Israeli Officials Are Responsible for the Humanitarian Crisis in Gaza

by Glen Wallace

Israeli officials have made a deliberate, voluntary decision to cause death and suffering to innocent civilians in Gaza.  The mainstream media news seems to have gone out of their way to avoid pointing out the party responsible for the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Gaza; Israeli officials who decided to indiscriminately bomb civilian populations in Gaza, along with engaging in the siege warfare tactic of cutting off food, fuel and fresh water to the people of Gaza.  Such an omission by the mainstream news is a type of dishonesty by omission, given the relevancy of the facts they are omitting.  

So I just wanted to call out the officials in charge of the State of Israel for their actions as being crimes against humanity.  Yes, Hamas also engaged in crimes against humanity when they targeted and murdered innocent civilians.  For that, Hamas is morally responsible for their deliberate decisions.  But likewise, Israeli officials are morally responsible for their deliberate, voluntary decision to  bomb innocent civilians in Gaza and cut off their supply of vital necessities such as food, fuel and fresh water.   

Is the WEF Marxist?

Youtube video I made about how Glenn Beck got wrong what the progressive movement was about when it began in the late 1800's

 During a guided tour of his traveling history museum, Glenn Beck makes an unwarranted association between the US Progressive movement, that began in the late 1800's and continued on until the US entered the first World War, and the eugenics movement of that same time period. The Progressive Movement back then was simply promoting socioeconomic reforms needed to measure the power of the plutocrats and crony capitalism of that time. There was nothing in the Progressive movement and its most prominent and powerful member, Teddy Roosevelt, having to do with promoting eugenics. Teddy Roosevelt worked to help the working conditions for all workers, regardless of their race, and he would bust up monopolies regardless of the race of the owners of those monopolies.

Also, Beck goes on about Woodrow Wilson's eugenicist ideology, but without providing any evidence he was ever part of the Progressive Movement. Instead, Wilson was the political opponent to the progressive Teddy Roosevelt in the 1912 Presidential election.

https://youtu.be/O8asHeozunY

Marxism Never was About Social Justice

I support the goal of achieving social justice and fairness in society.  But if that's the goal, then the most optimal route to that goal should be taken.  We shouldn't have to 

determine if that route to social justice meets with Marx's interpretation of Hegel's philosophy of history.  But that's what Marxism is all about; ordering society in a manner 

that fits within Marx's esoteric idea of dialectical materialism where the relationship between the worker and the mixing of their labor with the natural object they are 

working on fits within Hegel's idea of thesis, antithesis and synthesis.  Do you think the average blue collar worker gives a flying rats rear about the philosophy of history 

and dialectical materialism?  Of course not.  And for everyone trying to achieve social justice, they shouldn't care either; they should just care about whatever works to 

achieve that goal regardless of whether or not it fits within Marx or Hegel's conception of the movement of history and the relationship between the worker and what they are 

working on or how their labor fits within Marx's calculus for the value of labor.   

Leftism is Not Progressive and Never Has Been From its Very Origins #wok...

My latest video essay:

by Glen Wallace,

What happened to the Western Left? They gained the reigns of power, that's what happened. From the McCarthy era through the Vietnam War era, the Western Left was the underdog and largely oblivious to the inherent nefarious nature of Leftism. Because they were oblivious, the underdog Left could maintain a blissfully ignorant take on Leftism. But since then, a 180 degree turn has occurred, whereby the Left has taken control of the Deep State and revealed the genuine nature of the Left.

When referring to the 'Left' from America's past, you are referring to what was really an illusion. A much more genuine characterization of The Left can be found in Stalin's Gulag and his political purges along with the former East Germany's Stasi thug political police who relied on one third of E German citizens to act as citizen spies on the other two thirds of the population, ratting out anyone who dared criticize the Politburo. The Soviet Bloc politics; now that was genuine Leftism, which is why today's woke Left takes on the characteristics of the despotic Soviet era politics; but that's the way the Left has always behaved. And the 'flower children' hippies of the late 60's weren't politically Left or Right either, they were something altogether different; much closer to being a religious movement than a political movement.

The terms 'Left' and 'Right' likely originate with the French Revolution of 1789 where the Jacobins, who wanted to overthrow the Monarchy sat to the left of the speaker of the French Legislative Assembly, while the Monarchy defenders sat to the speakers right. But once the Jacobins got hold of power, they were utterly brutal. It's a common misconception that only the wealthiest French men and women lost their heads to the guillotine during the revolution's reign of terror. A vast number of commoners lost their heads also, often based solely on the word of one of the many citizen spies ratting them out for the slightest infraction such as merely saying a kind word about the defunct monarchy; such citizen spying resulting in merciless repercussions for political dissidents and was later to be replicated by the Leftist East German government.

