply but a pejorative term used to describe a group whose power rests on a foundation of embezzlement, misappropriation of funds, and the transfer of massive amounts of wealth from public to private interests. These private interests will typically overlap the ruling party’s own economic interests.Real World ExampleVladamir Putin’s post-Soviet Russia is a clear example of kleptocratic behavior by a ruling class. In the early 1990s, as the former Soviet Union collapsed and confusion reigned, Putin and his allies from within the leadership of the KGB squirreled away billions of dollars in public money. They would ultimately use this money to fund a rise to power and, subsequently, the establishment of a quasi-authoritative regime that handed central banking authority over to cronies, awarded friends with enormous no-bid contracts to build the notoriously shoddy Sochi Olympic Village, and, in 2003, took control of a privately owned oil company. In the latter case, Putin demonstrated his absolute power by claiming fraud against oil magnate Mikhail Khodorkovsky. The charges led to the billionaire’s imprisonment for a decade and parceling of his Yukos Oil Company to Putin’s friends and allies. In spite of its democratic facade, Putin’s Russia meets the basic qualifications of a true kleptocracy.MeritocracyMeritocracy refers to a system in which authority is vested in those who have demonstrated the merits deemed pertinent to governing or public administration. Often, these merits are conferred through testing and academic credentials and are meant to create an order in which talents, abilities, and intellect determine who should hold positions of leadership and economic stewardship. The result is a social hierarchy based on achievement.Real World ExampleIn a sense, America’s educational tradition suggests a meritocracy in which higher degrees denote access to greater opportunity. However, because earning this degree does not itself confer any automatic authority upon a person, the U.S. is not a true meritocracy. Today, Singapore offers a modern example that aligns closest to the concept of meritocracy. Here, academic achievements play a deeply determinant role in opportunities for economic advancement, professional mobility, and civic leadership. Though this approach has helped Singapore to become a thriving economy, some express concern that its meritocracy enforces sharp hierarchical divisions between members of the public and a small population of intellectual elites.Military DictatorshipA dictatorship is a nation ruled with absolute power, in the absence of a democratic process, and typically under the thumb of a single authority figure. In a military dictatorship, this authority usually heads the nation’s armed forces. A military dictatorship often comes to power by subverting the existing seat of government — sometimes though claims of corruption, weakness, or ineffectiveness — and which subsequently uses the military to establish its own brand of law and order. Military dictatorships will frequently prioritize law and order over due process, civil liberties, or political freedoms. Dissent or political opposition can be dangerous or even deadly for those living under a military dictatorship.Real World ExampleIn 2014, Thailand’s general election was disrupted by widespread protests against the government. The result was a nullified election and the subsequent dismantling of the civilian government. In the vacuum of power, General Prayut Chan-o-cha declared martial law, dissolved the senate, and placed himself in control of the nation. Since then, Thailand has persisted under dictatorial military rule. The military junta, called the National Council for Peace and Order, imposed nationwide curfews, forbids political gatherings, threatens arrest for political opponents or activists, controls the media, and enforces widespread internet censorship.MonarchyMonarchy refers to a form of rule in which absolute power and authority are held by a single member of a royal bloodline. In a monarchy, the individual in the seat of power is often believed to have been placed there by “divine right,” or the will of God. In a monarchical society, power is inherited within a line of succession that relates to one’s bloodline and birth-order within the ruling royal family. Though the monarchy has historically indicated absolute power, the concept has become increasingly diluted with the evolution of democratic principles. Today, some monarchies exist but are merely symbolic, whereas others coexist within constitutional structures. However, until the 19th century, monarchy was the most common form of government in the world.Real World ExampleToday, 45 nations in the world are governed by some form of monarchy. In many cases, this monarchy is largely symbolic and subservient to a constitution, as with the 16 commonwealth states recognizing Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II. By contrast, monarchies continue to enjoy far-reaching political authority in Brunei, Liechtenstein, Monaco, Morocco, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Swaziland.OligarchyOligarchy refers to a form of government in which a smattering of individuals rule over a nation. In many ways, oligarchy is a catch-all for any number of other forms of governance in which a specific set of qualities — wealth, heredity, race — are used to vest power in a