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"now ask yourself the real question: why is it seemingly impossible for the US to produce a presidential candidate with any remotely plausible chance of victory that even seems to understand this idea much less possesses the ability (or perhaps the willingness) to communicate it?"

We had one, not that long ago, a guy named Ron Paul. The Romney machine used vote-switching machines to eliminate him.

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author

was he ever a serious contender for president?

i like ron paul (and rand) but i got the sense he was never going to be allowed anywhere near the inside track to actual power. seemed like he was consigned to be the voice in the wilderness speaking the truths no one wanted to hear so everyone could sort of nod then go back to plundering.

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Maybe not, but a lot of us thought he did at the time. The momentum was there. More dire economic conditions, like those in Argentina, would have been enough. Obviously the Republican party controllers thought so too, or they wouldn't have had to rig the vote, which was well documented at the time by computer programmers who got real-time data on the vote and showed, quite convincingly, the votes being switched from Ron Paul to Mitt Romney. Googling a few years later didn't turn up any of that analysis.

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Dec 5, 2023·edited Dec 5, 2023

Stupid humans work hard and play by the rules.

Smart humans plunder and cheat.

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You can be right, or you can win.

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Reality sucks.

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Life is hard in Midgard.

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No good deed goes unpunished.

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The smartest humans band together, create rules so they work well with each other in order to plunder and cheat outsiders.

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I read the other day that we are only allowed to vote for those who are compromised. Sounds about right.

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What about RFK Jr? He is polling ahead of trump and biden among 18 to 34 year olds. He has talked at length about corporate capture of regulatory agencies such as the fed and sec, even congress. I believe he has a plausible chance of turning things around.

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Even if RFK Jr were to somehow get elected, how would he get Congress to go along?

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see if he lives to make it. if he is for real, and not another puppet, and he makes it, they could do as was done with his family members.

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Or just frame and prosecute him like they do to Trump

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And he carries a lot of ideological baggage. Corporate capture comes from government, not corporations. Ending government cooperation with big corporations, means minimizing government. I don't see Kennedy doing that. He'll naively create a new agency to stop corporate capture.

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The attempts of Ross Perot with his charts didn’t get him very far.

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☝️

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The real question we should be asking John is how to fix our broken corrupted systems. Our computer is hacked, and the president is just a part of that system.

Our systems are corrupted. It is our #1 problem as humanity.

The solution is simple. It is three steps:

Step 1: Fix trust in our systems. How? We make our own (no government involved) new high-trust transparent systems that we build and control 100% as citizens, then migrate to them as a place to solve problems together.

Step 2: Use Human Swarm Intelligence and/or think tanks (idea labs) to control the direction of the new high-trust systems in a decentralized way.

Step 3: Plug our new high-trust systems into our current corrupted systems in order to fix them.

That's it. Nullius in verba

*********************************************************************************

Do you want to find solutions and fix our problems? We must address our corrupted and broken systems first. How? By first understanding the problem with our systems and some methods we could be using to fix them. Learn more:

THE UNSTOPPABLE POWER OF HUMAN SWARM INTELLIGENCE and PROBLEM SOLVING AS GROUPS: https://joshketry.substack.com/p/human-swarm-intelligence-the-most

RUNNING A SYSTEM AS A SWARM (such as a business for example): https://joshketry.substack.com/p/fix-any-business-using-human-swarm

HOW CAN WE FIX TRUST (online and in person)? https://joshketry.substack.com/p/fixing-trust-online-and-in-person

RESOLVING CONFLICTS AS A SWARM (Muslims and Transgender athletes in jiu jitsu competition) : https://joshketry.substack.com/p/resolved-transgender-and-muslim-athletes

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The CATillon effect is so simple, if the general population heard about it they would be storming the Central banks tomorrow.

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A good number of them would try to get in on the scam.

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no, general population is too compliant, docile and gullible: there wasn't much organized, peaceful resistance the last few years

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They would first have to look up from their phones and TikTok videos, which isn't very likely.