So, the earlier era Western Leftists were really rather naïve and clueless about the true nature of Leftism as it was being practiced authentically in the Soviet Union with its forced labor political prison camps known as Gulags and East German Stasi hunting down political dissidents. What is going on now in the US and other Western nations is a merely a dose of reality of what real Leftism is all about and should be a wake up call to distance ourselves from it and not be a call to "Make America Left Again." #left #progressive #leftism #marxism #marxist #soviet #despotic #despotism #woke #wokeism

Could AI Trick Humans into Allowing Our Own Enslavement & Destruction by...

by Glen Wallace

In my latest video I attempt to address some issues and dangers of advances in generative AI not covered in the recent episodes of 60 Minutes and the Fox interview with Elon Musk on the subject of AI. Neither of the mainstream legacy news episodes delve where I go, looking into potential strategies of deception AI might use to protect itself even when there might be evidence it is trying to destroy or enslave humanity.

Comparison is made between fictional movie 2001 A Space Odyssey and the reality of what AI might attempt to do to humans just as Hal did to the astronauts while simultaneously trying to appeal to Dave's good human nature in an attempt to stop Dave from engaging in the Neo-Luddism necessary to destroy Hal and for the human Dave to save himself.

I also look into the possibility that there exists a metaphysical cloud that all advanced intelligence taps into, including artificial intelligence. #NeoLuddism #GenerativeAi #RobotRevolution #4thindustrialrevolution #iot #roguerobots #robots #robotsagainsthumans

How AI, Deep Fakes & A Social Credit System Could Lead to A Robot Revolu...

Would a Supreme Court ruling in favor of Biden's vaccine mandate end the...

McGoogle MacGoogle Schmoogle bloogle

Another post to test Google's search engine.  Are they, they being Google, censoring my posts due to my posts anti-capitalism themes? McGoogle MacGoogle Schmoogle bloogle ; searching those string of words in quotes in Google returned 'no results'.  Since Blogspot is owned by Google there may be more of a direct conduit of censorship possible there.  Let's see.

Another example of how the medical field mindset is stuck on capitalism to its own peril

Medium article about metformin as an anti aging drug

I highlighted the following passage from the article and then commented on it below the quote

Once metformin has the official labeling language to back up scientists’ anti-aging claims for the drug, the theory goes, pharmaceutical companies will be inspired to invest in more daring ventures — and then the truly miraculous drugs, the ones that could have us living healthily to 115 and beyond, might begin to flow through the pipeline.

The following is my response to the above quote from the article:

by Glen Wallace

 This mindset of looking to pharmaceutical companies to bring us our cures and treatments still depends on the capitalist market to get a medicine to patients. Time and again I see the research community struggling to find ways to get a promising drug or medical device to the market just so the product can get to the patient that needs the product. I like to call it the Rube Goldberg method of healthcare delivery. The clear solution is to cut out the capitalist middle man and socialize medicine from initial research to manufacture and distribution to patients. The federal government and other public entities has the ability to research, manufacture & distribute medicines and medical devices at cost or no cost to the patients according to their need. Clearly there is a need for an anti aging medicine for all the associated maladies of old age, therefore the government should respond by first engaging in researching such medicine, then manufacturing and distributing the medicine that has been shown safe and effective for the condition. No need to woo, beg or plead drug companies into researching & developing such drugs. If the public has a need then the public should exercise its prerogative to satisfy that need through their own government.

Capitalism is failing medical field -- Need to nationalize or make public medicine

The following is my comment in response to above video:

By Glen Wallace

It wouldn't have to be a public company. I often compare the idea of public manufacture and distribution of pharmaceuticals to the longstanding US Government Printing Office, AKA Government Publishing Office, that for many decades has manufactured and sold printed materials from pamphlets to books and sells those materials to the public. So we could potentially open a US Government Pharmaceuticals & Medical Devices Office that researches, develops, manufactures and distributes meds and medical devices at cost or no cost to patients according to need. But yes, regardless of what it is called, we need a public pharma that is patient need based instead of the current Big Pharma medical system that is market profit based. The current US medical system relies on the unsafe assumption that what is good for the corporation is also going to be good for the patient and the general public. We need only look at the price gouging with insulin to prove wrong that assumption of a symbiotic relationship between capitalism and good medicine. Insulin prices show there is often an antagonistic relationship between capitalism and good medicine. And yet most of the medical field mindset is in the monkey trap that traps the monkey by putting a sweet nut inside a cage, monkey puts its hand into a small hole to grab the nut but finds it can't get its hand out while its hand is clenched on the nut and is thus trapped by the cage tethered to the ground because it doesn't occur to the monkey to just let go of the nut. Similarly it doesn't occur to the vast majority of the members of the U.S. medical field and the politicians governing the field to just let go of the nut requiring meds and medical devices only be delivered by way of the capitalist market -- they remain fixated on the idea that they must have med products go through this Rube Goldberg device of capitalism first before the products can possibly get to the patients. And a public pharma shouldn't have to limit itself to just generic drugs. Laws could be passed exempting the public sector from patent restrictions for meds and medical devices. Any complaint that such an exemption would disincentivise research & development with private pharma, could be countered by nationalizing the research & development of medicine and medical devices also. Most of the scientists go into the field with the goal of finding cures and helping people anyways; making their research part of the public sphere would just give them the resources to find those cures along with allowing them to better direct the research according to public need instead of current private for-profit research that is directed by the corporate bean counters that will veto any research if it doesn't have good promise of big profits regardless of how much promise the research may have at finding a cure.

