LA 시사논평 / 최재형, 내각제 개헌 검토설 / 이재명-이준석의 기본소득, 이렇게 나라 망친다 (생방송 6. 23. 2021) https://youtu.be/FdSoNussw4c ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 정완진TV] 한국은행 '섬뜩한 경고'..."금융위기 터진다?"~~[멋진아재TV] https://youtu.be/OiQFe7UyOCo ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 실시간] SK본사 앞 - 대한민국 통신주권 되찾기! 중공 공산당과 인민군의 앞잡이와 개노릇을 하는 화웨이 장비를 즉각 제거하라! 자유우파정권 K리퍼블릭 K파티 https://youtu.be/0rO__rCfqus --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- “호주 본보기 삼은 中…스스로 호주만한 구덩이 파고 빠진 격”     중국과 호주의 외교적 갈등이 깊어지는 가운데, 중국이 호주를 본보기로 삼아 경제적 불이익을 주려 하지만, 실효를 내지 못하고 있으며 오히려 다른 국가들에게 ‘믿을 수 없는 나라’라는 인상만 주고 있다는 분석이 나왔다. 미국 허드슨 연구소 선임연구원 존 리 박사는 최근 미 의회 전문지 더힐(The Hill)에 보낸 기고문에서 “현재 중국은 스스로 호주만한 구덩이를 파고 있다”면서 “중국은 호주를 상대로 한 압박에 실패했을 뿐만 아니라 스스로 판 구덩이에 빠졌다”고 주장했다. [출처] 에포크타임스 한글판 - Kr.TheEpochTimes.com ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 접종 후 사망 신고는 누적 309명이다. 이 가운데 화이자 백신 접종자가 179명, 아스트라제네카 백신 접종자가 129명, 얀센 백신 접종자가 1명이다. 다른 증상으로 먼저 신고됐다가 상태가 악화해 사망한 사례까지 모두 포함하면 사망자는 총 417명이다. 연합뉴스 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 트럼프 , "바이든의 행정명령은 미국의 자살" / 지피지기 https://youtu.be/co32xp7ISRU --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Martin Rees and Steven Pinker: Wagering on catastrophe Four years ago these two eminent scientists bet on the likelihood of a man-made global biological disaster. Is it time to decide a winner? BY MARTIN REES AND STEVEN PINKER 4년전 천체물리학자 리스와 스티븐 핑커는 인위적이고 전세계적인 생물학적 재앙이 있을 것인지를 놓고 내기를 걸었다. 그 내기의 승리자는 아마 리스인 듯 하다. 리스 --- 생물학적 재앙이 있을 것이다. 핑커 --- 없을 것이다. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Covid Lockdowns Showed Us How Dangerous Social Engineers Have Become Birsen Filip It's fairly easy to destroy the spontaneously created institutions and groups that make up a well-functioning society. But it is nearly impossible to rebuild them once they're destroyed by central planners. 우한 폐렴으로 인해 사회 공학이 얼마나 위험한 지경에 와 있는지 알게 되었다. 사회에서 자생적으로 생성된 제도와 집단을 파괴하기는 쉽지만, 일단 중앙 계획가들에 의해 파괴된 제도와 집단을 복구하기는 거의 불가능하다. The Covid Lockdowns Showed Us How Dangerous Social Engineers Have Become Birsen Filip Since the onset of the covid-19 pandemic, governments around the world, along with a handful of unelected medical experts, have been behaving as though they are the social engineers of totalitarian regimes (e.g., fascism, Nazism, and communism). To be more precise, this select group of political leaders and medical experts have upended economies, as well as the lives of billions of ordinary people, by implementing extremely coercive and restrictive lockdowns and physical distancing measures for the stated purpose of bringing the pandemic under control and preventing future outbreaks. Specific measures have included curfews; police patrols on the streets; the compulsory closure of businesses deemed nonessential, as well as workplaces, schools, and institutions of higher education; the banning of social gatherings; the cancelation of sporting and cultural events; the suspension of religious services; and restrictions on personal movement and interactions at the local, national, and international levels. In many parts of the world, people have been subjected to mandatory stay-at-home orders, requiring them to spend most of the day confined and isolated in their homes. Lockdown measures have also been used to prohibit people from engaging in public protests and freely expressing their opinions, as failure to comply with limits on social gatherings has led to people being arrested, detained, and fined. It has also not been uncommon to see excessive police force being used to enforce lockdowns and curfews, and to disperse protests against unreasonable restrictions. Some governments have also set up detention centers for international travelers entering into their countries, where they are forced to quarantine at their own expense while they wait for the results of their covid-19 tests. Shockingly, in early June 2021, the provincial government in Ontario, Canada, went so far as to announce that residents in long-term care homes would soon be permitted to engage in “close physical contact, including handholding” and “brief hugs” with visitors when both parties are fully immunized. Unfortunately, instead of criticizing this state of affairs, the mainstream media and major social media platforms are fully on board. They have turned out to be willing collaborators of the governments in these matters by glorifying their oppressive and punitive measures, censuring critical viewpoints, and fostering a culture of surveillance, all while spreading fear. They have also been ceaselessly promoting the injection of experimental vaccines as the only solution that will bring totalitarian lockdown measures to an end. If Karl Popper and Friedrich Hayek had witnessed the type of central planning that has taken place since the beginning of the pandemic, they would have called it “holistic social engineering.” They were convinced that supporters of the concept of a social engineer sought to extend “the power of the State” in controlling and reshaping society as a whole in accordance with their own ideals, goals, and wills.1 According to Popper, social engineers