The term hyper-inflation itself is interesting. It is a word which seems to universally mean the sudden, dramatic drop in the value of money (ie. the sudden, dramatic rise in prices). The word inflation is more contested.

The government prefers to consider inflation a rise in prices. Why? Because government measures inflation by the heavily manipulable consumer price index, which can be twisted to ignore food and fuel costs. The government hates bad economic news. It also adjusts its many redistribution of wealth according to the CPI, so having control over it helps.

Followers of the Austrian School (me) use the term inflation to mean, simply, an increase in the monetary supply. Price increases are merely a consequence of inflation, as is the wage/price spiral so many economists enjoy obsessing over. So when government, and government minions scrutinize about what they call inflation, my friends and I think they are paying attention to the sideshow of prices, and avoiding the real issue: the printing of money out of thin air.

We do lack a word, however, for the sudden, dramatic drop in the value of money (rise in prices), hence we rely on hyper-inflation.

What does it look like?

Here is a note for a hundred trillion Zimbabwean dollars. I don’t think it’s worth the paper it’s printed on. Initially, governments like printing money, because it transfers wealth more subtly than taxation, but eventually you get this:

I’ve found a new website, The Daily Bell, which I like enough to make part of my daily reading. I also link them in my blog roll (see below, and to the right).

Check them out.

It seems they scrape articles from all over, then offer free-market analysis for each. Well written & insightful.

Seven United States senators have sponsored a bill that would abolish the “security” waiver that American presidents have used to prevent implementing a 1995 law declaring that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel.

Kansas Republican Senator Sam Brownback, a long-time supporter of Israel, introduced the bill and said, “It is long overdue for America to recognize the sovereign right of Israel to choose Jerusalem as its capital city.”

The proposed Jerusalem Embassy Relocation Act law, number S. 2737, is “a bill to relocate to Jerusalem the United States Embassy in Israel” and has six co-sponsors–five Republicans, from Kentucky, Texas, Arizona, and Louisiana and Independent Senator Joe Lieberman of Connecticut. (Read more from myantiwar.org)

Israel will coordinate with the U.S., U.K. and France to ensure the Security Council vetoes Arab countries’ resolutions on the Goldstone report, Israeli officials told Haaretz. (Read more from haaretz.com)

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Israel’s Ambassador to the United States on Sunday told American Jewish groups that they must press for sanctions on Iran, and condemned the findings of a United Nations commission on the Gaza conflict between Israel and Hamas, which he said helped to “cast widespread doubts about Israel’s legitimacy.” (Read more from Haaretz.com)

This guy articulates my views pretty well, though if you’re trying to win friends and influence people, I’d suggest you skip the condescending remarks he makes toward the end.

There’s been a lot of buzz about this on the internet. I think some of the reporting overstates what these stolen emails reveal. They don’t show a coordinated conspiracy to lie about global warming. They do, however reveal many scientists’ bias against opposing views, as well as their pettiness.

In one email, Benjamin Santer from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, Calif., wrote to the director of the climate-study center that he was “tempted to beat” up Mr. Michaels. Mr. Santer couldn’t be reached for comment Sunday.

In another, Phil Jones, the director of the East Anglia climate center, suggested to climate scientist Michael Mann of Penn State University that skeptics’ research was unwelcome: We “will keep them out somehow — even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!” Neither man could be reached for comment Sunday. (Read more from wsj.com)

This celebratory, told-you-so video by climate skeptics is probably premature, but it is funny:

Large sums promised to developing countries to help them tackle climate change cannot be accounted for, a BBC investigation has found.

Rich countries pledged $410m (£247m) a year in a 2001 declaration – but it is now unclear whether the money was paid.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has accused industrialised countries of failing to keep their promise.

The EU says the money was paid out in bilateral deals, but admits it cannot provide data to prove it.

. . . .

The Bonn Declaration is surrounded by confusion and has led to mistrust between developed and developing countries.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon says any new financing agreement signed at Copenhagen must be clear. (Read more from news.bbc.co.uk)

The internet has been simply abuzz about H1N1 and vaccines.

* It’s government pandering to the medical industrial complex. (Yes, I’ve repeated this myself.)
* It’s a de-population program.
* It’s a bio-weapon.
* Vaccines are essential.
* Vaccines are bullshit.

My favorite single reflection came from Ron Paul: The vaccine fiasco is a demonstration of how government doesn’t work. In New York, people who don’t want the vaccine are being forced by government to take it, while elsewhere people who want it can’t get it because there are shortages.

Here’s a collection of stories about the vaccine and H1N1 which I found interesting:

A brief conversation with a vaccine manufacturer:

Dr. Lorraine Day on government hype, the dangers of vaccines, and pharmaceutical companies.

See also criticism of Dr. Day.

Goldman Sachs Received H1N1 Vaccine Before Several Hospitals (GS) (Read more from businessinsider.com)

Isn’t that special!

Council on Foreign Relations discusses anti-vaccine movement & how to sell the vaccine to the public. They suggest faking a shortage of the vaccine to create panic.

