People who are not libertarians (or libertarian leaning) probably see most libertarians as pessimistic people.

I don’t like telling people that there will probably be a recession in 2023, but it is just based on the facts on the ground.

I don’t like telling people that they are getting ripped off by their own government (as if this is a secret). We are getting ripped off far greater than most people can fathom. I point it out in the hopes that more people will stop consenting to those who are abusing them.

Because I point these things out, it is easy for others to look at me as being a pessimist. I don’t think it is being pessimistic to point out truths around you, but I understand I am attempting to shatter people’s view of the world. Sometimes ignorance really is bliss, although I don’t think that was as much the case in 2020 until now with COVID hysteria.

If I were to always point out the bad situations, then it is understandable that others would look at me as a pessimist. I don’t want to ruin the party when everyone else is having fun.

There are some people with whom I just won’t discuss politics. I know better. I know they won’t be receptive. So as long as they are not challenging me, I leave them alone.

But even for those who may be receptive, there is a time and a place. It isn’t always easy to get those things right either. There have been times that I pushed too hard on a political issue that I regretted. Of course, there are also appropriate and not appropriate times to bring up a host of other issues that aren’t political as well.

The True Libertarian Pessimists

For some reason, I have become more annoyed by the libertarians who just can’t see anything good in the world. They see nothing to be optimistic about. They are just downers all the time.

Even if the political system is totally corrupt and irredeemable, it doesn’t mean we should live miserable lives all the time. There are many aspects of life to enjoy, even with the presence of a massive state. There is family, music, art, sports, and just the company of others.

I also get tired of libertarians who just constantly think everything is getting worse. And they are so skeptical that they talk themselves out of anything that should be seen as positive.

For example, some libertarians dismissed the political drama of Congress choosing a Speaker of the House. It really was mostly political drama, and who knows if it will make any difference. But there were a few Republicans in Congress who were tired of the establishment and pushed back a little. These people aren’t perfect, and maybe they partially did it for their own political reasons. But why should we just completely dismiss any pushback against the establishment?

We may get more investigations of the intelligence agencies because of this. We may get more investigations into COVID and the lockdowns and mandates. Maybe nothing will come of these committees and hearings, but at least there is more light being shed, which is better than before.

I hear the same thing with voting in general. Some libertarians will say that they don’t want to endorse the corrupt system, so they don’t vote. They may also say that it would make no difference anyway because they are all corrupt, as if every person running for office is exactly the same.

The reason for not voting often changes, but most of the time it comes back to pessimism. Some libertarians won’t vote at all because everyone is corrupt and there is no hope in changing anything.

But change can and does happen, even for the better. It is also important to acknowledge how much worse things could be. While the U.S. maintains some of the most draconian vaccine mandates (non-American residents/ citizens cannot enter the country without proof of “vaccination” against COVID), the U.S. has been far better off with other COVID policies compared to other major countries.

It was Americans who led the world away from COVID hysteria by opening things back up. Are these libertarian pessimists going to say that it doesn’t matter at all who is elected when Florida was opened up by the end of 2020 while most other states had major restrictions still in place?

In 2021, we started to see sporting events again with packed stadiums. It made it impossible for the hysterics to continue with draconian lockdowns.

There is a saying, “Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.”

I think it is sometimes used as an excuse to support bad things. At the same time, there is an element of truth to it. I can criticize Ron DeSantis for things he does that are opposed to liberty, but I can also recognize that he is much better than most other governors.

I can disagree with Tucker Carlson on certain things, but I can’t just say that he is the same as Sean Hannity. There is a big difference between the two. If you can’t recognize that, then you aren’t paying attention or you just simply don’t understand what is being said.

In general, I think it is important to recognize the many gains in liberty and the shift in public opinion.

Homeschooling has exploded in the U.S. Gun ownership by everyday people is quite high. Marijuana has been largely legalized or decriminalized by a majority of states despite the laws of the federal government.

Even with technology, things are much better. It can be used against us by the spying state, but it is also a tool to spread the message of liberty that didn’t exist 30 years ago.

There are probably more radical libertarians today than there have been at any time during the 20th century. In fact, the libertarians of today are probably more radical (in a good way) than most of the American colonist of the late 1700s.

