Control Vs. Empowerment: Central Planning Vs. Free Markets

'State Of Mind - the Psychology of Control' - full length movie

“Unfortunately, you’ve grown up hearing voices that incessantly warn of government as nothing more than some separate, sinister entity that’s at the root of all our problems.
...They’ll warn that tyranny always lurking just around the corner. You should reject these voices.”
― Barack Obama

Reject the founders - or one who claims the right to kill or imprison without trial anybody alive today - one who issues executive orders that give government the authority to confiscate all water, food, transportation, energy, construction materials, fertilizers, fuels, etc. nationwide (order #13603)
Reject voices that fought for liberty - or those that strip more of it away every day?

Reject voices that warn about government and gun control?

“Government is not reason, it is not eloquence – it is force.
Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.”

― George Washington

“But a Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored.
Liberty, once lost, is lost forever.”
“Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts and murders itself.
There was never a democracy that did not commit suicide.”
― John Adams

“Security without liberty is called prison.”

“It is the first responsibility of every citizen to question authority.”

“Any society that gives up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both.”

― Benjamin Franklin

“The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable ..., that I wish it to be always kept alive.”

“A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine.”

“Experience hath shown, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.”

“Laws that forbid the carrying of arms ... disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes ... Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man.”

― Thomas Jefferson

Suppose you lived in a country where people are forced to be protected by the sole security company  - BigGov - not only that, but no one is allowed to refuse the service or provide their own protection! Whenever BigGov decides that costs have gone up they simply raise the price and everyone must pay. After awhile the citizens grow tired of being forced to pay for a service that seems to provide little benefit and for which they themselves are brutalized by the strong-arm tactics of security personnel. To hold on to their cushy posts the company agrees to allow its leaders to be elected by the citizenry, who believe that, at long last, they will be able to control this behemoth - soon discovering, however, that company leaders always seem to come from the same two parties so that nothing really changes!

Of course, the story doesn't end there - it turns out that, as BigGov became larger and more powerful due to its monopoly on protection services, it established subsidiaries to provide both education and mandated healthcare among others - spreading its tentacles to control ever more of the public purse! And, as the out-of-control organization - unshackled by competition - grew rapidly, it came to control either directly or by setting conditions for other organizations to operate - pretty much everything. Then, aided by news services that seem to operate just like one of the behemoth's massive tentacles, never asking questions that challenge its legitimacy, the parasite continued its uncontrollable growth, draining the lifeblood from the more productive areas - until the host became merely an empty shell!

By now it should be glaringly obvious to anyone that the situation described is far from hypothetical, and instead reflects the type of government most people are forced to live under in today's world! But, while we can all see the pitfalls and most would refuse to do business with BigGov the company, most people still fail to see the obvious connection, when it comes to the BigGov that runs their lives, holding to a delusional belief that it's only a matter of electing the right people and all will be okay. But the reasons why monopolies deliver poor service at high cost have little to do with whether or not their leaders are elected or even well-intentioned but instead from the atrophy that inevitably results when any organization can freely impose its will and avoid the rigorous discipline of the free market!

The idea that men come together voluntarily to cooperate is a good one- it is the basis of democracy! But that idea becomes corrupted the moment the majority believe that through their elected officials they are entitled to take away the rights and property of the minority on behalf of some public good. Such a system - more properly called a mobocracy, masquerades as the ideal in most of today's world, its problem is not who runs it but lies deep in a system that breeds dependence & stifles self-reliance!

Like the BigGov analogy, the bigger this parasite gets, the more it extracts from the host to survive! During the latter stages, before as John Adams said, democracy "wastes, exhausts & murders itself", rulers do everything possible to retain their hold on power - they script and fund terror plots to keep the public in fear and justify larger budgets, classify facts that show wrongdoing as 'national security', threaten arrest of officials, insist that government be trusted and ask the public to report dissenters!

Collectivism - the misguided belief that individual rights do not exist and that a ruling group must decide what's best for the 'common good', continues to be resurrected time and again as a zombie, morphing from communism to socialism to fascism to statism, denying the right of individual choice. But until we drive a stake permanently through the heart of this failed philosophy, we are destined to continue the insanity of doing the same thing over and over, though still expecting a different result!

The only legitimate purpose of government is the protection of individual rights, not abolishing pain! Governments that stray outside that very specific role to try to prevent us from making poor choices, soon find themselves on the path to tyranny, oppressing the very public they claim to be making safe!

