Here are some questions I asked myself? I wonder how other Americans answer them?

I ask myself What do I know about the ends and outs of politics in Russia or the Ukraine?
Almost nothing, I haven’t been focused on that part of the world.

What do I know about Vladimir Putin,
President or Russia? Just from observation, I believe he is the best politicians among world leaders today. But, other than that very little,.
What do know about Volodymyr Zelenskyy, president of the Ukraine?

Less even than I know about Putin other than he is said to be just as corrupt as Putin. I have no special information.
What do I know about NATO? NATO is a defense treaty but now days it is used as a tool to gain economic power for its members. What do I know about war in general?
Probably a little more than the average economist. I do know that wars are generally fought for economic reasons. Who is better off because we fought the Vietnam war?
Certainly not everyone on both sides including civilians.Who is better off because we fought the first war gulf? Perhaps rich Kuwaiti citizens. Other than that I don’t know much.

Who is better off because we fought the war in Afganistan? A lot of people were killed, but I can’t think of much we gained from it. Who is better off because we fought the 2nd Gulf war? Gosh that one caused a lot of havoc and still is. How many of these wars made the U.S.Citizens made Americans safer? None. How often do countries with failed economies with enormous debt , both public and private, start wars so as to not experience any reckoning.

The economy in the United State cannot be moved higher anymore with QE or any stimulus. Why not start a war, convert to a war economy for the duration and maintain GDP that way for a while? We had a war time economy during WWII. It performed a whole lot better than was the case during the 30s?
There is very high public support for the U.S. being involved in the Ukraine war, almost
universal at higher levels.

Gee, I really don’t know much do I.? How much do you know? I do know that I do not know. That makes me feel empowered, strangely. How is that? I know for sure don’t know enough to jump on a bandwagon with other Americans who support the Ukrainian side.
How about you? What do you know that I don’t know? How many of you trust everything you are told by our leaders? So, are you folks ready to fight?

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Sometimes the simplest explanation of
something can have a profound impact. Years
ago Milton Friedman came up with his four
ways to spend money.

These are,

Spend your own money on yourself. This
the most efficient and productive way to spending money. The buyer gets exactly what
he wants. In a free market system, thisapproach is very common.

Spend your own money on someone
else.  This is a very efficient way to spend money, but less so than number one
Spend someone else’s money on yourself. This approach is quite a bit less efficient than numbers 1 and 2. Continue reading →

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Back in the nineties I worked with blind people.
One of them, Bob Wiley played piano in a
band I put together. I got to know bob very
well. He was highly educated. We talked a lot
about communication between the blind and
folks with sight. Although Bob had been blind
since birth he had a complete understanding of
what sight accomplished. Bob was a clinical
psychologist. He understood that people
communicate with body language along with
speaking. Facial expressions are very telling
with respect to understanding another’s
intentions. Masks have been used throughout

history to hide one’s face and intentions.

Of the two masked men above, which is a greater threat or any threat at all? There
actually is nothing dishonest about armed robbery. Sure, it is highly immoral but the
robber is completely honest about his intentions. It is your money or your life. That is
easily communicated. It is understood that you don’t trust a man pointing a gun at you.

Lets look at the doctor. Perhaps if we could see his face, that might give us an idea about
what his intentions are. We can’t. do that. His facial expression is missing. Is the doctor
going to rob us? Back in the good ole’ days before political medicine took over the health
insurance industry it was widely accepted that about any doctor was trust worthy.

Today, a doctors primary job is to rob you. A doctor may not even get a cut of the bounty
which rises like cream to the healthcare industry where it is scarfed up by all top players
in the industry. You may get treated if you insist. But a doctor is prone to do what his job
is. His job is to mine the population for maladies that enhance the profits of our betters
at the top of the healthcare industry food chain. Finding an untreated diabetic is like
finding a nugget of gold. So is booking a colonoscopy.

Doctors are not prone to be thieves. Their job requires them to be. They steal on behalf of those who pay them. I will come right out and say it. Healthcare in the United States is owned and run by organized crime. How do I know this? The same way you can know it. Certainly no one in the big mob called and told me. Of course, the American mafia doesn’t call up strangers and tell them what they are doing either. The mob in New York relied on
skimming operations over and over.

Take a close look at the Affordable Care Act and and you will notice that it is a collection of corporate skimming operations. Ordinary citizens have no input in determining what the mob steals. The Affordable Care Act was passed with input only from lobbyist and politicians. There was no input from the public at all. The parallels are striking. What do you think? Perhaps it is best to wait for someone to tell you before rushing to judgement. If that is your approach, go ahead and good luck.

The mob took over the baking industry back in the seventies. The price of bread
skyrocket. The public reasoned. “well heck , bread is sure getting expensive. Ain’t it a
crying shame.” Healthcare prices started skyrocketing Just after the Affordable Care Act
was passed. How do Americans feel about it. They reason “well heck, healthcare is sure
getting expensive. Ain’t it a crying shame.” Any parallels there?

Theft by way of the healthcare industry is complicated. It takes some abstract an
complex reasoning to see it. It takes an army of newly licensed doctors to make
skimming operations work. Old doctors rather than participate have hit the bricks.
Frankly the new ones I have encountered give me the impression that medical school
has been seriously dumbed down. I have mentioned to a few doctors something I knew
by virtue of reading WebMd. I have gotten the stare of a deer in headlights. WebMd is
written at about the sixth grade level. I’ll tell you, that is not reassuring at all.

Doctors, I’ll tell you, we all get into circumstances in this economy that are less than
stellar. We all have to make decision based on the “its either them or us.” However, it is
best to do this as little as possible. Also, we all have to decide how low we are willing to
go. Everyone has a moral compass. Some are lower than others.