There is a lot to be pessimistic about, but there is also a lot to be optimistic about. We should recognize both. And don’t bring everyone else down when they are having a good time. It doesn’t help our cause anyway.

Joe Biden seems to be in hot water. It’s amazing how the establishment will eat its own when its convenient.

With everything that Biden has gotten away with, are some leftover classified documents from when he was vice president going to be his downfall?

The Biden regime has had control over most of the media and the intelligence agencies. The only thing it hasn’t had full control over is alternative media, a few members of Congress, and, at times, the courts. It is hard to believe that all of a sudden they have found Biden doing something wrong.

This guy has only been president for two years, yet he has been an absolute disaster at every level. He tried to force 100 million Americans into choosing between getting jabbed or losing their job. He has funded the criminal organization that is the Ukrainian government (from one criminal to another). He has used the FBI and other agencies as his personal Gestapo to raid and destroy the lives of people who oppose him.

He has gotten away with murder, literally and figuratively, and now he is in trouble because there are a few boxes of documents in his garage? It tells me that the establishment may be using this to put him on notice that his time will be up soon. He will be gone from office by January 21, 2024 at the latest. They will put someone else up against Trump or whomever is the Republican nominee.

The rich thing about Biden and these so-called classified documents is just what an obnoxious and pompous jerk he was last year when talking about Trump. He wondered how anyone could be so irresponsible.

Now, when Biden is asked about documents with his Corvette, he points out that it was a locked garage. He said it’s not like they were out on the street. The right question back at him would have been, “Were the documents in Trump’s home out on the street?”

I really don’t care about classified documents. I only care to the extent that they probably shouldn’t be classified at all. Most things shouldn’t be classified. What happened to government transparency?

It is amazing how much the government wants to keep secret. Even the JFK assassination files from nearly 6 decades ago haven’t been fully released. It makes you wonder what they’re hiding.

After 9/11, I remember hearing that you should have nothing to hide if you haven’t done anything wrong. That was completely wrong, as you should be fearful about what the government may do to you. But why doesn’t this apply to the government itself? You shouldn’t have anything to hide unless you’ve done something wrong. Most of these classified documents have nothing to do with nuclear codes or anything related.

Biden and his handlers are despicable people, and they deserve to be held up as criminals. I don’t think the case of having possession of classified materials is any great crime in itself. I wonder what the powers-that-be have up their sleeve with this one. They already had full control of Biden, so that can’t be it. They could also easily force him not to run in 2024 and just cite age and health as a reason.

I’ve heard the theory that if they get Biden on this, then they can also go after Trump. The establishment doesn’t care about Biden at all. They will use him until he is no longer useful. He has already served their purpose of defeating Trump (whether legitimate or not), and helping to enact their tyrannical agenda. They are ready to toss him aside at any moment if it can help stop Trump in 2024.

The CPI report came out for December 2022.  Price inflation came in right where it was expected to be.

The CPI came in at negative 0.1% for December, while the year-over-year now stands at 6.5%.

The median CPI, which is less volatile, came in at 0.4% for the month, and it is up 6.9% year-over year.

Most asset classes finished the day higher, probably due to expectations that the Fed can be a little less hawkish on inflation.  Gold was higher.  Bitcoin was higher.  Bonds were higher with longer-term interest rates going down.  Stocks finished higher.

I think the little rally, particularly in stocks, is going to be short-lived.  The Fed could stop raising interest rates and stop draining its balance sheet right now, and I don’t think it would change the fact that there is a recession coming.

Unless the Fed goes ballistic and starts doubling its balance sheet again, as it did in 2020, then I don’t think the coming recession will be stopped.

The Treasury yields are still highly inverted at this point.  The 30-year yield is more than 100 basis points below the 3-month yield.  This is bordering on absurdity.  I can’t ever remember seeing the yield curve this inverted.  It wasn’t this inverted in 2006 or 2007 before the financial crisis hit.

The bond market is screaming recession, while the Fed will like continue to raise its target federal funds rate, even if more slowly.

And let’s not pretend the era of inflation is over.  We are still at 6.5% year-over-year, which is way above the Fed’s supposed target of 2%.

I have not taken the position that some libertarians and Austrian school economists have taken that price inflation will continue to roar, and possibly even go higher.  I am more in the camp that price inflation will fall in the short run, at least until the Fed goes on another massive money creation spree.

