Why assume that the amount you’re being assessed really does represent your fair share?

And if that makes sense, why not pay it forward?

If the state is so good at doing the things it does, why not give it more of your income, your wealth and your labor?

Next time a tax reduction comes around, keep paying at the old rate.

When there’s a chance to show solidarity on your income tax or VAT returns, do so by adding a few extra percent on top.

Quit taking exemptions, deductions and credits.

When you’re going to pay for a meal at a restaurant, give the waitperson a few extra of the local currency unit and explain that it’s not a tip, but that you’d like it to be sent to the treasury.

Try those things and see how they feel.

And if you’re not willing to, you really ought to be ready to explain why not.

From Network, 1976:

You have meddled with the primal forces of nature, Mr. Beale… and I won’t have it!
Is that clear?
You think you merely stopped a business deal.
That is not the case.
The Arabs have taken billions of dollars out of this country… and now they must put it back!
It is ebb and flow, tidal gravity. It is ecological balance!
You are an old man… who thinks in terms of nations and peoples.
There are no nations. There are no peoples.
There are no Russians. There are no Arabs.
There are no Third Worlds. There is no West.
There is only one holistic system of systems!
One vast and immane, interwoven, interacting, multi-variant, multinational dominion of dollars!
Petrol dollars, electro dollars, multi-dollars.
Reichsmarks, rins, rubles, pounds and shekels!
It is the international system of currency which determines the totality of life on this planet.
That is the natural order of things today.
That is the atomic, and subatomic, and galactic structure of things today.
And you have meddled with the primal forces of nature!
And you will atone!
Am I getting through to you?
You get up on your little 21-inch screen and howl about America and democracy.
There is no America.
There is no democracy.
There is only IBM and ITT, and AT&T, and Du Pont, Dow, Union Carbide and Exxon.
Those are the nations of the world today.
What do you think the Russians talk about in their councils of state? Karl Marx?
They get out their linear programming charts, statistical decision theories, minimax solutions and compute price-cost probabilities of their transactions and investments, like we do.
We no longer live in a world of nations and ideologies, Mr. Beale.
The world is a college of corporations… inexorably determined by the… immutable bylaws of business.
The world is a business, Mr. Beale.

Change we can believe in (Pure silver, silver, me hearties! Yaaaar!)

Original image by Ian-S @ flickr.com, who writes:

Found in the Norfolk (UK) village of Snettisham in 1985, the contents of a narrow-necked roman pot were found to consist of stock, raw materials and coins hidden by a Roman jeweller. The collection has become known as ‘The Snettisham Jeweller’s Hoard’, and dates from the late second century AD. These are some of the 83 silver coins from the hoard, and they all seem to show the Emperor Domitian (reigned AD 81-96). Some later coins dated at 154-5 AD were present too, and these dated the find.

I have two tasks:

• Exchange a quantity of Slovak koruna banknotes for euro notes
• Purchase a number of commemorative coins for a friend who is a collector

I hand over the banknotes, my card with my account number and my canceled US passport, asking to exchange the money for euros. The teller lady flips through the passport a few times, checking the data page and my visa page. She types in the passport number and confirms it against my account records on her computer screen, satisfied that they match. She then returns to look, curiously, at the four holes punched through the passport booklet, then picks up a telephone, signaling me to wait a bit.

Nope, that's not the guy.

A supervisor lady comes over. I tell her that the passport is canceled. She steps away to speak to someone out of sight for a few seconds, and comes back to tell me that they can’t accept the passport since it’s no longer valid. “I’m sorry,” I say, “but I probably don’t have any document, then, that will be sufficient.” I present my still-valid Florida driver’s license and the notarized copy of passport and visa I had made before the passport was canceled. No love. The supervisor steps away again, this time for about ten minutes. She’s on the telephone with someone.

While she’s away, I briefly address the teller, saying, “This is a matter of identity; I lost my citizenship, not my identity.” She just smiles emptily, and asks my patience for waiting.