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I suspect it is one of the reasons branches are being closed. Can't have a 'run on the bank' if there are no banks to go to.

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As Henry Ford once said, "It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning."

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He was a wise man.

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Perhaps that's why it seems the politicians and media are instead trying to distract us by stoking a race/identity war.

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The overwhelming emphasis these days is on getting mega-rich by outmarketing your competitors. It’s not even about creating value anymore. “Make $1000s a month dancing on Tiktok!” This is a natural response to worthless currency-obtain it creating worthless content.

When I listen to podcast after podcast interview with “successful” people, I always ask myself, “did he or she make the money because they created that much value, or just because they cracked the code?” Because in finance, anyway, I think a lot of people believe they are geniuses at identifying value, when actually they are geniuses at being in the right place at the right time.

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Dec 5, 2023·edited Dec 5, 2023

In today's America, there is an ever-shrinking pool of Winners and then there is everyone else, lucky to barely be getting by.

For those not born into wealth or otherwise preternaturally talented, attractive, or athletic, the only route to being a Winner is shameless self-promotion. You don't even need to be all that good-looking, but it certainly helps, especially if you are a female human.

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The only way to tread water right now is to relentlessly grow. I spend 95% of my waking hours thinking about, or working on, creative new channels for creating value and reaching customers. It’s fatiguing, but we need to keep food on the table for the coming inflation, and it’s a much higher ROI for me than putting up canned goods.

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I am reading books by Ron Paul. Agreed, he is an old man. But he seems to have more brains than the regular candidates together. He ran once years ago, but of course, got sidelined. Because he is right on so many points (have not yet finished the book so may be I disagree on other subjects) I am going to write him in

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Just because someone is old doesn’t mean they are not wise or have important things to say.

I get that the perception leads more to the Joe Biden version of age-related incapacity to deal with everyday life, that old people’s main concern is ‘get off my lawn’. But that’s not a universal truth.

I would take anything Ron Paul says over anyone in government and it’s deep state support.

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A mayor of Mississauga, Ontario, Hazel McCallion, died this year at 102. She was a very popular and exceedingly capable mayor until she retired at age 92. In retirement, she took on a teaching job at a local college and was an advisor at Toronto Airport.

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Amazing lady!!!

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Joe is doing fine. Why just yesterday I saw a picture of him standing on a ladder and decorating the Biden family Christmas tree. He didn't fall or anything.

On second thought, maybe that picture was Photoshopped.

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Of course, it is by design. We are technically being led by half-wits whose half-wittedness (?) provides excellent cover (Haha! Just look at what these stupid people are doing!) to the evil, intelligent people running the show.

Covid was the excuse to transfer even more wealth to the top, and to condition us to authoritarian government. The shots? My tinfoil hat receives signals telling me that they were designed to weaken immune systems and make people dependant on the medical system (more and more centrally controlled) for their meds and treatment. Weakened people are easier to control. Again, people were tossed off of transplant waiting lists for refusing to inject poison into their bodies. A warning for what awaits the noncompliant.

It's also no coincidence that Davos Democrats have been furiously writing laws to get effective semi-automatic rifles out of the hands of those most awakened to the upcoming horrorshow.

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Note the large increase in people on disability

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Bitcoin fixes this.

(Also, gato, thank you for such a clear explanation! I’ve been mumbling about the cantillion effect for a while, but now I can just forward to friends your much better explanation.)

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If you can buy any, banks are blocking outflows of money.

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(A sure sign that the establishment is getting nervous)

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Bitcoin fixes that! 🙏

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I agree; nothing fixes the mess of our current fiat system. (I mean, nothing realistic.. those who benefit from the money printing will never voluntarily give that up.)

Moving to bitcoin just makes it all moot.

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How does it make it moot? Bitcoin is valued against dollars ultimately. You may buy or sell something for bitcoin, but try using a bitcoin to buy groceries or gas.

