I once traveled to Ibarra, Ecuador, high in the Andes Mountains. I enjoyed walking through the market where many vendors sell their wares, from fruit to carved jade figurines.
Markets like this are everywhere. Drive from Guayaquil to Manta in the same country and you will see people on the side of the road hawking homemade cheese. Travel up the Amazon River by canoe into the deep interior, and you will find a fish market. On the other side of the globe, walk down the streets of Buriram, Thailand, and you’ll see everything imaginable for sale.
Markets transcend culture. The free market is a natural phenomenon of human nature.
We humans know we can improve our lives if we figure out how to provide what others need and will pay for at the right price point. It is through serving the needs of others that we advance ourselves and our society.
Leonard Read took this idea and ran with it in his essay “I, Pencil.”
“I, Pencil” highlights the incredible power of the free market. It emphasizes how the spontaneous order of market forces allows for the efficient production of goods—like pencils—without any central planning or regulatory oversight.
Think of the lumberjacks who cut down trees in the Pacific Northwest and of the workers who mill the wood from those trees into the thin shape of a pencil. Also think of the underground miners in Sri Lanka who dig out the graphite, which is then mixed with clay from Mississippi and fired in a kiln to create “lead” for the pencils.
Did you know the pencils’ erasers, likewise, are created by a complex mixture of products sourced from all over—from Indonesia to Italy? It’s true. The brass fitting that holds the eraser in place comes from zinc mines in such countries as India or Australia, and the zinc is mixed with nickel from nickel mines in, say, The Philippines or Indonesia or Madagascar.
But none of these components could be brought together and turned into pencils without the thousands of people who make the railroad ties and the rails and the spikes and the train engines that transport the raw materials and the mining equipment that extracts the minerals and metals from the earth. The train engines and mining equipment are fueled by diesel, which is itself mined and refined by machinery that was built by still more thousands.
Indeed, the creation of a single pencil requires an intricate supply chain and the collaboration of millions of people across the globe, each contributing their specialized skills and knowledge. None of them are aware that the final product they’re working on will be a pencil. They and the businesses that employ them operate in a free market, without central planning. The voluntary cooperation, coordination, and collaboration of their efforts is what Mr. Read refers to as “spontaneous order.”
Spontaneous order generates tremendous innovation, which in turn provides enormous benefits to humankind. The free market of the medical system in the US, for example, has generated medical advancements that positively impact everyone around the world, even people who live in oppressive governments that allow for little innovation.
But while free markets are a natural outcome of the good in human nature, the opposite is also true.
From the beginning of time, the evil that lurks to a greater or lesser degree in all human hearts has caused a few powerful individuals and institutions to brutalize the weak.
For example, the Vikings of long ago raped, murdered and pillaged peaceful people. Mobsters in every age and locale are known to bully, rob, shut down, shoot, and “disappear” the owners of businesses who refuse to comply with their shakedowns. Financial kingpins create systems of legalized thievery in which regular people are bled dry. Tyrants routinely suppress and subjugate the masses in all sorts of ways.
These two natural systems are diametrically opposed in many ways.
In free markets, people engage in voluntary transactions with whomever they want to work. Each person is free to choose what to purchase and where to purchase it. Each can decide whom to do business with—and whom to sever ties with. These millions of daily decisions maximize competition and encourage businesses to provide the best product or service for the least amount of money—or, put another way, for the greatest profit.
Small businesses thrive in free markets with few regulations.
On the other hand, Big Business isn’t a fan of free markets. Larry Fink, the BlackRock CEO who is considered the world’s most powerful money manager, speaks from self-interest when he declares, “Markets like totalitarian governments.” What he’s saying is that tyrannical regimes don’t like it when people have a choice. They don’t like voluntary transactions. Rather, they want to force compliance, as we witnessed when pharmaceutical giants colluded with governments to force us to receive the jab.
Coercion is a common tactic of large corporations. For example, 3M and DuPont, both of which make water filters, support the National Sanitation Foundation (NSF) certification process for water treatment methods. They lobby local and state governments to adopt NSF certification as a requirement for all water treatment products installed in commercial and government buildings. They also convince insurance companies to cover only NSF-certified products.
Such a certification process is bureaucratic, time-consuming and expensive. Large corporations that mass-produce simple products like water filters can afford to put many hours and dollars into certification, but it’s onerous for small businesses that make high-end, non-mass-produced merchandise like water distillers. In short, certification guarantees that behemoths can shut out small businesses from the market and create an uncompetitive environment.
Small business owners, as we know, are independent-minded. They think for themselves. Their size makes them nimble and able to come up with solutions that out-compete their larger rivals. In addition, small businesses are harder for governments to control than large corporations are, which is why governments prefer the latter.