believe that they can diagnose the goals and needs of society, and then implement a strategy to achieve them through large-scale planning.2 However, such an undertaking would require social engineers to centrally coordinate the activities of millions of people by replacing the wills and ends of those individuals with their own. Meanwhile, Hayek stated that the best way to make everybody serve the ends of the social engineers is to make everybody believe in those ends. To make a totalitarian system function efficiently it is not enough that everybody should be forced to work for the same ends. It is essential that the people should come to regard them as their own ends. Although the beliefs must be chosen for the people and imposed upon them, they must become their beliefs, a generally accepted creed which makes the individuals as far as possible act spontaneously in the way the planner wants. If the feeling of oppression in totalitarian countries is in general much less acute than most people in liberal countries imagine, this is because the totalitarian governments succeed to a high degree in making people think as they want them to.3 Social engineers of the pandemic have been largely successful in convincing the masses that the oppressive lockdown measures that they are being forced to endure are ultimately in the best interests of society as a whole. In many instances, they have managed to make many people believe that the goals of the lockdowns are in fact their own goals. At the same time, social engineers have been discouraging “criticism,” as they do not “easily hear of complaints concerning the measures” that they have instituted.4 Accordingly, the critical views put forth by some journalists, activists, dissenters, legal experts, medical professionals, and anybody else who cares about freedom, human rights violations, and the common good have been systematically silenced. Popper explained that the social engineer: will have to be deaf to many complaints; in fact, it will be part of his business to suppress unreasonable objections. (He will say, like Lenin, “You can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs.”) But with it, he must invariably suppress reasonable criticism also.5 After nearly a year and a half of antiliberal, undemocratic, unethical, antiscientific, ahistorical, and oppressive governmental measures, while denying billions of people their basic human rights, freedom, and sovereignty, social and economic life has essentially been completely crippled in many countries and regions. Nonetheless, social engineers of the pandemic period have treated critics and complaints as “a blemish,” proof of irrationality, and violations of the common good.6 Hayek and Popper incessantly warned about the form of central planning that we are currently being subjected to, which has been used by numerous dictators and tyrants such as Hitler, Stalin, and Pol Pot. They specifically argued that it would not only lead societies down “the road to serfdom,” but also cause irreversible, large-scale social and economic damage. In fact, since the lockdowns began, general freedom (e.g., freedom of speech, freedom of expression, freedom of religion, freedom of assembly, freedom of the press, and intellectual freedom), negative freedom (i.e., freedom from coercion), positive freedom (i.e., freedom of self-development), subjective freedom (i.e., freedom to act based on one’s own will and views), objective freedom (i.e., freedom of “being with other”), and economic freedom (e.g., freedom to earn one’s living, to produce, to buy, to sell, etc.) have been all violated to some extent. Furthermore, hundreds of millions of people have lost their jobs or endured income reductions, many small and medium-sized companies have gone bankrupt, unemployment rates have increased across major economies, and most countries have gone into recession. Moreover, the lockdowns have also had a number of unintended social and health consequences, including increases in domestic violence to unprecedented levels, in the form of both physical and emotional abuse; a significant rise in substance abuse and related deaths (i.e., overdoses); worsening mental health problems leading to depression and suicides; isolation and antisocial lifestyles and behavior, particularly in children; physical inactivity and weight gain; and, the cancellation or delay of medical procedures, surgeries, and consultations. The unexpected destructive consequences of the totalitarian lockdown measures will undoubtedly be felt for decades to come. Hayek and Popper would not have been surprised that the lockdown measures generated so many adverse impacts on people, the economy, and society. In fact, they warned that social engineering could never successfully achieve its predetermined goals and ends in the real world for two main reasons: the limited and dispersed nature of human knowledge and the spontaneous forces of society. Based on the concept of dispersed knowledge, “we know little of the particular facts to which the whole of social activity continuously adjusts itself in order to provide what we have learned to