small group of individuals. So, forms of government regarded as aristocratic, plutocratic, or totalitarian, for instance, can be referred to as oligarchic. Oligarchies are often characterized by tyrannical or authoritarian rule and an absence of democratic practices or individual rights.Real World ExampleThe apartheid government that ruled South Africa from 1948 to 1991 was a racially constructed oligarchy, one in which the minority white population exercised dominance and imposed segregation over the nation’s black population. The minority population controlled policy, public administration, and law enforcement, all to the explicit end of oppressing South Africa’s majority black population. The concentration of power in the hands of a minority population as a function of racial identity, as well as the resultant authoritarian rule vested in this minority population, qualifies South Africa’s now defunct apartheid government as an oligarch. Today, even with the Apartheid government dismantled, the vestiges of racial inequality remain in South Africa’s economy and political structures.PlutocracyPlutocracy refers to a system of rule in which power is determined as a direct function of wealth. Plutocracy mirrors the economic hierarchy of aristocratic systems but lacks the philosophical imperatives used to justify the latter. Whereas aristocratic forms of governance justified economic hierarchy by presuming an equivalence between wealth, heredity, and the qualification to lead, plutocracy refers in simpler terms to the ascendance of the wealthy to positions of power. Think of it as the difference between “old money” and “new money.” As with the phrase “new money” itself, plutocracy is rarely a term that a ruling class will self-apply. Rather, it is often used as a derogatory term meant to highlight the inequality inherent in capitalist societies.Real World ExampleThe label of plutocracy has been lobbed against a number of societies over the course of history and generally as a way of critiquing inequality. In both the United States and post-Soviet Russia — where a select group of billionaires possess 50% and 35%, respectively, of all national wealth — social critics have identified patterns of plutocracy. These critics would argue that the outsize power and influence of the wealthy in these societies tends to undermine equality and fair economic competition.RepublicanismRepublicanism, the form of government — not to be conflated with the Republican political party specific to U.S. politics — refers to a system in which power is vested in the citizenry. In technical definition, a republic is a nation in which the people hold popular sovereignty through the electoral and legislative processes as well as through participation in public and civic life. In its earliest form, the republic was perceived as a counterbalance to monarchy, an approach which merged monarchy and aristocracy with some trappings of democracy.Real World ExampleInformed by the philosophical ideals of the enlightenment, particularly the writing of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the revolutionaries who toppled the French monarchy in the 1790s established a new republic in their wake. Though the République française was short-lived — Napoleon’s rule transformed France into an aristocracy by the turn of the next century — its founding on the principles of Rousseau’s Social Contract would be particularly influential to the myriad nations soon to emerge from crumbling European monarchies and splintering colonial empires.SocialismSocialism refers to a form of government in which the people own the primary means of production. A counterpoint to the competitive nature and unequal proclivities of capitalism, socialism has existed in many forms and to widely variant degrees of strictness throughout history and around the world. From small communal societies to state-level governments that provide encompassing public services such as universal healthcare, the concept of socialism permeates governments the world over. By contrast to the less compromising and often more authoritarian nature of communism, socialism tends to be a malleable concept. Some adherents view socialism as referring to a strict policy of shared ownership and equal distribution of resources, while others believe free market capitalism can coexist with socialist forms of public administration. To wit, the Social Security system of the declaratively capitalist United States is inherently socialist in nature.Real World ExampleThe Nordic model of social democracy represents perhaps the most effective real world implementation of socialist principles. The Scandinavian nations of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden adhere to policies that combine free market capitalism with extensive public works, including free healthcare, free education, a comprehensive welfare state, and high percentages of unionized workers. This approach essentially combines the social consciousness of socialism with the private ownership and competitive opportunity of capitalism.TheocracyTheocracy refers to a form of government in which a specific religious ideology informs the leadership, laws, and customs of a nation. In many instances, there will be little to no distinction between scriptural laws and legal codes. Likewise, religious clergy will typically occupy roles of leadership, and in some