We can see a clear illustration of government’s preference for large businesses by looking at the planet-wide lockdowns that were imposed in the wake of the World Health Organization (WHO) pandemic declaration of March 2020. Almost overnight, small businesses in every country on earth were forced to close—sometimes temporarily, other times permanently—while Big Box stores were allowed to stay open. The mandated shutdown crushed entrepreneurs who had everything they owned invested in their businesses. This period ended up being one of the largest-ever wealth transfers from the middle class to the upper class. Some of the world’s most affluent individuals almost doubled their net worth from 2020 to 2021.
An October 2021 article in Newsweek describes how this transfer happened:
“Prior to COVID, more than 30 million small businesses accounted for about half the GDP and jobs in America; the other half of the economy was concentrated in 20,000 big companies. So you might have expected that small businesses would have had an equal amount of negotiating power when the pandemic hit as big companies. You would be wrong. [. . .] [B]ig firms were deemed ‘essential’ and allowed to stay open during the pandemic, while small businesses were subjected to punishing lockdown orders and forced to close, in part or completely. Many of the examples were doubly infuriating given the absurd hypocrisies they presented.
“For example, big box pet retailers like PetSmart that groomed pet hair and nails were deemed essential—while salons owned by small business owners that served humans were not. The LA-area Pineapple Hill Saloon and Grill was forced to close their outdoor dining—while a movie production not only operated but hosted a catering tent serving food to crew in the same parking lot that the restaurant had been forced to abandon. Weed dispensaries, illegal just a handful of years ago in many jurisdictions, were suddenly deemed essential.
“And the results of this are fairly easy to follow: Spending that couldn’t be done at closed businesses was shifted to the ones that were open, which were by and large big businesses, many of which naturally saw a substantial increase in their revenue.
“Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve was pumping trillions of dollars into the markets, helping to inflate stock valuations. Hundreds of thousands of small businesses were murdered in just a few short months—by government edict—while seven tech companies gained $3.4 trillion in market value.”
However, the most dramatic difference between the two opposing systems—one promoting freedom, the other pushing tyranny—lies in the kind of people these systems elevate.
The free market empowers hardworking, industrious individuals. It rewards and elevates people based on merit. It rewards entrepreneurs who are problem-solvers. It rewards inventors who advance technology to get better results with less energy. And it rewards employees who are industrious, who develop new skills, and who advance the interests of their employer. The free market creates a thriving, prosperous society and lifts up all people.
Tyrannical systems, on the other hand, elevate would-be rulers and their minions who desire control over others and who put bureaucratic procedure and red tape above freedom and prosperity. Tyrannical governments elevate psychopaths and sociopaths who will do whatever to whomever in order to hold on to power and gratify their greed. Tyrannies breed crime and corruption, cripple our economy, and corrode our moral and social fabric.
We can see this happening in the United States right now. Once-beautiful cities such as Portland and San Francisco are now ugly and overrun with homelessness and rampant crime. Why? Because prosecutors are choosing to not penalize the worst criminals, including white-collar fraudsters. The result is that dangerous psychopaths are empowered, while good people become victims with no recourse to justice, and society as a whole is diminished.
In this country, we understand that our rights come from God and not from the government, which means the government does not have the authority to infringe upon our property, privacy, sovereignty, or liberty. The US Constitution codified these rights and drew a line in the sand that protects “we the people” from psychopathic, power-hungry politicians and bureaucrats.
But the Constitution is just a piece of paper if we don’t hold politicians accountable when they breach its laws. The more we allow them to violate our rights without consequence, the more they will infringe on those rights with impunity . . . and their despotic control snowballs.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), to cite one example, has gone completely off the rails. In one of the most blatant violations of the First Amendment to date, FBI officers infiltrated Twitter and other social media platforms with the stated purpose of censoring US citizens.
But the Bureau’s law-breaking, rights-trampling ways don’t end there. The FBI has begun labeling concerned parents who speak up at school meetings “domestic terrorists.” FBI agents have also engaged in entrapment. For instance, in 2020 they lured four men in Michigan into an engineered plot to kidnap the governor of that state. And in 2021 they were actively involved in the January 6th “insurrection,” where they planted a number of undercover officers in the crowd with the intent to incite a riot.
What is the motive for their madness?
They are engineering their system of tyranny right in front of our eyes, and they feel that they can do so without any consequences because no one is holding them accountable for breaching our rights and the laws of the Constitution.
The problem is only going to worsen. Here’s why . . .
Governments around the world, in cooperation with the World Economic Forum (WEF), are actively rewiring every strand of our society.
First, let’s look at the WEF’s influence on corporations. In tandem with the United Nations, the WEF has created Environmental Social Governance (ESG) investment goals. ESG rewards corporate executives who put in place racist and transgender-friendly hiring policies.
Is ESG succeeding? Bloomberg obtained 2020 and 2021 data for eighty-eight S&P 100 companies and calculated overall job growth at those firms. These eighty-eight companies increased their US workforces in 2021 by a total of 323,094 employees, and, of these positions, 94% went to people of color!
