Events are moving so rapidly that it is almost difficult to keep track of them. The election of US President Donald Trump has so dominated the news that other equally important happenings are being kept on the back burner.
A few days ago and completely without warning, the government of India demonetized and withdrew from circulation all its 500 and 1,000 rupee notes. Imagine the Philippine government requiring everyone to turn in and exchange for smaller denominations all P500 and P1,000 bills. Multiply that by 100,000 and you will get an idea of the chaos.
Further—also similar to the Philippines—a huge percentage of business transactions are conducted with cash. The justification for this move is to attack the underground economy and corruption. Now, 86 percent of India’s currency is no longer valid, and the Central Bank says it will take up to 50 days (pundits say more like five months) to print all the new currency necessary to replace the old notes. In the West Bengal area, the fishing industry is in a state of near-collapse; in the wheat-growing states of the northwest, farmers halfway through the sowing season have run out of cash to buy seeds.
In France far-right party Front National leader Marine Le Pen—who came in a distant third in the 2012 election—has seen her polling making huge gains since the Trump victory in the US. In head-to-head polling against other likely political party candidates, she is now slightly ahead.
A third event is the passage in the United Kingdom of a law—the Investigatory Powers Bill—that “requires Internet, phone and communication app companies to store records for 12 months and allow authorities to access them whenever they demand. Security agencies may also ‘hack’ any personal devices they find evidential.” Of course, all this must be done with the approval of the newly created “Investigatory Powers Commission”.
Required reading for this time should be Ayn Rand’s epic 1957 novel Atlas Shrugged. The book is ignored because it is way too long, sometimes contradictory and sounds like a religious sermon—the same reasons some avoid reading the Judeo-Christian bible. But like the Bible, many truths are available.
Rand said that, at some point in the future, “government” would be so corrupt, interested only in its own power, it would do anything necessary to preserve its power. Policies would be made in the interest of economic “equality” to keep voters happy. Then economies would stagnate or decline. When that did not work, stronger measures would be employed to stop anti-establishment thinking and action.
“When you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing—when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors—when you see that men get richer by graft than by work, and your laws don’t protect you against them, but protect them against you—when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice—you may know that your society is doomed.”
There are now more people working for US national and local governments than in manufacturing, making goods. As the late US President Ronald Reagan said many times, “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help.’”
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