instances, the highest office in the nation. Because religious law usually extends from writings and traditions that are many centuries old, and therefore impose practices that may not conform with present-day standards of ethical justice or constitutional law, theocracies frequently run afoul of organizations and agencies advocating for global human rights.Real World ExampleIran is perhaps the most important and powerful theocratic state in the world today. Since a 1979 Islamic student revolution toppled the Iranian monarchy, the ayatollahs have ruled the country. Here, a “supreme leader” serves as head of state and delegates authority to other religious leaders. In Iran, the elected president is subservient to this supreme Islamic scholar. Likewise, while Iran has developed some dimensions of a modern legal code, judiciary system, and administrative process, all of these must first be based on Islamic criteria. In essence, the Sharia — the primary legal doctrine of the Islamic faith — is the primary legal doctrine for the nation of Iran.TotalitarianismTotalitarianism is an authoritarian form of government in which the ruling party recognizes no limitations whatsoever on its power, either in the public life or private rights of its citizens. Power is often vested in the hands of a single figure, an authority around whom significant propaganda is built as a way of extending and retaining uncontested authority. Totalitarian states often employ widespread surveillance, control over mass media, intimidating demonstrations of paramilitary or police power, and suppression — usually violent — of protest, activism, or political opposition.Real World ExampleThough North Korea identifies itself as the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, this is truly the clearest example of a totalitarian dictatorship in the modern world. Kim Jong-un rules with singular and unchallenged authority, commanding over his public without political opposition. With absolute control over the state-run media, an enormous military apparatus at his disposal, and an endless cycle of propaganda and misinformation helping to sustain his power, Kim Jong-un rules his state in a vacuum from world affairs. Criticism of the supreme leader or protest of his policies is a crime punishable by death, as are countless other crimes for which due process is not required. North Korea’s propensity toward human rights violations is said to be unparalleled in the modern world.TribalismTribalism refers to a form of governance in which there is an absence of central authority and where, instead, various regional tribes lay claim to different territories, resources, or domains. In this system, trade, commerce, and war may occur between different tribes without the involvement or oversight of a unifying structure. This was a particularly common way of life in the premodern world, where different families and clans would establish a set of common rules and rituals specific to their community. While many tribes have forms of internal leadership — from councils and chiefdoms to warlords and patriarchs — tribes are also distinct for having relatively limited role differentiation or role stratification within. In some regards, this can make the customs internal to some tribes particularly egalitarian. That said, tribalism as a way of life has been threatened, and in many parts of the world extinguished, by modernity, development, and the imposition of outside authority.Real World ExampleAfghanistan is a nation naturally predisposed to tribalism. Centuries of interference from outside invaders — the Soviet Union and the United States chief among them — have created an ongoing state of disarray for the central government of Afghanistan. This — combined with a sprawling and treacherous geography — reduced Afghanistan to a state of regional tribes. In many instance, the authority of local warlords, drug cartels, or Islamic clergy take on far more immediate importance than the authority of a central government. Today, the tribal dynamics that permeate Afghanistan represent a more direct influence on the lives of local populations than any international or federal ruling structure.

Terrific Summary by Yorick:1. "Bitcoin can be best understood as distributed software that allows for transfer of value using a currency protected from unexpected inflation without relying on trusted third parties"2. "While Bitcoin is a new invention of the digital age, the problems it purports to solve - namely, providing a form of money that is under the full command of its owner and likely to hold its value in the long run - are as old as human society itself"3. "People’s choices are subjective, and so there is no “right” and “wrong” choice of money. There are, however, consequences to choices"4. "I like to call this the easy money trap: anything used as a store of value will have its supply increased, and anything whose supply can be easily increased will destroy the wealth of those who used it as a store of value"5. "For something to assume a monetary role, it has to be costly to produce, otherwise the temptation to make money on the cheap will destroy the wealth of the savers, and destroy the incentive anyone has to save in this medium"6. "The monetary media that survived for longest are the ones that had very reliable mechanisms for restricting their supply growth - in other words, hard