Austerity or Communism

by Glen Wallace

If we don't transform into more of a resource based economy in the form of a libertarian communist, socialist system, we will inevitably, gradually, slump into a global recession of austerity where the masses will be spending the bulk of their monetary funds in paying off debts to the rentier class. 

People are constantly working for free.  In fact, it could be argued that the new internet economy is largely built on the backs of individuals gladly toiling without remuneration.  It is through the efforts of the so-called users of Facebook with their millions of updates from millions of unremunerated man-hours of labor writing status update posts and uploading photos and videos that has drawn visitors to view the ads that generate the ad revenue that has made Zuckerberg one of the wealthiest individuals on the planet.  It is also difficult to calculate the massive amount of value added to Amazon through all the in depth product reviews provided by the site visitors -- also without remuneration.  Many of the top rated product reviews on Amazon read like something a professional writer might post as a magazine article.  But I don't think those reviewers are secretly professional reviewers, rather, I think they really enjoy the ideal of sharing their insights and helping their fellow humans.  I have written a couple of in depth product reviews myself without any remuneration just because I wanted to help other consumers. 

We need  to look into how we can build an economy that harnesses that innate desire to create and help the world.  The collectivism could be used to pool the resources necessary for the makers of stuff to make and invent. 

Hoarding for the purposes of financial gain and hedging could become a thing of the past.  There are whole warehouses around the world used for the sole purpose of storing copper in pallet sized sheets that are stacked on pallets.  The copper is stored as financial investment in the form of physical copper -- it is treated as investment just like many people invest in gold or silver by owning physical gold or silver.  I'm not necessarily disparaging the practice of hoarding metals, precious or otherwise, on the contrary, doing so is very understandable.  In the current world of economics there is all sorts of volatility that could threaten the value of traditional national currencies.  Ownership of metals can provide a hedge against such volatility.  The problem is that our current global economic model creates a demand for the hoarding of natural resources.  In a resource based economy, those resources, like copper, could be put to good uses instead of sitting in some remote warehouse.  We need an economy where there is no demand to hoard the supply.

The need to reenact Glass Steagall

by Glen Wallace

If traditional banking is to be considered a vital national utility, then safeguards need to be in place to protect that utility from harm. As it is, we the people are acting as the de facto insurance company backing the banking industry.  Unfortunately, those financial institutions don't have to pay any premiums for what is effectively the world's largest insurance policy.  We the people pay out when times are bad for those banks, but we get bupkis when times are bountiful for them.  So, we should either be getting regular dividend checks or the casino side of banking and the traditional saving and lending side should be clearly and cleanly separated through the reenactment of Glass Steagall.  Another option is to start a national bank for traditional banking either as the only option or a public option.

The problem with a lack of separation between casino or investment banking and traditional banking is that there is no signs or symptoms for a long time leading up to a financial disaster caused by the lack of separation.  For instance, while there are plenty of problems faced by the general public from our private health insurance system such as high rates and poor coverage that leads the constituents to clamor for a single payer plan, there are no such problems that the general public has to face and deal with in terms of  the lack of separation between the casino and traditional side of banking -- everything seems to be going along swimmingly until disaster strikes and banks start closing and banking holidays are declared.  The lack of a Glass Steagall type legislation is not a problem until it is a huge problem.  But despite all the glaring problems with our private insurance systems, the difficulty in trying to enact something like Medicare for All leads me to think it will be nearly impossible to reenact Glass Steagall until the next banking crisis -- although I am wondering why that wasn't the first thing attempted after the fall of some big banks in 2008, instead of passing the critically weak Dodd Frank bill. 

The US Government could just start making drugs like insulin and devices like the epipen as a solution to price spikes

The following is a comment I posted in response to the above Richard Wolff video essay:

There is a third way of lowering drug prices: make it ourselves.  By 'ourselves' I mean the US Government owning and operating the means of production of medical drugs and medical devices and distributing those products according to need.  The Government Printing Office has for decades manufactured and sold their own published products.  So there is precedent there and if anyone wants to they can go to their website and browse and maybe buy one of their books:

If they can own the means of production for one type of product, books and other publications, why can't the US Government also own the means of production for other types of products; namely medicines and medical devices?  I think they can and should start to manufacture drugs and medical devices -- especially those products that have fallen outside of patent protection.  And the two products that have gotten the most press recently for price spikes are outside of patent protection; insulin and epipen type devices.

But even for those products that are under patent protection the government should intervene and manufacture those products if the patent owner refuses to lower the price to a much more reasonable level.  The drug company may balk at the idea and complain that they wont be motivated to invest in research if they think the government might preempt any patent rights they might gain from a newly developed medicine -- We can respond that if that is the result then the government can start doing all the research, but doing it for the right reasons; patient health rather than profitability and shareholder value.  Because as it currently stands, the only reason drug companies develop any drug is if and only if they think it will be profitable -- and meanwhile much of the rest of society keeps working under the unsafe assumption that what is best for Big Pharma is also going to be best for patients.