The supervisor comes back and apologizes, saying that she’s spoken to the bank’s legal department. The passport can’t be accepted since it’s no longer a valid document.

All I wanted to do was exchange one pile of fiat currency for a different pile, and maybe buy some shiny metal tokens with the remainder. I didn’t even need any access to my accounts.

I wonder if, when the US State Department person was operating the hole punch on my passport, little wisps of smoke might have been observed coming out — magic smoke which wafted away, carrying my identity as well as my citizenship along with it.

There was a time when presenting ID at a bank was done for only one purpose: to verify that the person attempting to withdraw money from a given account is actually an owner of that account. Just ten years ago in the US I could walk into a bank and deposit cash or endorsed checks into any account, even one I didn’t own, without needing to present any ID at all. I haven’t tracked exactly what’s gone on in the US banking system lately, but with the introduction of POS fingerprinting and all manner of other “Know Your Customer” measures and such mandated under the guise of combating money laundering — which isn’t even a real crime — I imagine the situation there has only gotten worse.

You are not the bank’s customer any more. The bank’s primary customer is the state. You are just an epiphenomenon, fluttering about that core, corrupt relationship.

If the bank people wanted to serve me, they would have responded to my letter asking about alternative forms of identification differently than they did. Instead of saying, “you must bring us one of these official documents,” they could have said, “come to our office, satisfy us of your identity; we will then take your photo and put it in the computer, and establish a password by which you can access your account at the branch.”

Remarkably, I can log on to the bank’s internet banking website using nothing more than a password and GRID Card code. I can move money between accounts, issue payment orders, even invest in securities. Nobody even needs to see my face. Yet that same method of authentication is unavailable or unacceptable if I appear in person at the branch.

So, whatever. My collector friend won’t get his coins unless he can find someone else in Slovakia to deal with it for him. And I’ll phone up the guy I know who operates as a black-market money changer and see what kind of rate he’s giving on Slovak koruna notes. I’ll bet it’s still better than the official exchange rate.

Roderick, do I get Agorist Demerit Points for this, or issue them?

NOTE: I’m not a registered charity, non-profit, or anything like that. It’s just me!

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YES, I am anti-American.

But let’s clarify a few things. I don’t think that the words “I” or “am” or the prefix “anti-” need any clarification. What does need to be cleared up is what is meant by the word “American”.

“American” means many different things. Let’s take them in turn.

• “America” the country — This, ultimately, is a set of lines drawn on a map, a geographical segment of the world. Do I oppose drawing lines on maps? Hardly. Marking roads, towns and rivers is useful. Even marking places where one might be subject to arbitrary violence is useful. But am I “anti-” the particular lines drawn to separate “America” from “the rest of the world”? YES. And I’m against all the other national and sub-national lines as well.

• “America” the land — Is it possible to hate a land? Perhaps, but I don’t. Mind you, there are plenty of places within those artificial map lines that I’d never recommend anyone to go, but there is nothing wrong with the land itself, the place, the landscape or its features. Do I hate the Grand Canyon, the central plains, the Adirondacks, or the Jersey shore? Not in the slightest. There are some southeastern swamp areas I wouldn’t recommend, but that doesn’t mean I hate those places any more than I could hate the moon.

• “America” the people — First of all, I don’t know these people. Sweeping generalizations about “a people” are often wrong and sometimes used to make the most horrifying collective judgements. As with any set, there are some people within the “American” boundaries who are good and some who are evil, some who are thoughtful and some who are mindless, some who are kind and some who are cruel. I can’t hate the “American people” any more than I can hate the “Congolese people” or the “Finnish people”. Mashing large numbers of human beings into collectives in order to pass judgement on them is ultimately a futile exercise.