I believe there is going to be a deep recession in the near future.  It will likely start before the end of 2023.  This is going to reduce consumer demand for many things that aren’t necessities.  The prices for food at the grocery store may not come down, but a lot of other things likely will fall in price.

Fear will quickly take over in the economy.  People will become more conservative with their money.  For those who maintain their income, they will likely save more money where possible.

The U.S. stock market was hammered in 2022.  The Nasdaq was hit especially hard.  It was down about 33% last year.  This does not at all mean we are anywhere near a bottom.  I will discuss this in a future post, but I think there is a lot more room to fall.

So while consumer price inflation seems to be cooling a little bit, the economy is still in major trouble with the past misallocations.  The bond market says a recession is coming soon.  This is the best warning you’ll get.

If you watch the establishment media, things seem rather rosy with the economy, as they almost always do.  It is surprising that some are admitting we may see a recession this year, but most of them are quick to say that it should be mild.

On the other hand, if you find alternative views, it is easy to find people who make it sound like the apocalypse is coming soon to a town near you.  I’m not saying that their predictions are impossible or that they definitely won’t happen.  At the same time, it is important to realize that life usually goes on.

As long as we don’t have an all-out nuclear war, life should go on, even if the economy is bad.  It will be a struggle for many, but most people living in a first-world country should be able to survive.

While I think a recession is inevitable because of past government and central bank policies, the economic future isn’t written in stone either.  It really is possible that we could have a hard recession that somewhat quickly (within a couple of years) turns around.

The 1970s were a rough period with stagnation and high inflation.  When Paul Volcker entered the Fed and allowed interest rates to dramatically increase, we saw recession for a couple of years in the early 1980s.  But the correction, which truly was a correction, was allowed to take place, and we saw relative boom times after that.

In other words, no matter how bad the economy may be, it is possible to have great economic times in the near future if the right policies are enacted, which mostly means getting rid of bad policies.

Sure, there is a misallocation of resources.  The correction is an attempt to correctly reallocate those resources in accordance with consumer demand.  Some of the wealth, or what was thought of as wealth, is destroyed.  But after a recession, the technology is still there.  The things we have learned should still be there.  The production capacity is still there.  So it is quite possible to recover quickly.  In fact, if there is minimal interference, it is likely that things will recover quickly.

From Rags to Riches

There is an even starker example than the 1980s in the United States.  Think about Japan and Germany after World War 2.  These two countries were close to obliterated.  When we talk about destroyed wealth, they literally had destroyed wealth in the form of buildings turned into rubble.

Luckily for the people there, the governments of Japan and Germany adopted relatively free market policies shortly after the end of the war.  And it followed that these two countries saw great prosperity after this time, in spite of the war devastation.

You can see many other examples of countries that became rich and prosperous after adopting free market policies.  Places like Singapore and Hong Kong became some of the richest places on earth.  Dubai is now a very wealthy place due to the lack of economic controls and taxation.  Despite what some think, it is not primarily due to oil.

Even China is an example of an impoverished country that rose up quickly after allowing some market policies to be adopted.  It is amazing what people will do and accomplish when they are allowed to flourish.

Japan and Germany were a mess after the war.  China, in 1980, was extremely poor due to the communist economy.  So these countries started at a very low point.

The United States is generally a rich country today.  It’s just that a lot of resources are wasted on the welfare and warfare state.  While some of the wealth that appears on paper may be fake (think of stocks and cryptocurrencies), a lot of the wealth we have is very real.  Americans generally enjoy nice houses, nice cars, and an overall good standard of living compared to much of the rest of the world.  I say that with the full acknowledgement that many families are struggling to pay their bills these days.

The point is that the United States of today isn’t going to be a rags to riches story.  It could be a story of rich to richer.

If free enterprise is just allowed to breathe a bit, it is amazing what entrepreneurs can do.  Even in our environment of regulation and high taxes, entrepreneurs and companies still find a way to satisfy consumer demand in many ways.  It is just more expensive for both parties than it needs to be.

If total government spending were cut by just 25%, and the worst of the regulations were repealed, we would see a boom unimaginable today.  We would see business activity soar, savings soar, and consumer goods getting cheaper and better over time.