expect. We know even less of the forces which bring about this adjustment by appropriately coordinating individual activity.”7 Hayek and Popper would have argued that social engineers of the pandemic could not realistically possess the type and the abundance of knowledge needed to plan such large-scale oppressive lockdowns. According to them, by ignoring the dispersed nature of human knowledge, social engineers falsely believed that they could possess all of the knowledge required to redesign an entire society while also having complete control over all efforts directed toward the achievement of teleologically evaluated goals. In fact, Hayek and Popper concluded that it was impossible to exercise complete control over society via social engineering because the limitations of human knowledge meant that nobody could foresee all of the possible consequences of human actions, which is necessary if common goals are to be achieved. These sentiments apply to contemporary social engineers of the pandemic, and could explain why they were unable to accurately predict the consequences of many of the oppressive policies and measures that were intended to mitigate the spread and impacts of covid-19. Popper and Hayek argued that even if it were hypothetically possible for a social engineer to possess all the knowledge needed to centrally plan and organize an entire society, they would still be unable to attain their teleologically evaluated goals in the manner they envisioned on account of the spontaneous forces of society, which represent the second main obstacle to the success of large-scale central planning. The spontaneous forces of society would make it impossible to effectively collect detailed information about the constantly changing activities, private interests, particular circumstances, complex relationships, and preferences of millions of people. The unexpected and unplanned outcomes associated with the spontaneous forces of society mean that the original plans of any social engineer will end in failure, because “the real outcome will always be very different from the rational construction” of the social engineer. In order to realize their predetermined goals, social engineers would be forced to continuously modify and change their plans, while using their exclusive power to coerce individuals for the purpose of imposing increasingly restrictive measures. That is to say, they would need to constantly interfere in the choices that individuals make without having to obtain any input from them. Hayek warned that the coercive measures employed by social engineers could “destroy those spontaneous forces which have made advance” and progress possible across history, and inevitably result in “a stagnation of thought and a decline of reason.”8 He wanted people to understand that while “it may not be difficult to destroy the spontaneous formations which are the indispensable bases of a free civilization, it may be beyond our power deliberately to reconstruct such a civilization once these foundations are destroyed.”9 This is why Popper called social engineering the “greatest and most urgent evil of society.”10 According to him, “even with the best intentions of making heaven on earth it only succeeds in making it hell—that hell which man alone prepares for his fellow-men.”11 1.Birsen Filip, "Hayek and Popper on Piecemeal Engineering and Ordo-liberalism," in Robert Leeson, ed., Hayek: A Collaborative Biography: Part XIV: Liberalism in the Classical Tradition: Orwell, Popper, Humboldt and Polanyi (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), p. 244. 2.K.R. Popper, The Poverty of Historicism (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1960). 3.F.A. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom: Texts and Documents, ed. Bruce Caldwell, vol. 2 of The Collected Works of F.A. Hayek, ed. Bruce Caldwell (1944; repr., Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), p. 157. 4.Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies (1945; repr., London: Routledge, 2011), p. 149. 5.Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies, p. 150. 6.F.A. Hayek, The Counter Revolution of Science: Studies on the Abuse of Reason (1952; repr., Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Press, 1979), p. 153. 7.F.A. Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty, ed. Ronald Hamowy, vol. 17 of The Complete Works of F.A. Hayek (1960; repr. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011), p. 76. 8.Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty, p. 90. 9.F.A. Hayek, Individualism and Economic Order (1948; repr., Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958), p. 25. 10.Popper, The Poverty of Historicism, p. 84. 11.Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies, p. 157. Author: Birsen Filip Birsen Filip holds a Ph.D. in philosophy and master’s degrees in economics and philosophy. She has published numerous articles and chapters on a range of topics, including political philosophy, geo-politics, and the history of economic thought, with a focus on the Austrian School of Economics and the German Historical School of Economics. She is also the author of The Rise of Neo-liberalism and the Decline of Freedom (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020). ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 법정 화폐는 어떻게 우리의 문화를 변화시키는가 건전한 화폐는 정부의 전제적 폭력에 대항해 시민들의 자유를 지키기 위한 도구로 만들어졌고, 이 사실을 알아야만 건전한 화폐의 중요성을 이해할 수 있다. 계속적인 인플레 상황에서 화폐를 사용하게 되면 사람들은 근시안적으로 바뀌게 되고, 야생의 동물들처럼 변한다. 동물들이 당장 내일의 먹이를 걱정하듯이, 인간들은 단기적인 목표만을 갖게 되고, 장기적으로 생각하고 계획하지 못한다. 법정 화폐는 정부를 더 크고 중앙 집권적으로 만든다. 건전한 화폐에서는 가능하지 않던 정부 프로그램이 법정 화폐로는 가능해지기 때문이다. How Fiat Money Changes Culture Stephan Livera Can the type of money used change the culture of a society? This might seem like an absurd proposition, but it is supported by the arguments of proponents of the Austrian school of economics. First, let’s contextualize the importance of sound money as opposed to fiat money. Mises notes in The Theory of Money and Credit: “It is impossible to grasp the meaning of the idea of sound money if one does not realize that it was devised as an instrument for the protection of civil liberties against despotic inroads on the part of governments.“ Fiat money has never arisen through purely voluntary market actions. It has always been coercively imposed via interventions such as legal tender laws, capital gains tax laws, central banking, laws permitting fractional reserve banking, government bailout guarantees, etc. This causes a degeneration in the quality of money used by society. But are there cultural consequences of this? To see the cultural consequences, we must first understand the pivotal role money and prices play in coordinating production across society. Entrepreneurs must act under uncertainty to gather the required resources to offer their goods and services. And yet money, their unit of account, for measuring profit and loss, is being manipulated by the government. Money is created as new loans are issued by commercial and retail banks, and the first recipients of that money benefit at the expense of late recipients. Using money with continual inflation encourages short termism and haste. We live more like animals in the wild. Animals in the wild care mostly about their next meal, rather than thinking, planning, and building for the long term as humans can do when we’re at our best. Consider the counterfactual world of living under sound money, chosen by the market. In this world, how does the state fund large programs? It must openly tax citizens, and for this, politicians pay a high price in lost popularity, and risk losing their next election. Instead of explicit taxation, politicians inside the government will prefer to use more hidden forms of funding for their programs. In order to do this, they must first remove the check of sound money. Going one step further, the creation and enforcement of fiat money enables larger and more centralized government. Large government programs become possible that were not possible or sustainable under a market-chosen, sound money standard. Consider the impact of profligate spending under a market-chosen monetary standard. In the past, this meant that governments spending big and living large were subject to net gold outflows to other countries. While many like to think of government programs and welfare statism as a "safety net" for society, consider that these programs fundamentally drive the wrong behaviors. Where historically, non-government-based mutual-aid societies promoted a culture of self-reliance and thrift, government welfare states promote the opposite, the end result being that government programs remove the safeguards that a market society would have. In this way, fiat money frees people from the prior "restraints" of polite society, with expectations for productive and civil behavior broken. Freed of prior constraints that families, religion, and communities used to impose, people often turn to more short-term gratification. They may engage in more reckless behavior that previously would have had economic consequences, such as the cost of raising children. Fiat inflation forces people to invest in just about anything rather than save in fiat cash, driving more money and debt as leverage through the financial services sector than otherwise would be the case. With cheap fiat debt, governments may more cheaply engage in warfare or sustain warfare for longer than they otherwise could have. Cheap fiat debt essentially provides the government with command over more of society’s resources than it otherwise would have had. For readers interested in learning more, I highly recommend reading Jörg Guido Hülsmann’s The Ethics of Money Production, and watching his lecture here on the Mises Institute YouTube channel. How could this situation be rectified? If the world were to transition back to market-chosen money, such as gold or bitcoin, we would see the discipline of the free market reassert itself. Until then, let’s recognize the ways that society and culture have been greatly influenced by government fiat money. Stephan Livera (@stephanlivera) is an Austro-libertarian writer and host of the Stephan Livera Podcast. -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------