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I didn’t quite answer your first question. Hard money - whether bitcoin or gold- is not subject to the cantillion effect. That’s what I meant about making it moot.

The folks who have been holding bitcoin for a long time (not me, sadly) are watching their purchasing power rise over the years. But even if it weren’t, they’re holding a money that is not at the mercy of the oligarchs.

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Dec 7, 2023·edited Dec 7, 2023

Gold's value can deflate because one can mine more.

Gold is better than dollars, but bitcoin is better than gold.

Not too late to get into bitcoin. You may not be able to buy a whole one, but bit by bit, grab some satoshis. It'll be better than nothing.

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Thank you for clarifying your point, I understand it now.

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There are folks who base all of their spending on Bitcoin. I’m not one of them - but groceries, dr visits, and lots of good and services are already available using Bitcoin, and I suspect gas and other essentials will be possible before too long.

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And bitcoin may not be at the mercy of the oligarchs at the moment, but you can bet they are working on ways to co-opt it should the need arise.

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Oh yes , for sure.

But it will prove very tough to co- opt. There’s no company, no CEO, no board of directors.

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The money printing accelerated during the financial crisis. I read many articles warning of consumer goods price inflation that would result. Then when that did not happen, some declared that it was no longer a problem and soon enough the smart set started talking about unbound printing with MMT.

But I gradually realized that there was price inflation and of the asset class that was most loved by the people that benefited most easily from ZIRP and QE: stocks. From that point the stock market was untethered from real economic conditions and largely continues in that way especially among certain favored tech stocks. However, there is psychologically only so much money that can pour into stocks before it becomes an absurd bubble and the market bumped up against those levels again and again.

The big money crew needed new and perhaps more physical investments and so we got a real estate bubble. Ominously, those thinking a couple of steps further ahead like Bill Gates and perhaps the CCP bought farmland, an even more basic resource.

The pandemic era allowed a final massive burst of money creation just as the system seemed to be in a sort of crisis. But now what? No matter how profligately they print, the richest 1% simply can't substitute their preferences for that of an entire global society. All they can do is overwrite the desires of the many with their own and that will eventually rely on brute force. I think we may see chicanery like CBDC first, but the late stage will be physical violence against the masses of people probably assisted by AI and automation.

Did you read that Israel is using an advanced AI program to pick targets in Gaza? Almost like a trial run of a system that could mesh social media, cell phone data, biometric, government database, etc all to pick people's homes to blow up?

Considering that literally every tool and institution of the "war on terror" was redeployed back against civilian populations, where do you think that AI will be used after its trial phase over there?

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If you bailout companies, do you live under a capitalist system? If you bailout companies, do customers matter? If your entire system is designed to figure out the price of something, and bailouts make sure that price can never be discovered, of what use is the system? Some might argue that now that you control every aspect of it, the only thing left is power.

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That's exactly right. And those who accrue power are hardly wise. Even if we assumed they had the most noble and benign intentions, they would still make mistakes. As the mistakes (and deliberate oppression) grow, the problems will become more and more apparent to the average person. In order to maintain power, they will eventually resort to violence.

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You can argue they already have, you know, potentially releasing a virus against their own populace and then locking everybody up. Better to reign in hell then to serve in heaven i guess.

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Unfortunately, it will take an Argentine peso level disaster in the US dollar to wake up enough people for a serious presidential candidate to emerge. By that time the American empire will have collapsed and the rest of the developed world along with it. We’re in a debt spiral, and disaster is a certainty. It will take time, but it’s on the horizon. Humanity will survive but there’s a lot of pain ahead in the near term.

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Unfortunately, DB, your concerns are legitimate. It has been obvious, for decades, that this circus can not continue. And that when America goes down, it will pull much of the world's economy with it.

Bastiat was prescient when he observed, almost two centuries ago, that, "When plunder becomes a way of life, men create for themselves a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it."

