10 Things You Are Not Supposed to Know

Have you ever thought that there are many things you don't know simply because you're not supposed to?

“The general population doesn’t know what’s happening, and it doesn’t even know that it doesn’t know.” ~Noam Chomsky

1.) It is almost impossible to pay off the national debt:

As William Cobbett had said, “nothing is so well calculated to produce a death-like torpor in the country as an extended system of taxation and a great national debt.”

That's because money is created out of debt in a one-to-one rise in public debt. America's national debt is around $20 Trillion. This means the (roughly) 234 million Americans would have to pay about $62,000 each to pay the debt off. That includes babies, kids, poor and homeless people. There are even people who claim that it’s mathematically impossible to pay off the debt completely. Almost every country is actually in debt to every other country. It’s insane.

As former Governor of the Federal Reserve Marriner Eccles had said, “if there were no debts in our money system, there wouldn’t be any money.”

2.) There's no underlying thing backing money (it is all an illusion):

A dollar bill is a dollar bill simply because everybody agrees it’s a dollar bill. The dollar bill isn't lawful money, but instead “legal tender.” Money has always been backed by a “gold standard”. This meant that the government had $100 worth of gold in a vault from which they made a $100 bill that went out into the market (although even gold has value only because we have all agreed since time immemorial that it is highly valuable). Nevertheless, we now should take the government’s word for it that the note is worth $100. The bill itself is just an IOU note, made of thin air, based on debt, and laundered by the government.

Even the debt issue mentioned in the first bullet is based on nothing and so is nothing more than a financial concept financiers agree on. The debt is not there. However, since all people just go along with it, it affects us through inflation, and devaluation, and the sky-is-falling knee-jerk reactions to money meaning something only because the world gives it meaning. Money is little more than a cartoon in the brain that we are addicted to watching.

3.) How to live simply and off the grid:

People are not supposed to know how to live off the grid because then they wouldn't be controlled by the government. The more self-sufficient a person is, the less money the corporations can make off him/her. The more rainwater someone catches, the less they’ll need to pay the water companies. The more windmills a person builds and solar panels they erect, the less they’ll need to pay the electric companies. The more composting toilets someone installs, the less they’ll have to pay plumbing companies. The more gardening they do, the less they’ll have to pay someone else for their food.

In short: the more independent people become, the less codependent they will be on the state. And the state won't like that because they want your money way more than they want your freedom.

4.) Planned obsolescence:

Speaking of making money off people, planned obsolescence is a way for companies to keep making money off individuals by capitalizing on their consumerist tendencies. Planned obsolescence is designed to encourage the consumer to buy every next upgrade. Everything from toasters to automobiles, cell phones to microwaves are prone to planned obsolescence by every greedy company that knows people will come back for more no matter how many times their things-things-things fall apart.

5.) Civil asset forfeiture:

As if police brutality and overreach of power hadn't been enough, police officials have been manipulating the totally flawed federal and state civil asset forfeiture laws which give them permission to seize, keep, or sell any property that's allegedly involved in a crime. The key word is “allegedly.” As most of the time property is taken without at least being charged with a crime. Crazy!

Originally supposed to be used on large-scale criminal organizations, it's now used almost exclusively on individuals, destroying people’s lives over petty “crimes.” More and more police departments are now using forfeiture to benefit their bottom lines. It is less about fighting crime and more about making a profit. John Oliver did a brilliant piece on the matter that gets right at the heart of the problem.

6.) The US imprisons more of its population (and profits off it) than any other country does:

Living in what is broadly considered the “land of the free,” this should come as a body blow to anyone who really believes in freedom. The total prison population has grown by 500% over the last 30 years. The US has less than 5% of the world’s population, yet they have almost 20% of the world’s total prison population, despite crime being at a historic low.

The icing on the cake is the deplorable fact that big corporations are killing off the prison system. Equal parts extortion and slavery, for-profit prisons don't do anything in the way of rehabilitation and therapy; everything in the way of profit and criminal relapse.

7.) Forced taxation is actually theft:

When taxation is forced, we're not talking about a free country. When taxation isn't optional, the country that forces the tax is not free. Bottom line. If someone doesn't pay their taxes in that country, they're threatened with violence or prison. That's point-blank extortion. And since it's being done by an authoritarian government, it's real tyranny.

If the state is using a monopoly on violence to get money out of people, that's not justice, that is extortion. It is that simple. If freedom is primary, then voluntarism should be paramount. The use of state services built off taxes is a completely different matter with completely different solutions and is also an irrelevant red herring to the issue at hand.

8.) People aren't supposed to be stateless, but they can be:

Statelessness is an alien idea in the modern world. Although it can be extended to all living beings “in principle” and “in theory,” it's exceptionally hard to be sovereign and stateless. That's because the entire world is plagued with a disease of statism. It's so second-nature to human's existence that they never question it. We all might as well be fish questioning water. But we're not fish. We are human beings with common sense, and we can think deep and logically. That is if we're not being oppressed into blind servitude and myopic subordination.

Even if we're not supposed to know that we can be stateless, we should always be willing to question everything. The reason why we are not supposed to know this one is because the nations want to have control over us. And it’s all about control. Alas, the cons outweigh the pros on becoming a stateless individual. Especially because we're social creatures and the majority of social creatures in our world are conditioned statists. As Nietzsche had famously noted, “State is the name of the coldest of all cold monsters. Coldly it lies; and this lie slips from its mouth: ‘I, the state, am the people.’”

9.) The police aren't legally obligated to protect you:

Most people falsely and ignorantly assume that it's the sworn duty of the police to protect and to serve. However, it is the exception, not the rule. A cop protecting is doing so in a humane capacity and not because they are obligated to do so. They just happen to be acting humanely. The reality is that power tends to corrupt. That applies especially to police. And especially to police who's trained to be offense-minded, oppressive, overreaching, and violent enforcers of a statist agenda. The solution isn't more ill-trained offense-minded police with too much power, but more well-trained defense-minded police with enough power. In short: a complete eradication of the Thin Blue Line.

10.) We all live in an oligarchic plutocracy disguised as a democratic republic:

In the modern world, money is power. Money that's concentrated in the hands of a few is also power concentrated in the hands of a few. And as power tends to corrupt in case it goes unchecked, people should be free to check it, lest tyranny prevail. However, because of an overreaching militarized police force, people aren't free to check it. And here we are, slipping into tyranny disguised as democracy.

If we lived in a horizontal democracy, we'd have a better chance at being free and independent. No masters, no rulers, and therefore, no chance for money and power to become concentrated in the hands of a few. Of course, that's much easier said than done, but nothing worth doing was ever easy.

Based on: The Mind Unleashed

Featured image: “Thinking Monkey”, source unknown