Dr. Edwin Vieira, Jr., Ph.D., J.D.
March 17, 2005
NewsWithViews.com
Contrary to a widespread belief, socialism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe did not collapse because of the clever geostrategic maneuvers of the Reagan Administration. Neither did the East Bloc break up because its leaders were incompetents who put into practice the wrong plans. Particular politicians and policies--East or West--had next to nothing to do with it.
The East Bloc fell apart--and had to fall apart, no matter what anyone did--because of an obscure principle of economics known as "the impossibility of rational economic calculation under bureaucratic central planning". Socialism failed--and must always fail--because, without prices for goods and services generated by a free market, central planners cannot allocate resources and manpower intelligently. But central planners cannot allow a free market to set prices (otherwise there could be no central planning). In the long run, this self-imposed bureaucratic blindness to the real values of people and things results in monumental waste, the failure of central plans to deliver sound capital investments and advancing standards of living, and finally the collapse of those societies that allow politicians and bureaucrats, rather than free entrepreneurs and workers, to direct the course of economic affairs.
Although this principle had been recognized by other economists for almost a century theretofore, it received systematic exposition in Ludwig von Mises's seminal treatise, Socialism, first published in the 1920s. So, during the heyday of central planning from the 1920s to the 1980s, no one should have been unaware of the problem. Nonetheless, the political elite and the intelligentsiia ignored it, just about everywhere. In the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, where Stalin and his successors imposed industrial-strength central planning through police-state terrorism and slave labor in the Gulag, the price was higher than in (say) the United States, to which Franklin D. Roosevelt was able to administer only a diluted dose of the same poison. But a price there was, paid as usual by common people.
Economic theory also teaches that any scheme of fiat currency and fractional-reserve central banking is just as inherently flawed, incapable of permanent existence, and inevitably doomed to disaster as all-around, full-blown socialism, because fractional-reserve central banking systematically subverts the free market's structure of prices through expansion of currency and credit--which results in redistribution of wealth, misallocation of scarce capital, and collapse in either depression or hyperinflation followed by depression. This is no new insight. The problems fractional-reserve banking causes were widely discussed in the 1800s; and the whole subject of political versus free-market money was exhaustively examined by Ludwig von Mises, in his treatise The Theory of Money and Credit, first published in the 1920s. (Probably the best book on this subject now available for the average reader is Murray Rothbard's The Mystery of Banking.) But, throughout the Western world during the 1900s and even unto the present moment, the political elite, high finance and big business, and their hired intelligentsiia have generally ignored these problems--doubtlessly because irredeemable currency and fractional-reserve central banking have served their short-term interests, and the costs of the system have always been paid by picking the pockets of the common man.
For this country's system of fractional-reserve central banking, though, Americans cannot blame some foreign dictator such as Stalin, but instead need to indict their own home-grown usurpers and tyrants: primarily, Presidents Woodrow Wilson (who signed the Federal Reserve Act in 1913), Franklin Roosevelt (who outlawed private possession of gold for use as currency in 1933-1934), and Lyndon Johnson (who repudiated the government's promise to redeem its paper currency in silver coin in 1967-1968). Some people also assign a large share of responsibility to Richard Nixon, who terminated redemption of Federal Reserve Notes in gold for foreign banks in 1971. This, however, is unfair. By "closing the gold window", Nixon extricated this country from an especially expensive variety of parasitism by the Federal Reserve System: its ability to prop up the value of Federal Reserve Notes by looting America's gold reserves. Indeed, such was Nixon鈥檚 legal duty. Because the Federal Reserve System as a whole is unconstitutional, paying out this nation's gold in redemption of Federal Reserve Notes is unconstitutional, too. (Nixon, of course, was far from being a constitutionalist. But, as folk wisdom teaches, "God writes straight with crooked lines".)
In the case of the Federal Reserve, economic history all too strongly confirms economic theory. In 1913, the Federal Reserve's touts predicted that it would allow bankers and politicians to "manage" currency "scientifically", and thereby to end business cycles, eliminate inflation, and forefend depressions. Yet, the country soon suffered a sharp, albeit short depression in 1920-1921, followed by the horrendous collapses of the stock market and the banks in 1929-1933, and the Great Depression that festered for the remainder of the 1930s. And since World War II, Federal Reserve Notes have lost more than 90% of their purchasing power--which is a serious consequence of inflation by any reasonable standard As to your question: as always. God Bless you. are you asking a question or giving an answer. It depends. So far we've managed to be sucessful by being less socialist than the Europeans. But I'm not sure we still are. The French and Germans elected conservatives, and European corporate taxes are now lower than in the U.S.
We just attempted to bail out bad loans by further reducing the value of our currency by lowering the interest rate. So things are going to get worse before they can get better. The danger of economic collapse is not in the poverty that ensues, although it can be detrimental to a country if say China wishes to invade. I think the real and present danger is the metal reserves going into this middle-east war, and nothing left but stone-age equipment to defend against anyone who wants to take up the pearl laid at their feet. Americans, in spite of their aggressive policies, are not prepared for a hostile take-over from a country that is stock-piling resources. you already seem to have the answer you are looking for.
i wonder why you are asking? i also wonder if its the right place for high leveled intellectualism.
i could argue contrary though! |