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Lets get something out of the way to start.

Doctors who practice medicine are not
overpaid. Based on their education, they make
no more money than those in other professions
that require the same number of years training.
There are doctors who make huge astronomical
amounts of money. These kinds do not practice
medicine. Doctors who work their way up the
corporate ladder do make millions per year.
They are not practicing medicine. Patients
contribute nothing to their incomes.
Physician’s pay makes up only a small portion
of a patient’s healthcare bill. If all patients had
to do is pay their doctors, they would all be doing back flips. Doctors get blamed by patients because doctors are the face of healthcare that patients see. So, they get blamed for what they have no control over. Continue reading →

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What is interesting about safety and and
security is that human beings will pay almost
any amount to avoid living in fear and feeling
vulnerable. They will pay as high a price for the
perception of safety and security as the real
thing. The difference is not easily discernible.
Does government provide safety and security?
It can and does sometimes but it is more likely
to provide the perception only. Who knows the
difference? It is the feeling that counts. Where
do they look to get it? They look in the same
place all animals look. That is the herd’s
leadership. It may be the head male in a pride
of lines, or the most powerful male water
buffalo. With human beings it is their
government. In any case, to the ordinary herd
members, the cost is staggering.

Here is the way it works with humans. Humans pay money but with every increment of
more safety and security they have to give up part of their freedom. For armed forces
they give up some but it is worth it? Every time more safety and security are opted for,
more freedom is given up. A guaranteed income takes away even more freedom. All of
this comes at a high monetary cost. Eventually folks want the guarantee that others
won’t call them names. That is the case today.

The price of safety and security is so high, it is very profitable to provide these things or
just their perception. Government agencies grow in size. As the agencies get large, those
which sell goods and services to them lobby government for more, more and more. This
is so profitable that techniques of scaring people into believing they are vulnerable
emerge. Folks get out their checkbooks.

Then the private sector gets involved. New services evolve to protect people from
everything from identity theft to home security. All kinds of adds that scare you start
appearing.

Feeling warm and cozy whether you are actually safe or not comes at a very high price.
One thing people are happy to give up is freedom. After all, what is freedom for other
than achieving safety and security. So you feel warm and cozy. Who needs freedom?
After all, isn’t feeling warm and cozy the goal anyway? Who needs freedom any more
after a big dose of feeling safe and secure.

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It is easy to notice that, not just with government, but in all aspects of their lives, people tend to end up having what is most important to them. Sometimes they end up having just that one thing and nothing
else.

If wealth is genuinely what a person wants,
especially if that want is out of proportion to
anything else, they are likely to have it, or at least end up with a higher than average income.

There is nothing magical about becoming wealthy. It takes a lot of sacrifice. To become wealthy requires, giving up many other things in life that are meaningful. . Be it love, free time, entertainment those things often must be left on the table.

Most people do not want to give these things up to the degree necessary to achieve great amounts of wealth. There is no problem with that. Wealth does not guarantee happiness. What about entertainment. If that is what people want, they end up being highly entertained. If alcohol is the most important thing, folks may end up with one last fine fifth of fine Tennessee whisky and nothing else besides liver failure. To some, free time is what matters, and in the end they are prone to have that.

In general, look at what a person has today and that is what is most important to him.
So lets look at what voters or “we the people” have with respect to government. They have
elected a government that serves their guardian. What does a guardian do? A guardian makes decisions for those who are incompetent at making decisions for themselves and manages every aspect of their lives.

So, over time government has taken on the role of a guardian. When voters make a choice, they pick the candidate they feel will most likely serve as a guardian. Since having a guardian is important out of proportion to everything else voters could get from government. A guardian is what they end up with.

Guardian seeking is a hard act to break up. Those who prefer to make their own decisions are a very small minority in the United States. Having a guardian is so important to Americans, they are willing to give up their rights guaranteed to them in the constitution in order to have one. Censorship? Censorship is no problem to Americans when the speech that is censored might end up denying them the guardian they so cherish.

Fantasy Free Economics is a threat to the guardian – seeking mentality that pervades the nation. So Fantasy Free Economics is highly censored as are other blogs and sources of dissenting viewpoints and information. Guardian seekers themselves are not the ones doing the censoring. The censoring is coming from the guardians themselves.Serving as a guardian for huge masses of people is astronomically profitable. More and more guardian arrangements are sought. Fears are even created just so guardians can provide safety and security to to the people they might serve.

There are those who prefer to live independent lives – though the number is shrinking. Unless independent minded people find ways to make their viewpoints known, it is only a matter of time before there are so few of them that they can’t have any impact at all.
Unless independent people make the effort to find sources of genuine information and
viewpoints, they may as well throw in the towel now.

Since the censorship effort have been in place, this is what has happened to my audience. During most of 2019 I was averaging over 1000 reads per day. Now my viewership has dropped to between 75 to 150. Censorship is highly effective.

Not just Fantasy Free Economics but all other blogs with non main street content have
suffered in the same way. I have decided not to quit. I will write even if it is only my three sons who read it. The facts are that our links are not allowed on social media at all. Search engines bury us so deep no one can find us. Firefox advises users that we are not safe. Even Zerohedge removes comments with links and so on. The only way our blogs can even grow halfway back to where they used to be in terms of readership, is when folks send links out in emails.
That is the situation independent blog writers are in. If our information gets spread around at all, it is because our readers send out our links independently of other media.

On a positive note, it seems the Chinese are once again allowing their citizens to access these kinds of blogs. I am getting hits from China again.

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