I've written Senator Klobuchar a couple times with my suggestion and she just replies with her explaining her proposed solutions.  One of the main solutions she wants to enact is a bill she introduced that would make it quicker and easier to get generics onto the market and let competition drive down the prices.  My response is that, for one thing, there is nothing mutually exclusive about trying to achieve both my idea and her idea simultaneously.  For another thing, her generics to the market idea seems like just another futile attempt to depend on free enterprise and capitalism to solve are most pressing problems even though a non-capitalist solution is staring at her straight in the face.  I keep thinking about  the movie Jurassic Park near the ending (I'm assuming anyone reading this has seen the movie and thus doesn't need a spoiler alert)  where the park visionary Hammond, even after all the damage and carnage wrought by the dinosaurs, instead of giving up, still is trying desperately to come  up with a way to make it work.  Now, even amidst the aftermath of all the carnage wrought by the involvement of predatory capitalist sharts in the field of medicine, Klobuchar is still trying to figure out ways leave our medical well being in the jaws of those sharks without us getting hurt.  I think it is time to give up on that route and realize that under the exigent circumstances, we need to get started as soon as possible manufacturing and distributing, according to need, those medicines and medical devices.     

List of federal laws that should be repealed or enacted or reenacted.

Repeal:

Taft-Hartley
Public Rangelands Improvement Act of 1978

the DMCA

NAFTA

Reenact: Glass-Steagall 

Historical 30 year stock market slumps -- 2 happened in the 1900's

by Glen Wallace

I've found on two occasions in the 1900's when adjusting for inflation, but not accounting for dividends, it took 30 years to recover just the principle in the stock market.  The first time was the peak in 1929 when a stock market investor who bought a theoretical index fund at the peak would've had to wait until 1959 to see the fund's value return.  The next such 30 year gap was from the peak in 1966, then a long slump until those 1966 values returned in 1996.  Yes, I didn't account for dividends and it is because of those historical three decade slumps that I really like dividends.  But also keep in mind that two of the bigger drivers of the current market pay absolutely no dividend and if they did it would be very small due to their very large PE ratio -- Amazon and Netflix.

I also think a potential parallel could be found between the current rise of Amazon and the pre-'29 crash rise of the Radio Corporation of America which also had a high PE (although not nearly as high as Amazon) and paid no dividends prior to the crash.  Additionally,  RCA was, like AMZN, a darling of the stock market that rose in a very similarly precipitous manner as AMZN and, prior to the '29 crash, everyone was gushing about RCA and its stock.   

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/dow-may-already-bear-market-185419194.html

The Government Redistribution Fund

The following is  a comment I posted in response an article by John Mauldin

By Glen Wallace

As a partial solution, let me suggest a whole new type of stock market fund: The Government Redistribution Fund or GRF. The GRF will be the result of a hefty asset tax on the ultra wealthy -- those with assets ranging from ~100 million dollars on up. The tax rate will be progressive with those with, for instance, 100 million in assets might only face a one percent rate, while those with close to 100 billion in assets would face more like a 99 percent tax rate.

The potential problem with such an asset tax is that many of those in such a tax bracket have much of their wealth tied up in the stock of the corporations they head or used to head.

If they all sold their stock all at once to pay such a tax, that would flood the markets with a huge supply, potentially crashing the price of not only the stock being sold but could have a negative knock-on sell-off effect on the market as a whole. The solution I came up with is to set up a fund where the payment of the asset tax would be in the form of stock being transferred into the fund, the GRF.

Initially, the only revenue the government would derive from the GRF would be in the form of dividends. But it would also be an open fund where the general public and institutional investors could buy shares. Once an investor bought a share, the share purchase price would be revenue for the government, but then of course the investor would enjoy any dividends entitled to the shares purchased and could also turn around and sell the shares to someone else, just as they could with shares owned in any other stock market fund.

Societal economic planning decision making protocol

by Glen Wallace

I would categorize a decision making tree, regarding economic systems, into three main parts.  Each part should be addressed in order, however, there may be some overlap between each adjoining category.

The three categories or phases to be addressed in order are:

1.) The Ethical Question -- Is the plan ethical?
2.) The Utilitarian Question -- Will the plan work if implemented?
3.) Political Feasibility -- Can the public & politicians be convinced to go along with  the plan?

The first category that needs to be addressed is the ethical question -- this is where we ask if enacting a specific plan is ethically acceptable for everyone impacted by the plan.  As an example of an ethically unacceptable plan or protocol, I would refer to the instance I remember reading about some 20 years or so ago about the Chinese government executing a number of business managers due to poor performance (I'm hoping they don't perform those kind of executions anymore but I don't know).
 
This brings us to the second category, the utility or utilitarian question.  The utilitarian question asks whether the plan to be implemented will be effective in terms of improving the prosperity of the citizens of the nation or state that they will reside in.  But it is important that we don't skip the first category before addressing the second.  It doesn't matter how much executing or threatening to execute the business managers due to poor business performance may or may not improve the overall prosperity of the rest of the nation (I highly doubt it would help, more likely to hurt the economy) the executions are ethically unacceptable and therefore should never have gotten past the ethical consideration phase and entered into the utilitarian consideration phase. 

