JPF Home Page Forums General Messages General Message Forum America's Watershed Election.

Great post from Joe and from Mike. Both are correct. Let's add a third, albeit not nearly as eloquent piece to the puzzle that neither one touched on.

We have an additional dynamic that changes things as well. It's called "Ownership." In addition, there's also another called "Credit." These further complicate both Joe's and Mike's very intelligent conceptual commentary. One protects assets (at least for those very powerful) from the men with guns and the other puts people into slavery against future work. i.e. you have to do significantly MORE future work than you may be able to do even if you're willing. Now we see the double edged sword.

Of course, ownership bothered the men with the guns a lot, so they had to find a way to "legally" steal back a lot of that property and thus they invented property taxes and inventory taxes and death taxes, so even though things had been aquired through the system with work and with gold, the government could STILL come in and take it anyway, and do it "legally" enough to keep all the citizens with guns from ousting them. At the same time, the men with guns built much larger guns and enlisted much larger forces because in the US, there more than 1 gun per person already out in the community. The US could lose our entire military and short of nuclear weapons being used, easily defend ourselves from any foreign invaders with just the weapons we have in our homes. So the military needed a well armed internal military to keep any uprisings under their thumb. They call it the national guard, though it's really the trump card for the men with guns to retain power should anyone go all "1776" on them.

More food for thought.

Brian