Burn it All

Our government is about to print more money. In times of economic boom, this is done as an intentional devaluation of the currency so that it can be used more effectively in the economy - in other words, when the penny is too valuable to be spent on a piece of candy, something needs adjustment because the currency for buying pieces of candy individually does not exist. There was a time in Britain when golden guineas were so scarce that they were hoarded by the nobility and by rich merchants for foreign trade... also Britain's peasants at times fell back on something resembling a barter economy for lack of silver pennies (one of the reasons governments switched from precious metals to paper/faux coinage was so that the government could control the money supply and use it to represent wealth like sheep’s wool and wheat).

This is not an economic boom. In times of economic downturn, recession, or (as I am beginning to suspect this will be) depression, printing more money is a way for the government to pay government workers. The hope is that no one will notice the devaluation of the currency until it is too late, allowing the government a few years of peace and quiet in which to shuffle blame around and decide which hee-hawing asses are going to take the fall for everything.

So this is a call to all Americans who can afford the losses:

Please burn your money.

Technically the government is burning your money as we speak, so you’re not actually losing anything. You have been robbed already, and burning money only serves to create a realistic image of how much money you actually have.

If enough Americans go out back and burn money, maybe we can avoid the currency collapse that struck China so many years ago. Its government devalued the currency so fast and hard that people were paid in wheelbarrows full of bills (incidentally I am not using hyperbole here) that weren’t worth anything by noon the next day. Maybe we can avoid starving to death in the streets, and war with all the nations who refuse to allow us to settle our bills with the unstable dollar and demand that we barter off the homeland instead.

Trust me... we do not want war with China. Not now, and probably not ever. War these days does not mean what it used to mean. The weapons are too mean, too unscrupulous and too destructive. War between superpowers in the old world meant millions of dead soldiers and cities burned to the ground. They accomplished this with gunpowder and napalm and bullets.

Today, we have missiles that can reach orbit.

We have nuclear weapons hundreds of times more destructive than the horrors that fell on Hiroshima and Nagasaki (any one of these monsters would vaporize all of Manhattan instantaneously, then carry on gallantly into New York State). China has these toys, just like we do, and the question you need to ask yourself is this:

Is China the evil (or amoral) giant or a state of great conscience?

Let us evaluate the options. If China is evil or amoral, they will use nuclear weapons in a war with America. War with them would result in the devastation both of China and of the U.S.. No one would win, and (honestly) no one would probably survive, including you.

If China is a state of great conscience, war with them is not morally justified, and we would be (in actuality) the “bad guys.” History would write us in as the guys that couldn’t pay off our debts and solved the problem by going to war. We would be France! The very fact that I am, this day, mocking France for improper banking practices hundreds of years ago is evidence that you never recover from that kind of idiocy. That doesn’t jive well with me.

So we do not want war. We just don’t.

If we do not want war, we want our creditors to think we can pay them back with money. Which means our money must be worth something, which means we need to stop printing more of it.

Money, like anything else, is prone to supply and demand. If there is more supply, the money is worth less. If there is less supply, the money is worth more. Money must be worth little enough to buy candy, but enough to buy F-14s and nuclear submarines. Right now, the dollar still has value. I can go to Ecuador, pay a Taxi three dollars to take me cross-town and get a huge gourmet lunch for a buck fifty more. Then I can crash at a hostel for six dollars and get breakfast in the deal.

Keep your eye on exchange rates. Right now, Pounds are selling for about 1.1 dollars and Euros for about 1.25 dollars. This is an improvement, mind you, over where we were recently, but this has less to do with improvement at home and more to do with economic collapse in the world outside. The bubble is bursting everywhere.

If the government persists in printing money, then we who can afford it must counter the effect. Consider it a donation of sorts - the printed money is being paid in to repair broken roads and do other such useful stuff, and it is feeding the families of American poor. Every dollar you burn makes their money worth more.

If all of us burn even just a dollar, it will help. Given how little a dollar will be worth soon, that's nothing.

Burn it.

Burn it all.


[Alausi will continue when I've finished the salvage-work on the relevant photographs]