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[TOP SECRET] 김정은, 중국의 예속국 되기를 결심했다!
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헌법과 국민 주권을 넘어선 CCP와 문정권, 사상적 근거를 제공하는 북경대 Jiang Shigong (주권을 ‘당’에 부여하는 CCP와 문정권)
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과천선관위가 몰래 파쇄해서 버린 투표용지가
고물상에서 대량으로 발견됨
근데
저걸 왜 경찰이 지키고 있노? ㅆ바꺼
그와중억
막짤에 자랑스런 우리의 태극기 ㅋㅋ
고물상 사장님 애국우파였노?
애국우파는 어디에도 없고 어디에나 있다
이거 ㅍㅌ아니겠노? ㅋ / 일베
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서초동 부정선거 항의 집회, 일베 사진
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몇년 후에는 코미디 소재가 되겠지?
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[정완진TV] 김광두 '무서운 경고'...한국 '베네수엘라' 된다?~~**[멋진아재TV]
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Big time tommy vibe checks
탈레브에 따르면, 소크라테스가 오늘날 살아 있다면 바로 이 사람과 유사할 거라고 함.
오늘의 명언과 같은 말을 한 마디씩 해주는데, 내용도 괜찮다.
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제로 금리의 사회적 결과
일본의 기이한 문화의 뒤에는 경제적 원인이 있다. 그것은 제로 또는 마이너스 금리이다.
일본은 1990년대에 저금리 정책을 시작한 이래로 30여 년이 지난 지금까지 제로 금리 함정에 빠져 있다.
혁신은 수년이 지난 후에야 보상을 받기 때문에, 만일 제로 금리가 들어선다면 혁신의 동력을 크게 약화시키게 된다.
제로 금리로 인해 정체된 사회 속에서, 청년들은 자본주의를 탓하거나 아니면 시위로 그들의 분노와 분만을 분출한다.
The Social Consequences of Zero Interest Rates
Pascal Hügli
Anyone who has ever been to Japan knows: Japan is special. The country has many strange habits. The Japanese culture is simply different and many peculiarities are hardly understood in the West.
But it's not only the old established traditions that are foreign to us Westerners. Just as disturbing are social developments such as the increasing tendency of Japanese people to overwork, parasite singles who isolate themselves, or the existence of platonic relationships in which people are paid to hold hands. All of these phenomena are indeed odd and are generally attributed to the peculiar Japanese culture. However, few people are aware that there is probably a deeper reason for these curiosities, namely an economic one: zero and negative interest.
What You See and What You Do Not See
Generally speaking, Japan is still considered not to be greatly affected by its decades-long zero interest policy. As we discussed in our German webinar with Professor Gunther Schnabl on Japanization in Europe, by taking a closer look, one does indeed see deteriorating phenomena in Japan.
Certainly, the land of the rising sun is still a rich country today. However, as the French economist Frederic Bastiat already knew, for an overall assessment it is not only what you see but also what you do not see that is relevant. So the question is, where would Japan be today without zero interest rates?
In fact, Japan has lost one thing above all in recent decades: economic power and economic culture. The latter has not so much been lost as it has changed dramatically. In the 1960s to 1980s, Japan caught up economically with the Western world. The economic growth of this period was to go down in the history books as Japan's postwar economic miracle.
During this phase, Japanese companies in particular became increasingly feared international competitors. They knew how to take over key technologies from abroad, improve them continuously, and conquer international market share step by step.
Due to this work philosophy of continuous improvement, known in Japanese as kaizen, companies such as Sony, Panasonic, Toyota, or Mitsubishi were soon feared worldwide. While it was previously the Japanese companies that copied the West, the West soon felt the need to emulate Japanese companies, given the innovative creativity that these large companies displayed.
Japanese innovation
But then, all of a sudden, things turned out differently, to the worse for Japan. At the beginning of the 1990s, interest rate policy in Japan increasingly moved toward the zero lower bound. Three decades later, the country is still stuck in a zero interest rate trap and the magic and innovative power of Japanese companies has diminished considerably. In the international context, they can hardly keep up with American or Chinese counterparts, or at least they are no longer as feared as they used to be.