• “America” the ideal — Ah, now we’re getting closer. America has a great mythology attached to it. A nation of migrants fleeing downtrodden lives in the old world settle a new, vast and fertile territory, bringing with them the finest ideals of liberal society and a vision of a bright tomorrow, and eventually giving birth to a society of freedom and prosperity. Gosh that sounds great, until you look at the history. The ideal is beautiful. Waving the ideal around today as some sort of excuse for what America has become is rank hypocrisy. And I really hate hypocrisy.

• “America” the historical national entity — From the extermination of native tribes through slavery, the “Civil” War, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, all the other bogus wars of the 20th century, the War on (Some) Drugs, Jim Crow apartheid, the US-led global abandonment of sound money in favor of fiat currency and predatory central bankers, McCarthyism, New Deal socialism and the entire narrative of American exceptionalism up to the present three wars (Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia) and the endless bullying of the American state on the world stage, I hate America.

• “America” the system of government — “Democracy, hooray!” This one’s easy; I hate all existing systems of government.

• “America” the state, comprised of people currently running around in clown suits, their masters in the political class, the plutocrats who own the political class, plus the bureaucracy and the shareholders, employees and managers of all those corporations that exist for little reason other than to serve the aforementioned filth — Well, let’s just say I won’t miss you when you’re gone.

So, am I anti-American? Yes and no. On balance, and for the sake of argument, let’s say yes, yes I am anti-American. And I believe my heart — and my hate — are in the right place.

Lack of bank note paper threatens Zimbabwe economy

The country, already suffering hyperinflation, is on the brink of financial collapse, analysts say.

HARARE, ZIMBABWE — It has come to this: Zimbabwe is about to run out of the paper to print money on.

Fidelity Printers & Refiners, the state-owned company that tirelessly churns out bank notes for the Robert Mugabe regime, was thrown into a crisis early this month after a German company stopped supplying bank note paper because of concerns over Zimbabwe’s recent violent presidential election, widely seen as fraudulent by international observers.

The printing operation drastically slowed. Two-thirds of the 1,000-strong workforce was ordered to go on leave, and two of the three money-printing shifts were canceled.

The result on the streets was an immediate cash crunch.

“If you think this currency shortage is bad, wait two weeks. By then it will be a disaster,” said a senior Fidelity staffer, who spoke to The Times on condition of anonymity because he would face dismissal and possible violence for talking to a Western journalist. The paper will run out in two weeks, he said.

The Zimbabwe dollar (Z$) has the dubious honor of being the world’s current Least Valued Currency Unit, currently over Z$200 billion per weakened, flailing US$, and with an exchange rate rising at billions per day.

Folks must be looking back fondly to just a few months ago when a beer went for a very reasonable Z$95.6 million…

As usual in the tame media, the timid approach to the cause of the phenomenon is buried at the end:

Everyone at Fidelity Printers knows the money printing is propping up Mugabe, the staffer said.

People read this, and think that inflation is some sort of natural disaster, like a tornado or earthquake, something that just “happens” to an economy. It is not. The money isn’t “propping up” Mugabe, it’s a symptom of Mugabe and his cronies stealing as much of the economy as they can get their hands on.

I could go on, but I don’t really expect anything more from the LA Times.

From The Guardian:

Slovaks open probe over possible euro leak-paper

BRATISLAVA, June 17 (Reuters) – The Slovak central bank (NBS) is investigating a suspected leak of information after suspicious deals took place before Slovakia revalued the crown’s euro parity peg last month, the daily Sme reported on Tuesday.

Slovakia revalued the central parity within the euro zone waiting room, the Exchange Rate Mechanism 2, by 15 percent to 30.1260 per euro on May 28, following rapid appreciation in the crown.

The unit jumped sharply in the hours before the revaluation. Dealers said players not usually active in the market had bought 500 million euros’ ($768 million) worth of the currency before the official release of the news, SME reported.

The paper quoted NBS spokeswoman Jana Kovacova as saying the bank was investigating a possible violation of a law on the handling of confidential information. Officials from the bank were not immediately available for comment.