We need to dramatically reduce the size and scope of the state, which also includes the Federal Reserve.  If the government stopped running up the debt, then the Fed wouldn’t have to monetize the debt to help fund the government spending.

There is no reason we can’t have the growth of the 1950s or the late 1800s with today’s technology.  It is amazing how much technology has advanced with a big presence of the state.  Just imagine how rich and prosperous we could be if we let economic freedom prevail.

I had the football game on the television when Damar Hamlin of the Buffalo Bills collapsed on the field.  I quickly realized that this was not really a football injury.

I have seen concussions on the field.  I have seen players injure different body parts.  It doesn’t happen often, but there have been spinal cord injuries.

In the case of Hamlin, he actually stood up after the play.  After about a second or two, he just collapsed.  It was fairly clear that it was a heart issue.

I thought I heard Joe Buck say that Hamlin had received oxygen, but maybe he meant after his collapse.  I am unable to find a transcript of what exactly was said.

It is also important to note that Hamlin is not some 300-pound lineman.  He is a safety weighing about 200 pounds.  To be a safety, you have to be in really good shape.

So the media and “experts” can gaslight us all they want and say that he got struck in the heart at just the right time, but it is rather clear that this young man had heart issues going into the game.

A young athlete with heart issues isn’t impossible, but it does seem to be happening more often these days.  And if it is acknowledged that he had heart issues before that play, then I’m sure the gaslighting media will say that it was a long-term side effect of COVID or something else.  They won’t admit it could have been from the so-called vaccine.

I know some will say it is insensitive to bring up such a topic when a young man is fighting for his life.  But there is speculation all over the place on what happened.  So why is it just the vaccine skeptics who aren’t allowed to say anything?

If this incident happened because of the so-called vaccine, it is vitally important to know.  It will help put a stop to people getting any more boosters, especially young people.  This is exactly the reason that the powers-that-be want to shut us up and not discuss this.  They seem intent on pushing their vaccines, even if it is causing young people to die.

It is also important to know if this was a vaccine injury because people who got jabbed can then be screened for heart problems.  They can at least know where they stand and even possibly try remedies to reverse side effects.

Of course, it will also tell us that the people pushing the so-called vaccines are complicit in the genocide.  It will be especially bad for those who tried to mandate vaccination, as it appears to be a criminal act.  It was already a criminal act for government officials to force people to inject something in their bodies, but if that very thing was known to be a death sentence for some, then it implicates murder.

Joe Biden is the number one criminal, even if he has dementia.  He tried to mandate the shot for about 100 million people in order to keep their job.

A Turning Point?

There have been many celebrities that possibly suffered death or injury because of the jabs.  Some of the major ones off the top of my head are Celine Dion, Justin Bieber, and Bob Saget.  I can’t say for certainty with any one of them that it was the jab, but that is certainly what it looks like.

When Hamlin collapsed on the field, there were likely tens of millions of people watching.  It was rather clear that it wasn’t a football injury except in that his heartbeat and adrenaline would have been higher than normal.

If he is able to survive, it was especially lucky that it happened in a professional football game.  They have several doctors and an ambulance ready to go.  If this had happened in another activity, or even at practice, he probably wouldn’t have been revived.

We are now in a situation where people generally know what happened.  They know it was a cardiac event.  It is just a question of whether people can step outside of the gaslighting just long enough to realize with their own eyes and common sense that this didn’t happen because of a hit to his chest.

A new Rasmussen poll shows that over a quarter of Americans believe they know someone who possibly died because of the vaccines, and nearly half believe vaccine side effects have caused a significant number of unexplained deaths.  This would have been taken before the Monday night game.  This is quite significant.

If we get to a point where 60 or 70 percent of Americans think the COVID shots are deadly, then the game is up for the establishment.  It means that most people think Joe Biden is a complete liar.  It means that most people will no longer trust the medical establishment and the pharmaceutical companies.  It means that the government becomes, in many ways, illegitimate.

The government that is supposed to protect us and care for us (ha ha) is actually trying to kill us.  It is rather clear that these vaccines weren’t just a mistake.  It isn’t a matter of “oops, it isn’t as safe and effective as we thought”.  These criminals mandated the jabs, which were neither safe nor effective.

