Find of the day

[Skybird]

Alan Greenspan, 1966: "Gold and economic freedom"

Under a gold standard, the amount of credit that an economy can support is determined by the economy's tangible assets, since every credit instrument is ultimately a claim on some tangible asset. But government bonds are not backed by tangible wealth, only by the government's promise to pay out of future tax revenues, and cannot easily be absorbed by the financial markets. A large volume of new government bonds can be sold to the public only at progressively higher interest rates. Thus, government deficit spending under a gold standard is severely limited.
(...)
The financial policy of the welfare state requires that there be no way for the owners of wealth to protect themselves. This is the shabby secret of the welfare statists' tirades against gold. Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the confiscation of wealth. Gold stands in the way of this insidious process. It stands as a protector of property rights. If one grasps this, one has no difficulty in understanding the statists' antagonism toward the gold standard.

full text: http://www.321gold.com/fed/greenspan/1966.html

[Aktungbby]

Just to stay on thread: from todays paper! I was going to post it but your topic beat me to it! http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/lifestyle/2014/07/18/millions-in-booty-from-california-gold-rush-recovered-from-ss-central-america/

full text: http://www.321gold.com/fed/greenspan/1966.html

Buy gold sell silver, sell gold buy silver.
Buy Randian voodoo ideology.

[Aktungbby]

http://www.let.rug.nl/usa/documents/1876-1900/william-jennings-bryan-cross-of-gold-speech-july-8-1896.php In conclusion: "You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns, you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold."

[Catfish]

Originally Posted by Tribesman

Buy gold sell silver, sell gold buy silver.
Buy Randian voodoo ideology.

After having read the book (why oh god why) i wonder how this pointless and fantasy piece of sh.. can influence or 'inspire' anyone with a clear mind or any empathy. This 'philosophy' must be the wet dream of all fascists and locust apitalism

Originally Posted by Catfish

After having read the book (why oh god why) i wonder how this pointless and fantasy piece of sh.. can influence or 'inspire' anyone with a clear mind or any empathy. This 'philosophy' must be the wet dream of all fascists and locust apitalism

That's the thing with ideologies, they require a mind that is not clear.
They all have their "oh yes that's it " moment but fall apart on the "but then, but how about, what if and hold on that don't work at all" moments.
People who swallow the ideology have a mind that is clouded by the "oh yes" moment and can not only get no further but don't wish to get any further as they are happy in the cloud of deluded bliss they wallow in.

Yeah - shiny rocks are the answer to all the world's problems. They must be. They're rocks. And they're shiny...

[Skybird]

Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1841: Self-Reliance

There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till. The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried. Not for nothing one face, one character, one fact, makes much impression on him, and another none. This sculpture in the memory is not without preestablished harmony. The eye was placed where one ray should fall, that it might testify of that particular ray. We but half express ourselves, and are ashamed of that divine idea which each of us represents. It may be safely trusted as proportionate and of good issues, so it be faithfully imparted, but God will not have his work made manifest by cowards. A man is relieved and gay when he has put his heart into his work and done his best; but what he has said or done otherwise, shall give him no peace. It is a deliverance which does not deliver. In the attempt his genius deserts him; no muse befriends; no invention, no hope.
(...)
Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members. Society is a joint-stock company, in which the members agree, for the better securing of his bread to each shareholder, to surrender the liberty and culture of the eater. The virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs.
Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist. He who would gather immortal palms must not be hindered by the name of goodness, but must explore if it be goodness. Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind. Absolve you to yourself, and you shall have the suffrage of the world. I remember an answer which when quite young I was prompted to make to a valued adviser, who was wont to importune me with the dear old doctrines of the church. On my saying, What have I to do with the sacredness of traditions, if I live wholly from within? my friend suggested, — "But these impulses may be from below, not from above." I replied, "They do not seem to me to be such; but if I am the Devil's child, I will live then from the Devil." No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature. Good and bad are but names very readily transferable to that or this; the only right is what is after my constitution, the only wrong what is against it. A man is to carry himself in the presence of all opposition, as if every thing were titular and ephemeral but he. I am ashamed to think how easily we capitulate to badges and names, to large societies and dead institutions. Every decent and well-spoken individual affects and sways me more than is right. I ought to go upright and vital, and speak the rude truth in all ways. If malice and vanity wear the coat of philanthropy, shall that pass? If an angry bigot assumes this bountiful cause of Abolition, and comes to me with his last news from Barbadoes, why should I not say to him, 'Go love thy infant; love thy wood-chopper: be good-natured and modest: have that grace; and never varnish your hard, uncharitable ambition with this incredible tenderness for black folk a thousand miles off. Thy love afar is spite at home.' Rough and graceless would be such greeting, but truth is handsomer than the affectation of love. Your goodness must have some edge to it, — else it is none. The doctrine of hatred must be preached as the counteraction of the doctrine of love when that pules and whines. I shun father and mother and wife and brother, when my genius calls me. I would write on the lintels of the door-post, Whim. I hope it is somewhat better than whim at last, but we cannot spend the day in explanation. Expect me not to show cause why I seek or why I exclude company. Then, again, do not tell me, as a good man did to-day, of my obligation to put all poor men in good situations. Are they my poor? I tell thee, thou foolish philanthropist, that I grudge the dollar, the dime, the cent, I give to such men as do not belong to me and to whom I do not belong. There is a class of persons to whom by all spiritual affinity I am bought and sold; for them I will go to prison, if need be; but your miscellaneous popular charities; the education at college of fools; the building of meeting-houses to the vain end to which many now stand; alms to sots; and the thousandfold Relief Societies; — though I confess with shame I sometimes succumb and give the dollar, it is a wicked dollar which by and by I shall have the manhood to withhold.
(...)
Insist on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you can present every moment with the cumulative force of a whole life's cultivation; but of the adopted talent of another, you have only an extemporaneous, half possession. That which each can do best, none but his Maker can teach him. No man yet knows what it is, nor can, till that person has exhibited it. Where is the master who could have taught Shakspeare? Where is the master who could have instructed Franklin, or Washington, or Bacon, or Newton? Every great man is a unique. The Scipionism of Scipio is precisely that part he could not borrow. Shakspeare will never be made by the study of Shakspeare. Do that which is assigned you, and you cannot hope too much or dare too much. There is at this moment for you an utterance brave and grand as that of the colossal chisel of Phidias, or trowel of the Egyptians, or the pen of Moses, or Dante, but different from all these. Not possibly will the soul all rich, all eloquent, with thousand-cloven tongue, deign to repeat itself; but if you can hear what these patriarchs say, surely you can reply to them in the same pitch of voice; for the ear and the tongue are two organs of one nature. Abide in the simple and noble regions of thy life, obey thy heart, and thou shalt reproduce the Foreworld again.

http://www.emersoncentral.com/selfreliance.htm

Man is timid and apologetic; he is no longer upright; he dares not say 'I think,' 'I am,' but quotes some saint or sage.
So Hoppe Popper Rand Fjordman Rothbard Greenspan Breivik Rockwell Geller....any other saints or sages you wish to quote?

[Jimbuna]

Subscribed.

[Skybird]

Beethoven: Piano Concerto 5, movement 2



Reading the comments you see that it is not fully clear who pianist and orchestra were. All I can say is it is a stunning recording due to its atypical slow pace - most recordings almost race through this piece to show how fast the pianist can play. But the slow pace models the fragile beauty of this piece by almost forcing the listener to pay attention to sequences of notes/tones that often escape his attention if being played faster.

Our modern world accelerates more and more. Classic music from the past nowadays gets played 30-40% faster than like it was intended by the composer at the time he was living, a known phenomenon in music history. What this pianist does is he deccelerates it again - and it is as if all world around becomes wide and open again.

What is this beauty that touches us from outside? What is it that gets touched by it in our inside?

[Sailor Steve]

Nice link, and nice summation. I'm not sure I agree about the speed, but that's what music is for. We judge it on how it affects us, and it affects us differently. Thanks for sharing that.

[Oberon]

I must admit I've noticed a difference in speeds in how people play Beethovens Symphony no 7 movement 2 in Allegretto. I prefer the slightly slower version, as heard in 'The Kings Speech'.

Faster


Slower


There's not a great deal in it, but I sometimes pick up on these things.

[Skybird]

Sandy Springs, Georgia - The city that outsourced everything

http://my.firedoglake.com/freemarket...ed-everything/

Keep the taxes where they have been raised. Local cities/regions then NEED to compete, and perform better, to attract tax payers.

Keep the taxes where they have been raised

Coventry is nowhere near Georgia. I suppose Cranbury Boston and San Francisco are quite a bit closer than Britain, but it certainly isn't keeping the tax money in Georgia.