An Excerpt From The Satoshi Papers: A Nation of Individuals?

It is the imaginable of the sovereign idiosyncratic that seems to astir occupation the nation-state today. This unusual menace cognition has been the outgrowth of a governmental genealogy that, successful the generations since the American Revolution, has progressively travel to equate the authorities with nine portion constellating the idiosyncratic arsenic the force of both. This equation would person been profoundly disconcerting to the founders of the American republic, who called distant a caller nationalist task precisely to preclude the abuses of an entrenched and predatory overclass—an aristocracy—that deemed itself the rightful custodian, successful perpetuity, of the destiny and champion interests of a people. The governmental question animating America’s founders was, therefore: How tin a radical self-govern without creating a hereditary people of governors? How tin sufficient tension, if not conflict, stay betwixt authorities and nine that the regularisation of instrumentality is preserved without becoming a prison?

The founders devised an ingenious solution to this occupation based connected a revolutionary premise: That the rights of the individual, not those of the state, are cardinal for a escaped society.[1] In different words, radical person rights; governments bash not person rights. Governments person powers, but only those powers that are explicitly delegated to them by the radical they represent. Put much precisely, the radical person the totality of enumerated and unenumerated rights, portion the authorities has lone those powers explicitly enumerated. Any actions taken by agents of the authorities extracurricular of their enumerated powers are a usurpation of the people’s rights. The radical indispensable safeguard these explicit limits and tin instrumentality the enumerated powers of the authorities backmost astatine immoderate time.

In different words, the American founders reversed the ascendant governmental assumptions successful their taste world: It was not the radical who had to beryllium that they were deserving of rights, that they were guiltless earlier the law, oregon that they had cleared themselves of inherited obligations to the state. Rather, it was the authorities that bore the load of proof: That it was worthy of trust; that it had the powerfulness to instrumentality a peculiar action; that immoderate idiosyncratic oregon entity was blameworthy nether the law; oregon that its warfare powers should beryllium exercised with the people’s humor and treasure. Concretely, this meant that during the epoch of the US Constitutional Convention, erstwhile the statement betwixt the Federalists and Anti-Federalists raged, a formative statement emerged that the American authorities would person nary powerfulness of its own, nary wealth of its own, and nary service of its own. The American Constitution stipulated that each of these things would beryllium efficaciously connected indebtedness from the people, successful whom existent sovereignty resided.

But things person changed profoundly since the Constitution was ratified. Not lone did America found a lasting service rapidly thereafter; that service has been engaged successful astir unceasing warfare—over a 100 conflicts some overseas and domestic, declared and undeclared—since that time. While astir Americans contiguous would apt beryllium acquainted with the large-scale conflicts successful which their federation has participated—the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, and 2 satellite wars, for example—they astir apt would beryllium amazed by the bulk of the wars successful which the United States has been involved. During the nineteenth century, those wars were fought mostly against American Indian tribes arsenic portion of the propulsion to colonize the West, portion during the twentieth period they were waged predominantly against socialist and communist movements astir the world. Twenty-first-century conflicts, successful turn, person been prosecuted nether the banner of the warfare connected panic and, much recently, the containment of adversary nations. Although the Constitution grants Congress the sole powerfulness to state war, successful practice, Congress has lone declared warfare successful a fewer large conflicts: The War of 1812, wars against Mexico and Spain, and wars against peculiar belligerents successful the First and Second World Wars. The remainder person been waged done immoderate signifier of unilateral enforcement action, whether by statesmanlike decree oregon by the determination of subject officers.

Just arsenic the US authorities present seems to person its ain army, it seems to person its ain money. In 1913, Congress passed the Sixteenth Amendment, giving it the close to levy imperishable income taxes connected the American people; property taxes, acquisition taxes, superior gains taxes, and firm taxes followed soon thereafter, portion different imperishable forms of taxation person been introduced successful the decades since. This wealth has since travel to beryllium wide referred to arsenic “government revenue” alternatively than “the people’s money.” But the national authorities does not confine its spending to the people’s money; rather, it borrows extensively, supporting a ballooning administrative authorities whose agencies are truthful galore and ill-defined that determination is nary authoritative notation for precisely however galore determination are. The Federal Register, the Online Federal Register, the US Government Manual, the Sourcebook of United States Executive Agencies, the Unified Agenda of Federal Regulatory and Deregulatory Actions, FOIA.gov, and USA.gov each database wide differing numbers and definitions of agencies.[2],[3] These agencies relation arsenic some rulemaking and rule-enforcing bodies, collapsing each 3 branches of authorities (legislative, executive, and judicial) into 1 successful their ain operations. This eliminates the checks and balances that the authors of the Constitution enactment successful spot to constrain the powerfulness of the state, subjecting the American radical to a increasing thicket of laws that they person had nary portion successful making and person nary electoral capableness to change oregon repeal. As a result, an illusion is created that the authorities has its ain power.

But portion subject conflict, taxation, and bureaucratic regularisation are each disposable manifestations of the powerfulness of the state, they are underpinned by a level that seems truthful mean and ubiquitous contiguous that it mostly goes unnoticed: A fiscal strategy successful which cardinal banks contented and negociate the proviso and terms of unredeemable fiat currencies. These currencies service arsenic the basal wealth that commercialized banks, successful turn, usage arsenic reserve assets to marque loans. Commercial banks and cardinal banks astir the satellite signifier a web of fiscal intermediaries who stock with each different accusation astir each transaction that passes done their networks—which is besides shared with the military, intelligence, and policing agencies of governments and intergovernmental organizations worldwide. Government’s regard into the economical enactment of each idiosyncratic and enactment anyplace successful the satellite is efficaciously unconstrained by immoderate privateness laws oregon law provisions regarding hunt and seizure of assets. This confederation betwixt banking powerfulness and policing powerfulness took clasp during the aboriginal twentieth period successful what tin beryllium called the Banker Revolution—a gyration truthful palmy that fewer are adjacent alert it happened.

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[1] Thomas Jefferson’s archetypal draught of the Declaration of Independence work “We clasp these truths to beryllium ineffable & undeniable; that each men are created equal & independent [emphasis added], that from that adjacent instauration they deduce rights inherent & inalienable, among which are the preservation of life, & liberty, & the pursuit of happiness.” See Thomas Jefferson, “Image 1 of Thomas Jefferson, June 1776, Rough Draft of the Declaration of Independence,” Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/resource/mtj1.001_0545_0548/?sp=1.

[2] Clyde Wayne Crews, “How Many Federal Agencies Exist?” Forbes, July 5, 2017, https://www.forbes.com/sites/waynecrews/2017/07/05/how-many-federal-agencies-exist-we-cant-drain-the-swamp-until
-we-know/?sh=535830391aa2.

[3] Molly Fischer, “What Is a Federal Agency?” Federal Agency Directory, Louisiana State University Libraries, March 28, 2011, https://web.archive.org/web/20130518150541/http://www.lib.lsu.edu/gov/fedagencydef.pdf.