Today's major problem is that hordes of people have been conditioned by the State education system to have a god-like reverence for the State, looking to it to come to their rescue! As the host weakens calls will intensify for the parasite to sink its talons in even deeper- hastening the inevitable collapse!

In the end, every system seeking to abolish pain by denying freedom of choice is destined for failure! But, the sad reality is that countless lives will be lost or destroyed before humanity learns that the only sustainable strategy is empowerment  - central planning and control always lose to free markets!

I Am A Terrorist
Slavery or Freedom
“We the Sheeple …”
Progressive Tyranny
Why We Should Mistrust the Government
The Good Guys Are Not Coming To Save Us
All About CONTROL: Man's Long-running Battle Over POWER
Do The Many Really Have to Obey the Few? Asking Permission From the Government

 
The Three Party System: Left, Right, and Reality

What Anarchy Isn't

How to instantly tell who's evil vs. good: the philosophy of 'control' vs. 'empowerment'

Tuesday, April 30, 2013 by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger Editor of NaturalNews.com

(NaturalNews) I get this question all the time from readers: How can we know whom to believe? Who's really telling the truth? Which person should I support for political office at the next election?

What if I told you there is an incredibly simple way to tell not only who's good and who's bad, but also how to tell who is pushing absolute evil onto our world?

This method is remarkably accurate, and you can use it right now to assess almost anyone.

It all starts with understanding the spectrum of control vs. empowerment.

Imagine a 10-foot string stretched out on the ground. On the far left side of the string, there is a point we'll call "Control." On the far right side of the string, another point is called "Empowerment."

Let's start with the "Empowerment" side first. This point represents people who primarily seek to empower you with knowledge, skills, wisdom and tools. "Empowerment" represents GOOD because it allows wisdom, skills and abundance to multiply from one person to the next. It recognizes the value of the individual and honors consciousness and free will.

On the far left side of the string -- which also represents the political left in America today -- we have "Control." This point represents people who primarily seek to control you: to extract money from you (rob you), to limit your freedoms, to demand your obedience and to use the threat of force to command your compliance. This philosophy dishonors the individual and downplays free will and individual liberty. "Control" is inherently evil because it seeks to diminish the power of a large number of people in order to accumulate power into the hands of a few people.

(The context of this discussion is, of course, entirely in the realm of dealing with adults. Obviously children should be subjected to certain controls for their own development and safety. That's called good parenting. But to treat adults like children and attempt to control them like a parent controlling a child is unjustified and inherently destructive.)

Examples of "control" vs "empowerment"

A person who seeks to teach others how to garden and thereby grow their own food is practicing empowerment and is therefore GOOD. But a person who seeks to place other people on government food stamps and thereby make them dependent on government for their food is practicing control and is inherently EVIL.

A school that teaches students to think for themselves and engage in critical, skeptical thinking about the world around them is practicing empowerment and is therefore GOOD. But a school that teaches students blind obedience to institutional authority while denying them the liberty to think for themselves is practicing control and is therefore EVIL.

A person who seeks to help others create their own successful businesses and generate abundant profits for themselves and their employees is practicing empowerment and is therefore GOOD. But a person who seeks to destroy entrepreneurship, suppress innovation, punish small businesses and burden private sector job creation with onerous taxes and regulation is practicing control and is therefore EVIL.

A person who seeks to teach others how to protect themselves against violent crime through the intelligent, ethical use of weapons for self defense is practicing empowerment and is therefore GOOD. But a person who seeks to strip away from everyone else their right to self defense, placing them in the position of defenseless victimization, is practicing control and is therefore EVIL.

A city mayor who seeks to teach his constituents the principles of nutrition and food choice so that they might make better decisions about their diet and health is practicing empowerment and is therefore GOOD. But a city mayor who demands blind obedience to his selective agenda of banning large sodas or other junk food items is practicing control and is therefore EVIL. (Bloomberg, anyone?)

So, getting back to the title of this article, the way to instantly tell whether a person is "good" or "evil" is to examine their actions on the control vs. empowerment spectrum. If they predominantly seek to control others, they are mostly evil. If they predominantly seek to empower others, they are mostly good.

Be careful to examine peoples' actions, not merely their words. Anyone can talk a good game of "empowerment," but very few actually seek to educate and uplift others around them.

The politics of control vs. empowerment