Right or wrong, one thing I hate about these people is the way they assume my health together with everybody else’s is their business.

My favorite video, and, I think, the most damaging to vaccine proponents is this affiliate CBS video with exposes how H1N1 is being massively misdiagnosed, and the CDC is dragging its feet in admitting it.

Happy holiday’s everyone.

The Great Thanksgiving Hoax
1999 by Richard J. Maybury

The official story has the pilgrims boarding the Mayflower, coming to America and establishing the Plymouth colony in the winter of 1620-21. This first winter is hard, and half the colonists die. But the survivors are hard working and tenacious, and they learn new farming techniques from the Indians. The harvest of 1621 is bountiful. The Pilgrims hold a celebration, and give thanks to God. They are grateful for the wonderful new abundant land He has given them.

. . . .

The problem with this official story is that the harvest of 1621 was not bountiful, nor were the colonists hardworking or tenacious. 1621 was a famine year and many of the colonists were lazy thieves.

In his ‘History of Plymouth Plantation,’ the governor of the colony, William Bradford, reported that the colonists went hungry for years, because they refused to work in the fields. They preferred instead to steal food. He says the colony was riddled with “corruption,” and with “confusion and discontent.” The crops were small because “much was stolen both by night and day, before it became scarce eatable.”

In the harvest feasts of 1621 and 1622, “all had their hungry bellies filled,” but only briefly. The prevailing condition during those years was not the abundance the official story claims, it was famine and death. The first “Thanksgiving” was not so much a celebration as it was the last meal of condemned men.

But in subsequent years something changes. The harvest of 1623 was different. Suddenly, “instead of famine now God gave them plenty,” Bradford wrote, “and the face of things was changed, to the rejoicing of the hearts of many, for which they blessed God.” Thereafter, he wrote, “any general want or famine hath not been amongst them since to this day.” In fact, in 1624, so much food was produced that the colonists were able to begin exporting corn.

After the poor harvest of 1622, writes Bradford, “they began to think how they might raise as much corn as they could, and obtain a better crop.” They began to question their form of economic organization.

This had required that “all profits & benefits that are got by trade, working, fishing, or any other means” were to be placed in the common stock of the colony, and that, “all such persons as are of this colony, are to have their meat, drink, apparel, and all provisions out of the common stock.” A person was to put into the common stock all he could, and take out only what he needed.

This “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need” was an early form of socialism, and it is why the Pilgrims were starving. Bradford writes that “young men that are most able and fit for labor and service” complained about being forced to “spend their time and strength to work for other men’s wives and children.” Also, “the strong, or man of parts, had no more in division of victuals and clothes, than he that was weak.” So the young and strong refused to work and the total amount of food produced was never adequate.

To rectify this situation, in 1623 Bradford abolished socialism. He gave each household a parcel of land and told them they could keep what they produced, or trade it away as they saw fit. In other words, he replaced socialism with a free market, and that was the end of famines.

Many early groups of colonists set up socialist states, all with the same terrible results. At Jamestown, established in 1607, out of every shipload of settlers that arrived, less than half would survive their first twelve months in America. Most of the work was being done by only one-fifth of the men, the other four-fifths choosing to be parasites. In the winter of 1609-10, called “The Starving Time,” the population fell from five-hundred to sixty.

Then the Jamestown colony was converted to a free market, and the results were every bit as dramatic as those at Plymouth. In 1614, Colony Secretary Ralph Hamor wrote that after the switch there was “plenty of food, which every man by his own industry may easily and doth procure.” He said that when the socialist system had prevailed, “we reaped not so much corn from the labors of thirty men as three men have done for themselves now.”

Most of my socialist leaning friends would be at a loss to tell me how to poor were cared for before the growth of our massive welfare state. Perhaps they assume that before Medic Aid in 1965, people were stepping over corpses on their way to work. Most of my non-socialist friends also do not know.

The following are excerpts from an important essay about the role Fraternal Societies used to play before government killed them off.

Thoough I’m not certain it was written as an academic study, I makes me think of how few academics pursue things that actually matter. Most humanities Phd’s I know are the first to admit their subject is bullshit. They compare lengths of dresses, catalog break-dance movies, and deciding how the trauma of immigration is evident in some obscure writer’s description of nature. What a waste…

Mutual aid was one of the cornerstones of social welfare in the United States until the early 20th century. The fraternal society was a leading example. The statistical record of fraternalism was impressive. A conservative estimate is that one-third of adult American males belonged to lodges in 1910. A fraternal analogue existed for virtually every major service of the modern welfare state including orphanages, hospitals, job exchanges, homes for the elderly, and scholarship programs.

But societies also gave benefits that were much less quantifiable. By joining a lodge, an initiate adopted, at least implicitly, a set of survival values.

Societies dedicated themselves to the advancement of mutualism, self-reliance, business training, thrift, leadership skills, self-government, self-control, and good moral character. These values, which can fit under the rubric of social capital, reflected a kind of fraternal consensus that cut across such seemingly intractable divisions as race, sex, and income.