Shifting Preferences
Innovation ultimately has a lot to do with time preference in economic terms. Real innovations often only pay off years later, which is why innovative companies have to be prepared for a long haul. Zero interest rates counteract the power of innovation, because they almost always go hand in hand with higher time preference. The fact that Japanese companies are hardly feared by global competition today is probably largely due, albeit not monocausally, to Japan's long-standing zero interest rates.
Today, people generally speak of the lost decades that Japanese companies have fallen victim to. The opportunity costs of this zero interest rate policy are also reflected in the dwindling innovative strength and productivity. It is hard to imagine where Japan would be today if the Japanese economy had been spared the burden of zero and negative interest rates.
Instead, Japan's "innovations" seem to be located in consumer-oriented, rather bizarre fields today. The platonic relationship offers are only one "invention." Today Japan is also a pioneer in dolls, which Japanese men mainly use as sex dolls but also as relationship substitutes. Also, an "emerging" market in renting a substitute father or friend can be found in Japan. If you do not want to go out alone, you can rent a companion. Or you can rent a whole family to be able to fake enough visitors at your personal graduation party.
Such "market offers" are ultimately an expression of the current market situation in Japan, which has been geared toward consumption and short-termism for decades due to zero interest rates. It is only logical for entrepreneurs to adjust their offers accordingly. This consumer-oriented "instant attitude" is also reflected in the large number of vending machines that exist in Japan. Today, the country has the highest density of these devices; there is one vending machine for every twenty-three people.
Society Suffers
The zero and negative interest rates have not only paralyzed the innovative power of Japanese companies, but in the same breath they have also affected the working population. In reference to the lost decades, one also speaks of Japan's lost generation.
Younger people in particular have been hit the hardest. As recently as 1992, 80 percent of young Japanese workers had a regular job. In 2006, half of all young workers were in part-time jobs with lower wage levels. Only 2 percent of nonregular workers in Japan move to regular work each year. Most of today's young workers are unlikely to find a regular job. Haken is the term used in Japan for these part-time jobs.
Japanese part-time employment jobs
Quite a few young people have therefore completely cut themselves off from the world of work, an inglorious trend known in Japan under another popular term called hikikomori. At the same time, people are withdrawing more and more from civil society and the public sphere into their own four walls. Unofficial speculations suggest that this phenomenon, described as cocooning, now affects up to 10 million Japanese.
So while some Japanese are retreating, others are working themselves to death. According to the Organisation for Econommic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Japanese workers sleep less than their colleagues in other Western economies, averaging 442 minutes per twenty-four hours. In the USA, for example, this average is 528 minutes.
A sad example was set by the young Japanese woman Matsuri Takahashi, who took her own life at the age of twenty-four and worked well over a hundred hours a week for months before her death. She thus became the face of this phenomenon known as karoshi.
Japanese salary growth jobs employment
Here in the West all of these phenomena, above all karoshi, are justifiably met with great incomprehension. Nobody really wants to or can understand that in Japan no one would really do anything against this. But again, people here in the Western world generally forget that these problems have precisely the deeper root described in this article.
Zero and negative interest rates are a reality in Europe and will soon be in the US as well. It should not be expected that we will necessarily be immune to simlar developments to those in Japan. In the West, the first "signs of resignation" are beginning to appear, particularly among millennials and younger generations. A growing proportion of them seems to be subconsciously realizing that they have to adjust to an increasingly stagnant life.
The anger and frustration are then directed either at the condemned turbocapitalism, against which more and more people take to the streets in demonstrations. Or people give themselves over to various new forms of nihilism, such as the "Tide Pod Challenge," popular a few years ago. This consisted of swallowing detergent pods and resulted in a few lost lives, at least in the US.