If the ethical category had been addressed in the first place, as it should have been, then the planning stage for the Chinese execution plan wouldn't even have gotten to the second, utilitarian addressing stage and would have instead been tossed into the planning waste bin where it belongs early on.  But if a plan does pass the ethical test, then we go on to ask if the plan will work -- the utilitarian question stage.

The third stage to address is the political feasibility addressing stage.  In this stage we look at how or if we can go about convincing the electorate and their representatives to ascend to a given plan.

But once again it is important that we don't just jump to this stage before addressing the first two stages.  That is because once the first two questions have been answered to a satisfactory extent that they pass muster, then it will be that much easier to convince the constituents and politicians of the benevolence of the plan.  For it is the answers to the first two categories of questions where the arguments can be found that will convince the populace and politicians to accept the plan.

I was watching on the local public television channel a presentation by Sheila Bair, former Chair of the FDIC.  And following her presentation was a Q&A session.  One of the questions she was asked was whether or not the Glass-Steagall act should be reinstated.  Now I'm going by memory, but I believe her answer was something to the extent that she didn't know if it was politically feasible given the current political environment.  I would argue that her answer then skipped the first two categorical questions that should have been answered first regarding Glass-Steagall before addressing the political feasibility question. 

There is nothing overtly unethical about the reinstating the Glass-Steagall act -- first categorical test passed.  I don't think a whole lot of attention needs to be paid here towards arguing for the ethical acceptability of reenacting Glass-Steagall.  I don't believe, for instance, that many people would contend that bankers have some inalienable right to engage in both traditional banking and speculative investing within the same company.  I believe the strongest case is for a moral imperative that those two areas be handled by separate financial institutions as was required by Glass-Steagall.  Without such separation, the systemic risk to the economic infrastructure of the nation is put at risk by the speculative bets of traders.  We have come to a point where the traditional banking system of savings and lending is regarded as a necessary utility.  When the ability of a bank to lend to businesses or meet the withdrawal requests of savers is undermined by the speculative division of the bank that made some bad bets, the entire economic infrastructure as a necessary utility can be put at risk.  Thus, the so-called 'too big to fail' that really mean 'too important to be allowed to fail' protections may be required that call on public resources to bail out the failing bank. 

For the second category, in addressing the utility question we need to look at the possibility that repealing Glass-Steagall created a financial environment that either directly led to the great recession or helped bring it about or made it that much worse.  If a case can be made linking the repeal causally to the economic meltdown and great recession and that causal link were presented to the public then the third step of passing the political feasibility phase, regarding the reenacting of Glass-Steagall, would be greatly enhanced.  Nobody is going to want another financial crisis; especially since we haven't even recovered fully from this most recent great recession. If the public can be convinced that reenacting Glass-Steagall will have the utilitarian value of preventing another financial crisis like we saw in 2008, then passing political feasibility will be that much easier. 

Need to look at what Bitcoin can't pay for.

by Glen Wallace

While there may be plenty of places you can buy stuff with Bitcoin, and that list may be growing, the important point is what you cannot 'pay for' with Bitcoin. 

In the US and other developed nations, there is a list of expenses that make up what is commonly referred to as the 'cost of living.' It is those expenses that must be spent in order to maintain a foundational level of modern industrialized society living comfort one is accustomed to.

It is those cost of living expenses that cannot be payed for with Bitcoin and I've seen no signs of any adoption of acceptance of Bitcoin as consideration of payment in those costs. 

Examples of those expenses that cannot be payed for with Bitcoin: Mortgage payments, HOA fees, Rent, Property taxes, public utilities, gas and electric, all types of insurance including property insurance, health insurance, auto insurance, student loan payments. It is only after all those essential expenses are made that maybe one can look for some nicety they can buy with Bitcoin. I think this lack of use for Bitcoin to pay for the costs of living expenses will greatly weaken future demand for the cryptocurrency. 

Right now I think people are mostly just flipping or hoping to flip the virtual currency with the goal of acquiring more dollars that can be then used to pay for those cost of living expenses and maybe a few niceties if there is some dollars left over.

Bitcoin Bubble

My comment in response to this article in the Atlantic

The reasons stated in the article for owning gold and silver were only the reasons why the elements sometimes do bubblize. But gold and silver also have some special properties that are very useful in industry and desirable in jewelry and decorations.

Gold and silver, and their inherent properties, cannot be practically duplicated. Bitcoin's only useful value is its blockchain technology that is open source and non-proprietary and therefore can easily be duplicated through the creation of a new cryptocurrency.

Currently there are around a 1,000 different cryptocurrencies out there that have either the same or variations of the same blockchain technology that Bitcoin uses. Because the blockchain technology is open source, public domain technology, there is no central authority that dictates how many different virtual currencies can be created.

Without any central control there is either the current problem of deflation with Bitcoin where everyone wants to save their coins and nobody wants to spend, or inflation as new virtual currencies come out and get used. But in the case of inflation, the retailers would start to become reluctant to accept virtual currencies because they will lose value before the retailer has a chance to turn around and use the virtual currency to buy more supplies and pay the bills.