money"7. "The choice of what makes the best money has always been determined by the technological realities of societies shaping the salability of different goods"8. "Human civilization flourished in times and places where sound money was widely adopted, while unsound money all too frequently coincided with civilizational decline and societal collapse"9. "Whether in Rome, Constantinople, Florence, or Venice, history shows that a sound monetary standard is a necessary prerequisite for human flourishing, without which society stands on the precipice of barbarism and destruction"10. "History shows it is not possible to insulate yourself from the consequences of others holding money that is harder than yours"11. "Some of the most important technological, medical, economic, and artistic human achievements were invented during the era of the gold standard, which partly explains why it was known as la Belle Epoque, or the beautiful era, across Europe"12. "World War I saw the end of the era of monetary media being the choice decided by the free market, and the beginning of the era of government money"13. "Government money is similar to primitive forms of money and commodities other than gold: it is liable to having its supply increased quickly compared to its stock, leading to a quick loss of salability, destruction of purchasing power, and impoverishment of its holders"14. "With the simple suspension of gold redeemability, governments’ war efforts were no longer limited to the money that they had in their own treasuries, but extended virtually to the entire wealth of the population15. "Had European nations remained on the gold standard, or had the people of Europe held their own gold in their own hands […], history might have been different. It is likely that WorldWar I would have been settled militarily within a few months of conflict"16. "The cause of the Great Crash of 1929 was the diversion away from the gold standard in the post-WWI years, and the deepening of the Depression was caused by government control and socialization of the economy in the Hoover and FDR years"17. "All spending is spending, in the naive economics of Keynesians, and so it matters not if that spending comes from individuals feeding their families or governments murdering foreigners: it all counts in aggregate demand and it all reduces unemployment!"18. "In essence, Bretton Woods attempted to achieve through central planning what the international gold standard of the nineteenth century had achieved spontaneously"19. "Hyperinflation is a form of economic disaster unique to government money. There was never an example of hyperinflation with economies that operated a gold or silver standard"20. "With government money, whose cost of production tends to zero, it has become quite possible for an entire society to witness all of its savings in the form of money disappear in the space of a few months or even weeks"21. "Hyperinflation is a far more pernicious phenomenon than just the loss of a lot of economic value by a lot of people; it constitutes a complete breakdown of the structure of economic production of a society built up over centuries and millennia"22. "Even if the textbooks were correct about the benefits of government management of the money supply, the damage from one episode of hyperinflation anywhere in the world far outweighs them"23. "Hanke and Bushnell have been able to verify 57 episodes of hyperinflation in history, only one of which occurred before the era of monetary nationalism, and that was the inflation in France in 1795, in the wake of the Mississippi Bubble"24. “The constantly increasing supply means a continuous devaluation of thecurrency, expropriating the wealth of the holders to benefit those who printthe currency, and those who receive it earliest. This is termed the CantillonEffect”25. “Whether it’s because of downright graft, “national emergency,” or an infestation of inflationist schools of economics, government will always find a reason and a way to print more money, expanding government power while reducing the wealth of the currency holders”26. “It is ironic, and very telling, that in the era of government money, governments themselves own far more gold in their official reserves than they did under the international gold standard of 1871–1914”27. “A sound money makes service valuable to others the only avenue open for prosperity to anyone, thus concentrating society’s efforts on production, cooperation, capital accumulation, and trade”28. “The twentieth century was the century of unsound money and the omnipotent state, as a market choice in money was denied by government diktat, and government-issued paper money was forced on people with the threat of violence”29. “Sound money is an essential requirement for individual freedom from despotism and repression, as the ability of a coercive state to create money can give it undue power over its subjects, power which by its very nature will attract the least worthy, and most immoral”30. “Sound money is a prime factor in determining individual time preference, an enormously important and widely neglected aspect of individual decision making. Time preference refers to the ratio at which individuals value thepresent compared to the future”31. “Economist Hans-Hermann Hoppe explains that once time preference drops enough to allow for any savings and capital or durable consumer-goodsformation