The record of five societies that thrived at or near the turn of the century illustrates the many variants of this system. Each had a distinct membership base. Two of the societies, the Independent Order of Saint Luke and the United Order of True Reformers, were all-black. Both had been founded by ex-slaves after the Civil War and specialized initially in sickness and burial insurance. The other societies had entirely white memberships. The Loyal Order of Moose was an exclusively male society that emphasized sickness and burial benefits. It became best known during the 20th century for its orphanage, Mooseheart, near Aurora, Illinois. The Security Benefit Association (originally the Knights and Ladies of Security) followed in a similar tradition but broke from the mainstream by allowing men and women to join on equal terms. During the 1910s and the 1920s, the Knights and Ladies of Security established a hospital, a home for the elderly, and an orphanage all in a single location near Topeka. The Ladies of the Maccabees was an all-white, all-female society. It provided such health benefits as surgical care. It is worth noting that the women who belonged to these societies, regarded themselves as members of fraternal rather than sororal societies. For them, fraternity, much like liberty and equality, was the common heritage of both men and women. To this end, an official of the Ladies of the Maccabees asserted that “Fraternity in these modern days has been wrested from its original significance and has come to mean a sisterhood, as well as a brotherhood, in the human family.”

. . . .

During the 1930s, officials of the homes for the elderly and orphans of the SBA cited Social Security and other welfare programs as justification not only for rejecting applicants but for closing down entirely. The Security Benefit Association, for instance, closed its orphanage because of “a lack of demand or need for that form of benevolence attributable to public funds now available for the support of dependent children.” It used the same justification to discontinue its home for the elderly several years later. While Mooseheart remained open and even increased capacity, applications fell off rapidly in the decades after the Depression because of a rise in social-welfare alternatives such as Aid to Families with Dependent Children.

Mutual aid was a creature of necessity. Once this necessity ended, so too did the primary reason for the existence of fraternalism. Without a return to this necessity any revival of mutual aid will remain limited. Moreover, fraternal membership, although still heavily working class, no longer includes the very poor who most need social welfare services.

Nevertheless, a reinvigoration of mutual aid (though not necessarily through fraternal societies) is not out of the question in the 21st century. One reform that would encourage such a trend is to repeal or revise laws that subsidize third-party insurance. Perhaps the leading example is legislation enacted during World War II, which exempts employer-provided fringe benefits, such as health insurance, from income tax. According to John C. Goodman, the annual value of this exemption adds up to an enormous $130 billion. For a typical autoworker, for example, it is over $1,200 per year. Federal tax policy has not only tied workers to their jobs but has undermined their incentives to purchase health insurance through non-governmental organizations such as fraternal societies. It has also created a perverse system where workers lose all their benefits when they change jobs or become unemployed. By contrast, if individuals had the same tax incentives to purchase insurance from associations, such as lodges, as they do now from their employer they could still retain full coverage even if they changed jobs.

The shift from mutual aid and self-help to the welfare state was not just a simple bookkeeping transfer of service provisions from one set of institutions to another. As many of the leaders of fraternal societies had feared, much was lost in an exchange that transcended monetary calculations. The old relationships of voluntary reciprocity and autonomy have slowly given way to paternalistic dependency. Instead of mutual aid, the dominant social-welfare arrangements of Americans have increasingly become characterized by impersonal bureaucracies controlled by outsiders. (Read more from heritage.org)

About the author: David T. Beito is assistant professor of history at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa and is the author of From Mutual Aid to the Welfare State: Fraternal Societies and Social Services, 1890-1967 (University of North Carolina Press).

I love this video for a variety of reasons. It’s the story of a man who loves what he does which itself is an inspiration for us all.

If you watch the whole thing (and I hope you do), you’ll hear about how government grants protection to giants like Pepsi-co by placing restrictions on businesses like the Soda Pop Shop. He would have been charged with “restraint of trade” if he began reusing bottles. He explains how recycling laws were a

Some highlights:
5:30 — The case against Corn Syrup. He doesn’t say it, but the reason everybody uses corn syrup is because of government tariffs on imported sugar. This comes form pressure both from the American sugar industries who want protection, and corn industries who want more reasons to grow corn.

7:40 — “Big business loves big government.” His disdain is evident even his voice.

9:40 — On recycling laws. [They] were written so that coke and pesi didn’t have to wash bottles and could transfer costs to consumers. Their hypocrisy is evident in the story about how he’d be charged with “restraint of trade” if he ever reused bottles.

Who knows? I might have to start watching Television again.

The most recent Comprehensive Annual Financial Report (CAFR) from the Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG) reveals that the majority of jobs for the top principal employers in six counties are government jobs.

In the six southern California counties of Los Angeles, Orange, San Bernardino, Riverside, Ventura and Imperial, more than half of the top employers in those counties, on average, are government entities. (Read more from examiner.com)