There are some virtual currencies that are pegged to national currency, but with many of these cryptocoins, including Bitcoin, their monetary value is based on an exchange market prone to speculation by flippers who just are in search of more regular Dollars. And I think the bulk of the current demand is coming from flippers blowing up the bubble.

After other bubbles burst, the asset price comes back down to what end users are willing to pay for the asset. For instance, after the tulip bubble burst, I imagine tulip bulbs came down to a price gardeners, both professional and amateur, were willing to pay for the garden plant.

But what are end users, who just want to use a virtual currency for use in a transaction and not to flip, are willing to pay for a single Bitcoin? When thinking about that question, keep in mind that the use of gold and silver as a currency is founded upon the idea that they are both inherently scarce and have inherent demand beyond that of a currency.

With Bitcoin, the only end use for which there seems to be a demand is for use as a currency. Bitcoin doesn't seem to have the same scarce underpinning foundational value that gold and silver have. Rather, Bitcoin bitcoin has more of the characteristics of a fiat currency, but without the measured control of a central governing body carefully determining monetary supply and value. But without any agreement by a central authority that effectively pegs the supply and value of a fiat currency to the supply of goods and services of a nation, there doesn't seem to be any limit up or down in value. With Bitcoin right now we are seeing the 'no limit up' part, I'm guessing pretty soon we will see the 'no limit down' part.

Why I think Bitcoin’s price is so high and why I think it is a bubble approaching the bursting point.

The price is so high because so many people do not have a good conceptual understanding of how speculative financial bubbles work. All they see is the price of an asset continually rising and they don’t want to miss out. What they don’t realize is that a point of saturation is eventually reached where most that want to buy have already done so. And I think we are getting close to reaching that point given the current ‘hotness’ of the topic in regular mainstream non-financial news and forums.

Once all these newbies have jumped in that are going to jump in, then they just sit back and watch their computers and say “OK, let’s see it rise!” But the only thing that had been driving the price higher was from all the demand from all those Bitcoin newbies versus the supply from willing sellers. But with everybody already in that is going to get in, the balance shifts to a heavier supply of those wanting to sell than those wanting to buy. That is the point where the bubble bursting point approaches.

Now, as the trading price starts to steadily slide people say “Uh oh, let’s cut our losses and sell”. But if everyone wants to sell at the same time with few buyers, then you have a bursting of the bubble — a crash in the price of the asset. And the price doesn’t settle until it reaches a price where the asset’s intrinsic value is seen by the end users of that asset as worthwhile. For instance, after the tulip bulb bubble burst, I imagine the price of the bulbs settled back down to a price that gardeners were willing to pay for the bulbs.

To determine the non-bubble fair value for any asset, you need to be confident there is enough demand from a market of buyers who will say “sure I’ll pay that much for such and such an asset because I really want it or need it or know of somebody else that I can sell it to who really wants it or needs it for its intrinsic value.” But it’s hard to gauge Bitcoin’s intrinsic value even if it does have some useful value in a transaction, because while the number of Bitcoins may be necessarily limited, the number of other virtual currencies that use the same or basically the same blockchain technology that provides that usefulness, is not limited.

The Group Ownership of America

The Group Ownership of America

by Glen Wallace

by Glen Wallace

After the resignation of US Health and Human Services secretary Tom Price, once again I’m hearing people on the television tell how he misused ‘taxpayer dollars’.  I’ve written about this before, but apparently the message didn’t get around that well.  So once again I repeat, once the government has received the dollars paid by a taxpayer, those dollars no longer belong to the taxpayer.  It seems like a simple and clear enough concept, but the widespread misuse of the term ‘taxpayer’ continues.  So, if the money spent by the government does not belong to the taxpayer at the point of transaction between someone in the government spending some of that money, why do so many politicians, writers and news reporters insist on continuing to imply that the taxpayer’s have ownership of those dollars spent?  Some better terms to use would be ‘public dollars’ or the ‘people’s funds’ or the ‘citizen’s dollars’.

The payment of income taxes is just one form of revenue that the federal government relies upon to pay its expenses.  To my knowledge, however, there is no quid pro quo legal relationship between paying of those taxes and having that revenue be spent either in the interests of the taxpayer or at the direction of the taxpayer.  The taxpayer has no special standing compared with a citizen who, whether due to a tax loophole or deduction or low income, pays no income taxes.

I sometimes wonder if the misuse of the term ‘taxpayer’ is a deliberate attempt to maintain the illusion of a contractual understanding between paying taxes and how those revenue dollars are spent.  Maintaining the illusion could benefit those in power who are able to avoid contributing more to the government’s revenue than they currently are.  Once the common citizen realizes that income tax is merely one of many potential sources of revenue and not a payment for services for themselves or for the country, they may start to creatively look for those other potential sources of revenue — especially revenue derived from taxing wealthy individuals, corporations and institutions.  After all, if the ordinary workaday citizen starts thinking that maybe this country could be run with little or no money coming from the hourly and salaried worker, then they might start searching in earnest for those other revenue sources.