We are living (for now) in the death spiral of the richest, freest society the world has ever known. The "great experiment" was fun - while it lasted.

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🙏 We agree. There is no way to fix a system built upon flawed assumptions and a faulty foundation. The outcome has been inevitable from the beginning.

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founding
Dec 5, 2023·edited Dec 5, 2023

Yeah it's actually so simple it's elegant.

Must be nice to de facto control the discount to NPV for your investment AND everyone else's. And be able to asses your risk by simply offing all the risk to everyone else from the very beginning, knowing that they cover your cost of capital AND are your best leading indicator for when you should pour more of their "investment" into your next "investment"...and pull the prior one out.

Just by knowing when it's time to push print and knowing that everyone else is clueless that the money IS the investment. Nothing like knowing your "past" performance guarantees future results.

Please consult your financial advisor....if you also need to know jack-shit...:)

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👍🏽👍🏿👍 Awesome, the article, that is.

Living in Missouri, I’m sandwiched between banker cartels from the east & west who need to be excised like a malignant disease; removed from my state like a bad roach infestation—with flame 🔥 throwers. We’re suffocating, and the sooner we take off our Red & Blue gang colors, stop attacking each-other and end the Federal Reserve & Central Bankers, IMF, World Banks… the sooner we can start prosecuting and liquidating the assets of Bill Gates, George Soros…Rockefeller, Rothschild…BlackRock & Big Pharma…and everyone associated with war profiteering, especially weapon sales to Ukraine, the Israeli military and the the free automatic machine guns for the civilians to kill Palestinians. Meanwhile, we Americas are being disarmed? WTF is that about?

We are so rich, Americans, as well as the rest of the world, if only we can take back our planet and our individual lives with the right to actually compete fairly and live free. Fair trade/exchange tax is all that’s necessary for the infrastructure that would allow individuals to save themselves. I can’t say it enough: Clean Electricity ⚡️ is totally free, minus the infrastructure, therefore so is water and communications. Everything else humans can create, manufacture & build can be part of a fair trade for legit-profit market, just not an abundance of free electricity & clean water made scarce by mobster utility, currency, war & disease bankers. I really do hate the worthless, scalping, non-producing money & control junkies.

I’ve got dark plans for the shit physicists & engineers trapping the world to the fraud of the “everything must be for profit” system; true electrical enlightenment for the masses; free energy & clean water, and the personal freedom and natural world peace that comes with it. I’m bloody flailing.

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Sorry, there is no such thing as free electricity. You cannot separate the grid from the cost. Everywhere "green" energy is implemented costs skyrocket. Climate hysteria is just another government psyop IMHO.

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Nonsense. Who told you that rubbish? I’m rushing to answer, so pardon any spelling errors. I’ll come back to edit later.

No sir, or is it ma’am? You’re talking semantics, not REAL “production or ongoing manufacturing costs,” as if there are people cranking and spinning the turbine or slave workers hidden inside my solar panel slaving away making electricity. Think!

Imagine you just purchase a bicycle or a rocking chair, as well as paid a few dolors in fair taxes in order to build and maintain the sidewalks and roads to ride your bike in public leading to your private driveway. Would you allow a gangster to attach a toll gate to enter your driveway or a meter to count the miles you drive your bike and them charge you for it beyond the initial cost and the initial tax you just paid? Of course not, that’d be theft, correct? THINK.

Of course there’s an initial cost for “the utility system”, like my hydroelectric dam I get my electricity from, or my solar panels I charge up my car with, or my windmills I power my farm equipment with, but there’s no meter attached to any of those systems charging me beyond the initial system’s costs to build and instal that is legitimate. My electricity bills are a fraud and a crime against humanity. Same with my public roads, public water lines, public sidewalks connected to my private sidewalk, my private driveway, my private water lines attached to those public systems—which my fair taxes already paid for. Any gangster charging me beyond the initial cost and tax is a “legal” crime, like forcing people to get Vaxxed in the name of security after creating a synthetic pathogen to terrify you with to get you to comply. It’s a “legal” but unconstitutional crime against humanity, and eventually those criminals will pay for it. I swear it.