at all, the tendency is for time preference to drop even further as a“process of civilization” is initiated”32. “Microeconomics has focused on transactions between individuals, and macroeconomics on the role of government in the economy ; [...] the most important economic decisions to any individual’s well-being are the ones they conduct in their trade-offs with their future self”33. “The better the money is at holding its value, the more it incentivizes people to delay consumption and instead dedicate resources for production in the future, leading to capital accumulation and improvement of living standards”34. “The move from money that holds its value or appreciates to money that loses its value is very significant in the long run: society saves less, accumulates less capital, and possibly begins to consume its capital”35. “Civilizations prosper under a sound monetary system, but disintegrate when their monetary systems are debased, as was the case with the Romans, the Byzantines, and modern European societies”36. “What matters in money is its purchasing power, not its quantity, and as such, any quantity of money is enough to fulfil the monetary functions, as long as it is divisible and groupable enough to satisfy holders’ transaction and storage needs”37. “The best form of money in history was the one that would cause the new supply of money to be the least significant compared to the existing stockpiles, and thus make its creation not a good source of profit”38. “Had government money been a superior unit of account and store of value, it would not need government legal tender laws to enforce it, nor would governments worldwide have had to confiscate large quantities of gold and continue to hold them in their central bank reserves”39. “The fact that central banks continue to hold onto their gold, and have even started increasing their reserves, testifies to the confidence they have in their own currencies in the long term”40. “Sound money is money that gains in value slightly over time, meaning that holding onto it is likely to offer an increase in purchasing power”41. “Unsound money, being controlled by central banks whose express mission is to keep inflation positive, will offer little incentive for holders to keep it”42. “With unsound money, only returns that are higher than the rate of depreciation of the currency will be positive in real terms, creating incentives for high-return but high-risk investment and spending”43. “Savings rates have been declining across the developed countries, dropping to very low levels, while personal, municipal, and national debts have increased to levels which would have seemed unimaginable in the past44. “One of the most mendacious fantasies that pervades Keynesian economic thought is the idea that the national debt “does not matter, since we owe it to ourselves”45. “Only a high-time-preference disciple of Keynes could fail to understand that this “ourselves” is not one homogeneous blob but is differentiated into several generations -namely, the current ones which consume recklessly at the expense of future ones”46. “The twentieth century’s binge on conspicuous consumption cannot be understood separately from the destruction of sound money and the outbreak of Keynesian high-time-preference thinking, in vilifying savings and deifying consumption as the key to economic prosperity”47. “It is an ironic sign of the depth of modern-day economic ignorance fomented by Keynesian economics that capitalism - an economic system based on capital accumulation from saving - is blamed for unleashing conspicuous consumption - theexact opposite of capital accumulation”48. “Capitalism is what happens when people drop their time preference, defer immediate gratification, and invest in the future. Debt-fueled mass consumption is as much a normal part of capitalism as asphyxiation is a normal part of respiration”49. “The only cause of economic growth in the first place is delayed gratification, saving, and investment, which extend the length of the production cycle and increase the productivity of the methods of production, leading to better standards of living”50. “This move from sound money to depreciating money has led to several generations of accumulated wealth being squandered on conspicuous consumption within a generation or two, making indebtedness the new method for funding major expenses”51. “As H. L. Mencken put it: “Every election is an advanced auction on stolen goods””52. “As politicians sell people the lie that eternal welfare and retirement benefits are possible through the magic of the monetary printing press, the investment in a family becomes less and less valuable”53.