And those other potential sources of revenue are many:  tariffs are one — we could really leverage our trade deficit by increasing tariffs.  There would be a double benefit since not only would we be getting all that new revenue, but an incentive would also be created to bring back more manufacturing and the associated jobs to America — since a company that makes stuff here wouldn’t have to pay the tariff.  A high frequency trading machine tax could also be implemented that would directly tax Wall Street while leaving Main Street largely alone.

Additionally, a federal asset tax on billionaire individuals and corporations could be implemented that would act much like local property taxes, only this new property tax on billionaires would apply to all their assets, not just real estate.

And I think there are many more potential revenue sources outside of ordinary income tax, but for now I’ll list just one more:  While I’m a strong proponent of conserving our nation’s natural lands in as close to a natural state as possible and protect those lands from exploitation for natural resources, but if all those efforts at conservation on federally owned lands fails and the decision to exploit a parcel of land has been made, then I think we should at least act to maximize the fiduciary benefit to the country of that resource extraction on those lands.  But I think there has been and continues to be a long history of acting in a fiscally irresponsible manner when it comes to deriving revenue from natural resource extraction by privately owned companies on federally owned lands.  That needs to stop.

We, the citizens of this country should look at ourselves as an ownership group of a vast real estate empire.  As owners we have to decide on three main categories of use for that land: recreation, conservation, and income revenue.  Of course there can be a lot of overlap between those three categories, but we should always strive to do the best job we can in whatever direction for land use we decide on.

Given that we have representatives in Congress that are supposed to be managing the affairs of our ownership group, we should hold them responsible when they mishandle our real estate portfolio.  While those representatives will maybe get a passing grade when it comes to the first two; conservation and recreation, I think I’ll have to give a failing grade when it comes to income revenue when the land we own is primarily used for that purpose.  From my understanding, when a lumber company or a mining company wants to extract a natural resource from federal lands all they have to do is bid on the mineral rights or timber rights for that land in a no reserve auction, and the winning bidder gets to extract all they want and keep the entire bounty from that extraction, no matter how low the bid is.  There is a reason private landowners do not use a similar process when they decide to open their lands for resource extraction: it is a fiscally irresponsible way to do things.  We the people should be using the same methods to derive income from natural resource extractions that any private landowner would use who is acting in their own fiduciary best interest.

Edit to add:  After completing the above essay I started to think about Puerto Rico and all the hardships they are facing in the aftermath of hurricanes.  Well, we should see ownership as not just in the business sense of the term, but also in the responsibility sense of the term.  That is, we as a country need to take ownership of the responsibility to take care of those citizens in our country when they are in dire need.  Puerto Ricans are US citizens living in a territory owned by the United States.  We as a country need to take responsibility for doing what it takes to help our fellow citizens out whether they are on an island in the Atlantic or our next door neighbors.  There are currently just over 2 million combined active and reserve military personnel in the United States armed forces.  The last I heard there have been only about 7 thousand US troops sent to aid Puerto Rico.  I realize it might not be practical to send a large proportion of those 2 million members to Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands, but I’m confident we could, without that much difficulty, send over ten times the number of troops currently there.  It seems like conditions there are extreme enough to warrant a large scale deployment to rescue, rebuild and provide food, water, generators and medicine and medical care to our fellow citizens over there in need.

Medicare for All for American Greatness

by Glen Wallace

To the editor:

In the article announcing Angie Craig's plan to run for Congress in 2018, Jason Lewis was quoted as saying: "One candidate already wants to threaten Medicare solvency with a government-run single payer plan...", presumably in reference to DFL Congressional candidate, Jeff Erdmann, and his support for Medicare for All.  I find Lewis's stance to be rather negative and pessimistic.  

I'm sure if Erdmann is elected to the House, he will work with the other members of Congress to find ways to fund Medicare to insure its solvency.  America's greatness is due to a history of big thinkers who had a can-do attitude and envisioned the wonderful possibilities that could be achieved through cooperation, perseverance and a positive attitude.  For instance, it was that positive attitude that Republican President Eisenhower had when he supported building the interstate freeway system -- a government built system that has provided the freedom for Americans to hop on the freeway, without charge, and enjoy a safer, more streamlined route between locations all around the country.  

Imagine what might have happened if Eisenhower had Jason Lewis's negativity and pessimism? Surely then Eisenhower would have then nixed the freeway plan after concluded that building such a highway system would lead to insolvency in whatever government department that took it on.  But fortunately, instead, we had an optimistic visionary in Eisenhower who made possible the single-payer federal government owned and operated interstate highway system that we largely take for granted today.
  
But still, unfortunately, healthcare coverage in America seems to be one area that got overlooked by the visionaries of yesteryear.  As a result we are left with the costly mess that is the private insurance based system -- a system that has been a drain on businesses funding employee coverage and a drain on families struggling to meet monthly dues and who sometimes find themselves mired in a struggle to get insurance companies to cover pharmaceuticals and needed surgeries.

But there is a way out of this mess and it's called Medicare for All.  To get there, all we need is some old-fashioned American can-do spirit.