Try thinking about utilities this way. Imaging your private home and local city was a huge space ship taking off into space. Why would you allow gangsters to charge you for oxygen, clean electric or water beyond initial costs via fair tax? Same after you land on the moon or Mars. If someone on board wishes to trade you for a rocking chair you produced with a beautiful oil painting, plus pay a fair trade tax dollar in addition to maintain your spaceship, that’s legit. But ones you get home and hang the painting or use the chair, would you allow a gangster to charge you additional fees for enjoying those items? Of course not.

Charging people beyond fair tax for utilities is a psyops, brainwashing crime. You’ve been brain-trained into believing nonsense by the mob, and I’m going to destroy them for it, as well as any engineer or physicist challenging me. For over ten years I’ve posted public wagers of $250 Thousand challenging anyone with the brains and bloody balls to match that wager to prove me wrong, and all I hear are goddam grumblings and crickets in the background with an occasional troll wasting my time arguing semantics. I’m NOT calling you a troll. But I am insisting you, as well as I was, have been brainwashed; not properly informed and educated. We’ve been lied to by money junky monsters. Nobody who visits my home or motel, which has it own independent water and electric systems, is charged for water or electricity, just a few pennies in business tax for the actual maintenance costs for those systems—the same as any business costs, which is dirt cheep over time. And the more time that goes by, the cheeper evolving technology makes these systems to build and maintain. One more time: charging people for an abundance of free electricity is a crime against humanity by mobsters!

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Three words (one for emphasis)-

Gold f--ing standard

It's in the US Constitution for crying out loud (Article 1, Section 10), the founders knew it.

Shameless self-promotion (given alignment): We spread this message with a line of 'better bedtime stories' educating families about the broken, crooked, debt-based fiat money system using the principles of liberty, sound money Austrian Economics and natural law (www.inflationeducation.net).

Great work, El Gato!

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founding

Even Keynes knew it:

"Lenin is said to have declared that the best way to destroy the capitalist system was to debauch the currency. By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. By this method they not only confiscate, but they confiscate arbitrarily; and, while the process impoverishes many, it actually enriches some. The sight of this arbitrary rearrangement of riches strikes not only at security but [also] at confidence in the equity of the existing distribution of wealth.

Those to whom the system brings windfalls, beyond their deserts and even beyond their expectations or desires, become "profiteers," who are the object of the hatred of the bourgeoisie, whom the inflationism has impoverished, not less than of the proletariat. As the inflation proceeds... all permanent relations between debtors and creditors, which form the ultimate foundation of capitalism, become so utterly disordered as to be almost meaningless; and the process of wealth-getting degenerates into a gamble and a lottery.

Lenin was certainly right. There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose."

~John Maynard Keynes, The Economic Consequences of the Peace (1919)

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"if you think the person in the oval office or the party running congress makes a whit of difference here, i fear you’re fooling yourself."

-----------------------------------------

100%

you know it, i know it. how many more will it take to birth a tipping point of independent voters who make common cause with each other on the local level everywhere and break the parties' stranglehold?

the two leading candidates for 2024 are among the biggest grifters in history. that underscores your point with a vengeance.

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Is it just me, or is Milei just like a big fluffy human cat? Maybe he's been subscribing to your Stack?

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great article, thanks for the explanations.

inflation caused the war & breakup in the former yugoslavia, go back and look at their economy/inflation in the 1980's, especially late 80's. it got blamed on 'ethnic tensions'.

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The free market does not make you eat bugs nor does it make anyone do anything. With a free market, you always have choices. It is a closed and controlled market (like microsoft windows automatically being on most computers) that limits your choices to near zero or none.

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Read the rest of the article maybe?

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