If these are not warning signs, what is? Strange trends are happening in Japan, and they are about to increasingly happen in Europe and the US. As a matter of fact, these consequences of the zero and negative interest rate policy of today will have to be discussed more intensively, or else people's growing hatred of people will be directed at the wrong culprits. In addition to the economic consequences, the social consequences must be taken into account, as these often weigh more heavily in the long term.
Author:
Pascal Hügli
Pascal Hügli is the chief research officer at Schlossberg&Co, a Swiss asset manager focused on protecting its clients' wealth from unprecedented and increasing monetary socialism around the globe.
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헌법은 실패했다. 현재 헌법은 연방정부의 권력을 제어하는데 아무 힘도 발휘하지 못하고 있다.
유일한 해결책은 자유주의 또는 고전적 자유주의라 불리는 철학을 기초부터 다시 세우는 것이다.
The Constitution Failed
Ryan McMaken
Contrary to a certain nostalgic nationalist myth that still endures, the US Constitution as first conceived was never intended to limit government power. The primary purpose of the Convention of 1787 was to increase federal power, as the older constitution of 1776 (i.e., the "Articles of Confederation") was regarded by centralizers as being too "weak." The older constitution was built on a consensus model, and required acquiescence from a supermajority of member states to do much. The overwhelming preponderance of government power lay with the states themselves, which were in their own right too weak to demand much from their citizens.
Nonetheless, this loose union of states had functioned well enough. The states, working in voluntary union, had fought off the most powerful empire of the 18th century during the Revolution. The Massachusetts state militia had put down Shays' rebellion without any federal help. Americans, for the most part were more free and better fed than the populations of Europe, the wealthiest region of the world. Thanks to the liberal ideology spread by the Revolution, slavery was in decline nationwide. Indentured servitude was on the way out. The restrictive feudalism of old was disappearing.
Yet, the wealthy elite, like Hamilton and Washington and Madison (in his counter-revolutionary phase) wanted something else. They wanted a federal system that could force payment of federal taxes. They wanted a bigger navy. They wanted a federal army that could march into the interior and threaten farmers with destruction, as Washington did during the Whiskey Rebellion. In short, they wanted a Constitution that would centralize power, and grow it.
It was the opponents of these "Federalists" who demanded the only part of the constitution that ever actually limited power. The anti-federalists demanded amendments that would protect local communities from federal power. They eventually got their Bill of Rights, but of course the federal government has always sought to interpret the Bill's amendments in a way that expands federal power. Or, the federal government just ignores it altogether.
But let's say for the sake or argument that the Bill of Rights and the constitution are one in the same. and the purpose of the constitution is to limit the power of the state. By this standard, it is clear the constitution has failed.
For evidence we need only look around us. Virtually nowhere do we find the constitution places any meaningful obstacles in the way of federal power.
Obamacare, for instance, requires that Americans purchase health insurance, or be punished with an additional tax. Where does the constitution provide the federal government with the power to coerce people into purchasing certain products? Nowhere. Yet the Supreme Court has declared this constitutional.
The PATRIOT Act, of course, enables the federal government to freely spy on countless Americans with no probable cause. The accused are not permitted to defend themselves in open court, for reasons of "national security." The privacy of Americans has been effectively abolished. The US Constitution does not prevent this in any way.
And then there is the federal War on Drugs. Once upon a time, it was accepted as common knowledge that the federal government did not have the power to regulate intoxicating substances. This is why it was necessary to pass a new constitutional amendment allowing for alcohol prohibition. Then that amendment was repealed. Later, federal judges and politicians decided that the meaning of the constitution had mysteriously changed to now allow for the federal government to dictate what we all could smoke or eat, after all.
The same was once true of immigration policy. Until the 1880s, few even tried to assert that the federal government could close borders or round people up and deport them. It was accepted the constitution made this a state and local matter. And then, the feds changed their mind, and what was one minute unconstitutional was constitutional the next. The same thing happened with federal legislation on abortion.
In many cases, of course, these provisions that are apparently in violation of the Bill of Rights and Article I were justified on the grounds that they are "necessary."