“The majority of the technology we use in our modern life was invented in the 19th century, under the gold standard, financed with the ever-growing stock of capital accumulated by savers storing their wealth in a sound money and store of value which did not depreciate quickly”54. “The contributions of sound money to human flourishing are not restricted to scientific and technological advance; they can also be vividly seen in the art world”55. “In times of sound money and low time preference, artists worked on perfecting their craft so they could produce valuable works in the long run”56. “Modern artists have replaced craft and long hours of practice with pretentiousness, shock value, indignation, and existential angst as ways to cow audiences into appreciating their art, and often added some pretense to political ideals, usually of the puerile Marxist variety”57. “As government money has replaced sound money, patrons with low time preference and refined tastes have been replaced by government bureaucrats with political agendas as crude as their artistic taste”58. “The Use of Knowledge in Society, by Friedrich #Hayek, is arguably one of the most important economic papers to have ever been written”59. “In a free market economic system, prices are knowledge, and the signals that communicate information”60. “Prices are not simply a tool to allow capitalists to profit; they are the information system of economic production, communicating knowledge across the world and coordinating the complex processes of production”61. “Any economic system that tries to dispense with prices will cause the complete breakdown of economic activity and bring a human society back to a primitive state”62. “The fatal flaw of socialism that #Mises exposed was that without a price mechanism emerging on a free market, socialism would fail at economic calculation, most crucially in the allocation of capital goods”63. “In an economy with a central bank and fractional reserve banking, the supply of loanable funds is directed by a committee of economists under the influence of politicians, bankers, TV pundits, and sometimes, most spectacularly, military generals”64. “Creating new pieces of paper and digital entries to paper over the deficiency in savings does not magically increase society’s physical capital stock; it only devalues the existing money supply and distorts prices”65. “Only with an understanding of the capital structure and how interest rate manipulation destroys the incentive for capital accumulation can one understand the causes of recessions and the swings of the business cycle”66. “The business cycle is the natural result of the manipulation of the interest rate distorting the market for capital by making investors imagine they can attain more capital than is available with the unsound money they have been given by the banks”67. “Contrary to Keynesian animist mythology, business cycles are not mystic phenomena caused by flagging “animal spirits” whose cause is to be ignored as central bankers seek to try to engineer recovery”68. “Economic logic clearly shows how recessions are the inevitable outcome of interest rate manipulation in the same way shortages are the inevitable outcome of price ceilings”69. “Monetary history testifies to how much more severe business cycles and recessions are when the money supply is manipulated than when it isn’t”70. “A capitalist system cannot function without a free market in capital, where the price of capital emerges through the interaction of supply and demand and the decisions of capitalists are driven by accurate price signals”71. “The central bank’s meddling in the capital market is the root of all recessions and all the crises which most politicians, journalists, academics, and leftist activists like to blame on capitalism”72. “Imagining that central banks can “prevent,” “combat,” or “manage” recessions is as fanciful and misguided as placing pyromaniacs and arsonists in charge of the fire brigade”73. “Central planning of credit markets must fail because it destroys markets’ mechanisms for price-discovery providing market participants with the accurate signals and incentives to manage their consumption and production”74. “It is typical of the #MiltonFriedman band of libertarianism in that it blames the government for an economic problem, but the flawed reasoning leads to suggesting even more government intervention as the solution”75. “Only when a central bank manipulates the money supply and interest rate does it become possible for large-scale failures across entire sectors of the economy to happen at the same time, causing waves of mass layoffs in entire industries”76. “In a free market for money, individuals would choose the currencies they want to use, and the result would be that they would choose the currency with the reliably lowest stock-to-flow ratio. This currency would oscillate the least with changes in demand and supply”77. “It is an astonishing fact of modern life that an entrepreneur in the year 1900 could make global economic plans and calculations all denominated in any international currency, with no thought whatsoever given to exchange rate fluctuations”78. “The combination of floating exchange rates and Keynesian ideology has given our world the entirely modern phenomenon of currency wars”79. “Hard money, by taking the question of supply out of the hands of governments and their economist-propagandists, would force everyone to be productive to society instead of seeking to get rich through the fool’s errand of monetary manipulation”80. “Under a sound monetary system, government had to function in a way that is unimaginable to generations reared on the twentieth-century news cycle: they had to be fiscally responsible”81. “For those of us alive today, raised on the propaganda of the omnipotent governments of the twentieth century, it is often hard to imagine a world in which individual freedom and responsibility supersede government authority”82“. The fundamental scam of modernity is the idea that government needs to manage the money supply. It is an unquestioned starting assumption of all mainstream