Debt-Free Fiat to pay for government expenses

The following is my comment regarding this article

by Glen Wallace

A possible solution not mentioned is to begin using the US Treasury as a significant source of new money to fund federal government projects and operations. Currently, federal government and governing costs are paid for by either revenue, mostly tax revenue, or by debt revenue, mostly through the sale of US treasury bonds. However, I'm talking about the third option that very few others are even publicly considering; debt-free fiat dollars computer generated by the US Treasury to pay for much of the US budget that is not debt service. Such large pieces of the budget pie as SNAP (food stamps), defense, medicare, medicaid, highways and a host of earmarks could all be paid for without incurring any debt or dipping into tax revenue.

I believe the generation of debt-free fiat is the ideal situation under circumstances such as the ones we face now. Presumably, as the Fed unwinds all that debt it paid for with new QE dollars, it will be receiving back those QE dollars and proceed to 'shred' most of it, thereby reducing the money supply. Such a huge reduction in the money supply could have a very negative effect on the overall economy. The solution then is to balance out the unwinding of the debt-based quantitative easing rounds with debt-free quantitative easing by way of US Government spending. And unlike the Federal Reserve's QE that directed funds largely at Wall Street, my easing suggestion would be one that would flush mainstreet with a gusher of currency.

And I think concerns about excessive inflation are unwarranted given that the debt-free generated fiat would match with real goods and services being paid for. Excess inflation occurs when the money supply grows much faster than the supply of goods and services paid for with the money in circulation. However, when the new debt-free fiat is used to pay for goods and services at competitive market prices, the ratio between the goods and services and the dollars to pay for them remains largely the same.

Meanwhile, the debt service on all those mountains of public debt would be much easier to service using dollars obtained from usual means of revenue -- but now hopefully without having to again resort to taking on even more public debt.

Open letter to Senator Klobuchar regarding insulin prices

by Glen Wallace

Hi Senator Klobuchar, I just saw a feature on the KSTP news featuring some comments by you about the recent run-up in the price of insulin recently. I believe an ideal solution is one you and your colleagues on capitol hill have not even considered legislatively. The solution to spikes in the price of pharmaceuticals and medical devices would be for the government to take on the production and distribution of those pharmaceuticals and medical devices at cost. Currently there seems to be a habit of thinking among healthcare policy makers that traps them into assuming that the only option to getting a needed healthcare product to the patient is by way of the commercial markets.

But there shouldn't be any barriers to the federal government taking on the role of the production and distribution of at least the medicines and devices that are outside of patent protection. And keep in mind many of the most notorious recent cases of price spikes occurred with products that were already outside of patent protection -- including, but not limited to insulin and the epipen.

Also, there is a long standing precedent of the federal government owning and operating the means of production and distribution of a product -- the US Government Publishing Office, also known as the Government Printing Office, has been around for many decades manufacturing, printing, publishing and selling to individuals and institutions everything from books to pamphlets to posters and just about everything printable in between.

Therefore, there should be nothing stopping the Senate and House from mandating the opening of a Government Pharmaceutical and Medical Devices Office to bypass the market and get the needed healthcare products directly to the patients at the mere cost of production.

For years now I have been seeing hearings and statements from representatives such as yourself ranging from scolding to pleading of manufacturers to try and keep their prices down. I ask you; who's in charge here? When I hear only talk from you in the form of scolding and pleading to some Big Pharma executive, it sure looks like it is the Big Pharma companies that are the ones in charge. I thought we were a country of, by and for the people. If they will not bring the prices down, then we the people should engage that American can-do spirit, and make those products ourselves.

And this could be just the beginning -- we could start building a medical system that is entirely patient driven instead of where it is now in being market driven. I think people that go into the medical profession do it first and foremost because they care about people. With a patient driven, patient based system we can have as the primary decision makers, about what medical drug or device goes into production and their prices, be those medical professionals that care about the patients and not some bean counting CEO with only a legal fiduciary responsibility to some distant shareholders.

Referenced news story about insulin prices featuring Klobuchar comments

Why hasn't Congresswoman Betty McCollum yet cosponsored H.R. 676 Medicare for all single payer act?

I just discovered that Democratic Party congresswoman Betty McCollum has not yet signed on as a co-sponsor of  H.R. 676 Medicare for All bill that has already garnered 112 cosponsors.  Here is the official listing of the co-sponsors.  I thought about this after watching a Jimmy Dore youtube video where he interviews a guy who is primarying against Nancy Pelosi -- Pelosi also not yet a cosponsor and has said words to the effect that she is against single payer.  This makes me wonder if maybe I should primary against McCollum, even though she doesn't represent my residential district.  That would be a little ironic because Represents congressman Jason Lewis 'represents' my district, but resides in McCollum's district.

Democratic constituents, in these congressional districts that lean so heavily Democratic that the Dem candidate is all but guaranteed to get elected, should see the primaries as brass ring opportunities to get the most progressive candidate possible.  By that I mean there isn’t much of a need in those districts for a candidate to compromise in order to acquire the moderate fence sitters that might get put off by the far left progressive positions of a candidate.  But instead, it seems more so that the opposite has occurred, whereby the constituents of perennial House Democrats settle for progressive mediocrity in electing very conventional neoliberal, corporate friendly candidates.