And "necessity" overrules any concern for constitutionality virtually every time. It was "necessary" that federal spy agencies be able to monitor all our communications. Because of terrorism, you see. It was "necessary" to put Japanese-Americans in "internment" camps because it was "necessary." That, of course, was "constitutional" also. Only decades later, when it became politically expedient to do so, did the Supreme Court reverse itself and decide concentration camps are unconstitutional.
But the point has been made. If a future "emergency" requires that some other group of people — say, people who refuse "stay-at-home" orders or federally mandated vaccination be rounded up and incarcerated en masse, do not doubt this will be regarded as perfectly constitutional. If it is decided that federal agents be empowered to confiscate privately-held guns, there is no doubt a "public health crisis" or "emergency" will be cited to ensure this is deemed constitutional, too.
At this point, who would be naïve enough to think the federal government would limit itself from any "necessary" act just because it is unconstitutional?
Advocates for private gun ownership can chirp about how "the Second Amendment" protects them. But if a critical mass of politicians, pundits and voters decides the Second Amendment is null and void, the constitution will be interpreted as "necessity" dictates.
We're likely to see something similar with the First Amendment also. It appears to be only a matter of time until an alliance of Washington politicians and Supreme Court justices determine that speech opposing, say, gay marriage is "hate speech" and punishable by fines and incarceration.
And then, of course, there are the countless federal laws that control every aspect of everyday life from what one can buy or sell, whom one can hire, and with whom one may do business.
Are these powers listed under the "enumerated" powers of the constitution? Do they violate the Bill of Rights? Virtually no one cares. Which means it doesn't matter. It's constitutional if the politicians (which, of course, includes the lawyers in robes we call "judges") say so.
So, when it comes to the constitution's ability to restrain government power, the conclusion is obvious: that scrap of parchment is an obvious failure, and it is apparent the text of the document is insufficient to prevent interpretations of the text which empower the federal government rather than limit it. It is also apparent the public and their representatives are uninterested in limiting federal power. I claim no novelty in pointing this out, of course. More astute observers recognized the impotence and failure of the US constitution decades ago. As Murray Rothbard wrote in 1961:
From any libertarian, or even conservative, point of view, it has failed and failed abysmally; for let us never forget that every one of the despotic incursions on man’s rights in this century, before, during and after the New Deal, have received the official stamp of Constitutional blessing.
And before Rothbard, there was Lysander Spooner who noted:
the Constitution is no such instrument as it has generally been assumed to be; but that by false interpretations, and naked usurpations, the government has been made in practice a very widely, and almost wholly, different thing from what the Constitution itself purports to authorize. ... But whether the Constitution really be one thing, or another, this much is certain—that it has either authorized such a government as we have had, or has been powerless to prevent it. In either case, it is unfit to exist.
In other words, appealing to the text of the constitution to claim illegitimacy for the latest government power grab is pointless and irrelevant to the task of actually limiting the power of the state. The de facto status of the constitution is that it positively authorizes every new "despotic incursion" the federal government wishes to initiate.
In turn, everything the federal government wishes to do is ultimately constitutional. So long as the public tolerates it.
And it's this final piece of information that is the key to the puzzle. So long as the public tolerates it, it will be done. Words on parchment are useless in opposing this. The beliefs of the people who wrote the Bill of Rights — that is, a group of laissez-faire liberals from the late eighteenth century — mean nothing if the public doesn't agree with them. And virtually no American today agrees with the anti-federalists of old that the federal government must be kept limited, weakened, and confined to a small number of tasks. If no one agrees with the philosophy behind the Bill of Rights, few will care if its provisions are violated.
The only way forward at this point to to rebuild this philosophy — a philosophy we call liberalism or "classical" liberalism — from the ground up. This requires scholarship, activism, teaching, writing, debate — and time. Demanding obedience to a long-disregarded document does nothing. For far too long, the party of laissez faire and liberalism thought some documents from 200 years ago would protect them from a government run amok. They were wrong.
--->한국의 우파들이 해야 할 일도, 헌법을 철저하게 자유주의적 입장에서 다시 쓰는 것이다.
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