economic schools of thought and political parties”83. “Having the ability to print money, literally and figuratively, increases the power of any government, and any government looks for anything that gives it more power”84. “By placing a hard cap on the total supply of bitcoins, Nakamoto was clearly unpersuaded by the arguments of the standard macroeconomics textbook and more influenced by the Austrian school, which argues that the quantity of money itself is irrelevant”85. “Societies with money of stable value generally develop a low time preference, learning to save and think of the future, while societies with high inflation and depreciating economies will develop high time preference as people lose track of the importance of saving”86. “With sound money, the government’s war effort was limited by the taxes it could collect. With unsound money, it is restrained by how much money it can create before the currency is destroyed, making it able to appropriate wealth far more easily”87. “Unsound money is a particularly dangerous tool in the hands of modern democratic governments facing constant reelection pressure. Modern voters are unlikely to favor the candidates who are upfront about the costs and benefits of their schèmes”88. “Unsound money is at the heart of the modern delusion believed by most voters and those unfortunate enough to study modern macroeconomics at university level: that government actions have no opportunity costs”89. “It is no coincidence that when recounting the most horrific tyrants of history, one finds that every single one of them operated a system of government-issued money which was constantly inflated to finance government operation”90. “Unsound money makes government power potentially unlimited, with large consequences to every individual, forcing politics to the center stage of their life and redirecting much of society’s energy and resources to the zero-sum game of who gets to rule and how”91. “In the world of fiat money, having access to the central bank’s monetary spigots is more important than serving customers. Firms that can get low-interest-rate credit to operate will have a persistent advantage over competitors that cannot”92. “Banking has evolved into a business that generates returns without risks to bankers and simultaneously creates risks without returns for everyone else”93. “In a world where central banks allocate credit, the larger firm has an advantage in being able to secure funding at a low rate which its smaller competitors cannot get”94. “Bitcoin was the first engineering solution that allowed for digital payments without having to rely on a trusted third-party intermediary. By being the first digital object that is verifiably scarce, Bitcoin is the first example of digital cash”95. “Whereas in a modern central bank the new money created goes to finance lending and government spending, in Bitcoin the new money goes only to those who spend resources on updating the ledger”96. “Difficulty adjustment is the most reliable technology for making hard money and limiting the stock-to-flow ratio from rising, and it makes Bitcoin fundamentally different from every other money”97. “Bitcoin is the hardest money ever invented: growth in its value cannot possibly increase its supply; it can only make the network more secure and immune to attack”98. “The security of Bitcoin lies in the asymmetry between the cost of solving the proof-of-work necessary to commit a transaction to the ledger and the cost of verifying its validity”99. “The Bitcoin ledger of transactions might just be the only objective set of facts in the world”100. “Bitcoin is the first example of a digital good whose transfer stops it from being owned by the sender”101. “Bitcoin presents a tremendous technological leap forward in the monetary solution to the indirect exchange problem, perhaps as significant as the move from cattle and salt to gold and silver”102. “Without a conservative monetary policy and difficulty adjustment, Bitcoin would only have succeeded theoretically as digital cash, but remained too insecure to be used widely in practice”103. “Bitcoin’s volatility derives from the fact that its supply is utterly inflexible and not responsive to demand changes, because it is programmed to grow at a predetermined rate”104. “As the size of the market grows, along with the sophistication and the depth of the financial institutions dealing with Bitcoin, this volatility will likely decline”105. “As long as Bitcoin is growing, its token price will behave like that of a stock of a start-up achieving very fast growth. Should Bitcoin’s growth stop and stabilize, it would stop attracting high-risk investment flows, and become just a normal monetary asset”106. “Bitcoin is the cheapest way to buy the future, because Bitcoin is the only medium guaranteed to not be debased, no matter how much its value rises”107. “The strict digital scarcity of the Bitcoin tokens combines the best elements of physical monetary media, without any of the physical drawbacks to moving and transporting it. Bitcoin might have a claim to make for being the best technology for saving ever invented”108. “Any person who owns Bitcoin achieves a degree of economic freedom which was not possible before its invention”109. “For the first time since the emergence of the modern state, individuals have a clear technical solution to escaping the financial clout of