Me, I’m off to go jack up the rates I charge to translation agencies now, so they can’t jail me later.

From The Slovak Spectator:

Put up prices: go to prison

Businesspeople may face jail for euro price hikes under planned law

9 Jun 2008

UNJUSTIFIED price hikes prior to the adoption of the euro as Slovakia’s currency might result in businesspeople being sent to jail if a government plan to protect citizens from pre-euro price inflation becomes law.

[...]

Children branded by their new currency masters

The revision, which would impose a prison sentence on anyone who violates price discipline rules, would become valid in September.

Prime Minister Robert Fico described the law as a tool to penalise those who plan to make a fortune at the expense of others during the euro-switch.

“If someone is such a crook that they elevate prices only to become rich at the expense of someone else, the penal code will be applied,” Fico told a press conference on June 4.

[...]

Judging by details available so far, it seems that any citizen who feels they have suffered from an unjustified price increase will be able to report the business concerned to the police.

[...]

The revision indicates a lack of understanding of the basic principles of the market economy, where the optimal price is generated based on demand and supply, said the executive director of the Slovak Business Alliance, Robert Kičina.

“The freedom to set prices is a basic right of businesses operating in a competitive environment, and price changes are not a reason for criminal proceedings,” Kičina told The Slovak Spectator.

Richard Ďurana, director of the economic think-tank INESS, agrees that such legislation has no place in market economy. “It certainly won’t help businesses if the prime minister flatly throws them into the same group as criminals,” Ďurana told The Slovak Spectator.

[...]

“Instead of explaining the advantages of the euro, the government is evoking an unjustified suspicion among people that businesses want to use the switch to the euro to elevate prices,” Kičina said. “The revision criminalises the business environment.”

The best price regulator is competition and a watchful customer, say business professionals.
Lifting prices above the optimal level is disadvantageous for businesses because sales drop, Kičina said, adding that if prices fall beneath the optimal level consumers also lose out because production falls.

An important pre-condition for a functioning market is free access, so that if a business elevates prices in an unjustified way alert competitors can immediately enter the market and compete with lower prices, Ďurana said.

“The solution is to erase regulations, not to create more,” Ďurana said.

Neither Ďurana nor Kičina expect businesses to use the euro-switch to push up their prices to any great extent.

“If there was currently room to inflate prices, businesses would increase their prices today and would not wait for the euro,” Kičina said.

No country entering the eurozone before now has implemented criminal penalties for raising prices. However, in Slovenia businesses and the government signed an agreement about not elevating prices before the euro’s adoption, in order for the country to be able to meet the inflation criterion, said Kičina.

“The moment the term of the agreement expired, prices jumped and Slovenia is now struggling with the highest inflation within the eurozone,” Kičina concluded.

According to Ďurana, Malta installed a tough regime of price controls and a system of reporting price increases, with the added pressure of financial penalties.

“Such artificial intervention in prices meant that once regulation ended, inflation increased rapidly from 0.9 to about 4.5 percent,” said Ďurana.

Related: Police to pursue pricing

The head of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, Richard W. Fisher recently spoke in front of the Commonwealth Club of California. In his speech at the club, Fisher remarked that the unfunded liabilities from Medicare and Social Security adds up to $99.2 trillion. Assuming Fisher’s figures are accurate, this country cannot possibly pay off the debt and fund these unfunded liabilities from the Medicare and Social Security programs. The official government debt is approaching $10 trillion and combine that with these unfunded liabilities and it is obvious that this country is broke. It is broke because of this phony fiat currency system that allows the Federal Reserve a private central bank to print money out of thin air with little to no oversight. It is insane that a private institution is allowed to maintain a money monopoly by creating credit out of thin air when the government can do the same thing without paying interest.

We hear ya, Lee.

Anyway, when’s the next American Idol on?