In other words, Big Business froze out new hires based on merit and instead started hiring based on the superficial trait of skin color. An article from America First Legal gave an example:
“On December 11, 2023, James O’Keefe [then head of Project Veritas] released a recording on X of IBM Chief Executive Officer and Board Chairman Arvind Krishna. In the recording, Krishna promises to fire, demote, or deny bonuses to corporate executives who either fail to meet the corporation’s racial, national origin, and sex-based hiring quotas, or who hire too many Asian individuals. Also, Paul Cormier, the chairman of IBM subsidiary Red Hat, admits that Red Hat terminated employees who failed to meet the corporation’s unlawful racial, national origin, and sex-based quotas.”
These new hiring practices now pervade large companies. What will result from not hiring based on merit? I’ll answer by posing this question: why is Boeing suddenly experiencing a rash of mechanical problems in its airline fleet? Could it be because top management has stopped hiring people based on their skills and experience and is instead hiring based on ESG metrics? It would seem so.
All of us are familiar with the names of large companies that have been promoting the transgender agenda: Bud Light and Jack Daniels and Target come to mind. While most people expected Bud Light management to quickly apologize for their disastrous commercial with Dylan Mulvany, they never did. Why? Because any executive who goes against the trans agenda will be blacklisted by Corporate America and unable to retain or secure a job. So, expect more depravity in the future.
The biggest change in our society will result from the introduction of Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs). CBDCs represent the most fundamental shift in the monetary system in history. They will enable central banks (and probably the largest commercial banks) to track every single purchase you make. You will have no financial privacy whatsoever. In addition, CBDCs will be intertwined with the new carbon credit score that each person will receive. Each product you purchase will either positively or negatively affect your carbon credit score.
How will our controllers determine whether a product has a positive or negative impact on your carbon credit? The WEF is working with corporations to adopt a certification program. It will be much more extensive than current certification programs, such as the NSF mentioned before.
For example, it will look at every aspect of a corporation, from its own hiring practices to the hiring practices of its vendors to its social responsibility score. The latter means how the company treats its trans workers and enforces their “rights” in the workplace. Is an employee sufficiently punished if he refuses to use a fellow employee’s preferred pronouns?
In short, it will be very difficult for small businesses to get certified, and many won’t want to be certified because the requirements will go against their moral values. If you purchase products from a non-certified small business—or from any business that does not play the ESG game—your own social credit score will be negatively impacted.
Your score will also be adversely affected if you post unacceptable news or views on social media, if you write articles that refute the official narrative, and even if you get your news from approved sources or not. If you participate in misinformation or disinformation, as defined by the government, you will be punished in some form or fashion.
People with high social credit scores will get more benefits—money, opportunities, freedoms—while people with low scores will be penalized. The severity of the penalty will depend on the nature of the infraction. All in all, those who resist will have a much harder time in life.
Not only will this new system (called a kakistocracy, which literally means system of government which is run by the worst, least qualified, or most unscrupulous citizens) elevate the wrong type of people, but the psychopaths in charge will be able to choose with incredible preciseness exactly whom to elevate into their cabal. Never in history have the power-mongers had the tools they have now to build from scratch a new system organized and overseen by ill-intentioned people.
I have been trying to sound the alarm bells about how these parasites want to change our entire way of life to benefit themselves at the expense of good people. They literally want to enslave the human race, and if we don’t stop this system of control they are putting in place, every aspect of our lives will be controlled by psychopaths.
You probably want to ask: What can I do to stop this?
My first answer is, “Be courageous and do whatever you can.” A mother who sees that her children are in danger goes into momma bear mode and becomes fearless and unstoppable. A father who sees his daughter in danger will stop at nothing to protect her. Right now, your children are in significant danger. Now is the time to step up and protect them by whatever means possible.
Second, you MUST stop watching the corporate-controlled news. It is pure propaganda designed to make you unaware and compliant. Turn it off. And turn off talk shows. Instead, spend your free time researching independent journalists and finding out what is really happening in the world.
Third, spread the word. Educate others, whether they be friends and family or strangers, who are sometimes easier to talk to than are the people close to you. Print this newsletter out and hand it to people.
Fourth, get active in local and state elections. Freedom must be protected on the local level. We need to ensure that the United States remains decentralized—with each of the 50 states taking back their constitutional power from the federal government and from international organizations like the UN and the WHO and the WEF. The Tenth Amendment was written to limit and enumerate federal powers and protect against federal overreach. Remember, decentralization is good, centralization is bad.
For the sake of our loved ones and our future generations, we must ensure that all systems and institutions reinforce decentralization and liberty. We must totally and absolutely reject the WEF, CBDCs, Digital IDs and any restrictions on freedom of speech and of the press.
Above all, through it all, we must stay rooted in the knowledge that our rights come from God, not from government.
Glenn Meder
Excellent as always.
Will research, written and on the mark.👍
John