the governments they live under”110. “Bitcoin, and cryptography in general, are defensive technologies that make the cost of defending property and information far lower than the cost of attacking them”111. “If BTC continues to grow to capture a larger share of the global wealth, it may force governments to become more and more a form of voluntary organization, which can only acquire its “taxes” voluntarily by offering its subjects services they would be willing to pay for”112. “Contrary to popular depictions of anarchists as hoodie-clad hoodlums, Bitcoin’s brand of anarchism is completely peaceful, providing individuals with the tools necessary for them to be free from government control and inflation”113. “The invention of Bitcoin has created, from the ground up, a new independent alternative mechanism for international settlement that does not rely on any intermediary and can operate entirely separate from the existing financial infrastructure”114. “Bitcoin can be seen as the new emerging reserve currency for online transactions, where the online equivalent of banks will issue Bitcoin-backed tokens to users while keeping their hoard of Bitcoins in cold storage”115. “Bitcoin’s advantage is that by bringing the finality of cash settlement to the digital world, it has created the fastest method for final settlement of large payments across long distances and national borders”116. “Bitcoin can be best understood to compete with settlement payments between central banks and large financial institutions, and it compares favorably to them due to its verifiable record, cryptographic security, and imperviousness to third-party security holes”117. “BTC, having no counterparty risk and no reliance on any third-party, is uniquely suited to play the same role that gold played in the gold standard"118. “If Bitcoin continues to grow in value and gets utilized by a growing number of financial institutions, it will become a reserve currency for a new form of central bank"119. “The first central bank to buy BTC will alert the rest of the central banks to the possibility and make many of them rush toward it. The first central bank purchase is likely to make the value of BTC rise significantly"120. “While central banks have mostly been dismissive of the importance of BTC, this could be a luxury they may not afford for long. As hard as it might be for central bankers to believe it, BTC is a direct competitor to their line of business”121. “The modern central bank business model is being disrupted. Central banks now have no way of stopping competition by just passing laws as they have always done. They are now up against a digital competitor that most likely cannot be brought under the physical world’s laws”122. “If the modern world is ancient Rome, suffering the economic consequences of monetary collapse, with the dollar our aureus, then Satoshi Nakamoto is our Constantine, Bitcoin is his solidus, and the Internet is our Constantinople”123. “Should it achieve some sort of stability in value, Bitcoin would be superior to using national currencies for global payment settlements, as is the case today, because national currencies fluctuate in value based on each nation’s and government’s conditions”124. “Bitcoin is the only truly decentralized digital currency which has grown spontaneously as a finely balanced equilibrium between miners, coders, and users, none of whom can control it”125. “After years of watching altcoins get created, it seems impossible that any coin will recreate the adversarial standoff that exists between Bitcoin stakeholders and prevents any party from controlling payments in it”126. “It is high time for everyone involved in BTC to stop concerning themselves with the question of the identity of Nakamoto, and accept that it does not matter to the operation of the technology, in the same way that the identity of the inventor of the wheel no longer matters”127. “No single altcoin has demonstrated anything near Bitcoin’s impressive resilience to change, which is down to its truly decentralized nature and the strong incentives for everyone to abide by the status quo consensus rules”128. “Contrary to a lot of the hype surrounding Bitcoin, eliminating the need for trust in third parties is not an unquestionably good thing to do in all avenues of business and life”129. “A non-Bitcoin blockchain combines the worst of both worlds: the cumbersome structure of the blockchain with the cost and security risk of trusted third parties”130. "“It is no wonder that eight years after its invention, blockchain technology has not yet managed to break through in a successful, ready-for-market commercial application other than the one for which it was specifically designed: Bitcoin”131. “The most common potential applications touted for blockchain technology - payments, contracts, and asset registry - are only workable to the extent that they run using the decentralized currency of the blockchain”132. “All blockchains without currencies have not moved from the prototype stage to commercial implementation because they cannot compete with current best practice in their markets”133. “Any application of #blockchain technology will only make commercial sense if its operation is reliant on the use of electronic cash, and only if electronic cash’s disintermediation provides economic benefits outweighing the use of regular currencies and payment channels”