I hate seeing this quiet genocide.  Most people who get the shot do not suffer any noticeable side effects that last.  We don’t know the long-term effects yet, and hopefully there won’t be much.  But even if just one in a thousand people who get the jab end up prematurely dead, that is a massive number of people when you consider that a couple of hundred million Americans got jabbed.  Worldwide, it is probably at 5 billion, although there were different shots for different areas.

If “just” one out of a thousand people die because of the shot, that means that over 100,000 Americans have died or will die because of the shot.  I am not convinced that the number isn’t worse that this.  And again, we don’t know the long-term effects with cancer, autoimmune diseases, and heart problems.  We also have to acknowledge the vaccine injured who may not die but have their lives forever changed.

We can all hope that this young man survives, and we should also hope that if the vaccines are causing these injuries and deaths that have seemed to increase since 2021 that the large majority of people become aware.  The criminals need to be held to account, and we need to move away from the tyranny.

This will be one of my main themes for 2023. It is looking highly likely that the United States will enter a recession in 2023.

The yield curve is highly inverted at this point. When the yield on a 30-year bond is paying less than the yield on a 1-month Treasury, you know there is something wrong.

In the face of this inverted yield curve, the Fed is tightening its monetary policy to fight the inflation that it created. The Fed has been increasing its target federal funds rate, and it has been slowly draining its balance sheet.

The price inflation picture remains unclear for 2023. It is possible that consumer price inflation could come down quite a bit if we hit a hard recession, which will damper consumer spending and demand.

At the same time, it’s possible that we could see a major asset deflation without the rate of consumer prices for necessities coming down. For example, food may continue to increase in price in general, while the prices for stocks and houses are going down.

It is important to prepare ahead of time. If you wait until we are in the midst of a recession to change your lifestyle and your mentality, then it will be a much more painful time.

You obviously want to prepare with actionable things, to the degree its possible. You may not have much control over whether you lose your job, although even here you should try to make yourself indispensable to the degree possible.

If you have your own business, you want to take steps to reduce risk, particularly not being over-leveraged.

You also don’t want to have any personal debt that has a high interest rate. Of course, you never want this anyway, but it is especially important in a recession. In fact, you don’t really want to have any debt, if possible, other than maybe a low interest rate mortgage.

From an investment standpoint, you don’t want to be heavy in stocks, as they are likely to tumble overall. There are always a few individual stocks that do well anyway, but good luck picking them.

They say cash is king in a recession, and this is mostly true, as long as it isn’t an inflationary recession like the 1970s. No matter what, it is good to have some liquid funds on the sidelines, even when the currency is depreciating at 8% or so per year.

There are many actionable things you can do now to prepare, including reducing your overall spending. But perhaps the most important thing is to prepare mentally.

If you are cutting your spending, even by a few percentage points, and you are anticipating a hard recession ahead, then it will make it easier emotionally on you when it does arrive.

And if the recession never does arrive in 2023, then the worst case is that you will have deprived yourself of a few things and saved a little bit more money or paid down debt.

It is hard for anyone if they all of a sudden have to cut their spending by 10% or more. If you started by cutting even 2%, it will be much easier on you. It’s not just because you already started, but because you were anticipating hard times ahead. It is far less emotionally draining.

I know a major correction is coming. Maybe they (the government and the Fed) can somehow kick the can a little farther down the road. Either way, there will be a major adjustment at some point. It would be wise to prepare for what’s ahead. You can use the start of the new year to make some minor lifestyle changes.

As we close out 2022, the dollar price of gold is just above $1,800 per ounce. While the gold price has fluctuated a bit, it has actually mostly stayed within a narrow range.

Starting around the beginning of the 21st century, gold went on a bull market run for about 10 years. It has largely been uneventful since that time. There was a short-term bear market in 2015 and 2016. If you had invested in gold around 2011 near its high, you wouldn’t have seen much in the way of gains or losses in terms of U.S. dollars since that time, although the dollar has depreciated quite a bit in that time.

Precious metals, particularly gold and silver, is the only major asset class that isn’t in a bubble. While stocks, real estate, cryptos, and other assets have roared higher for the last several years, the metals haven’t done much.

Bonds are a different story. They are likely in an unsustainable long-term bubble, but they could still do well in 2023 if there is a deep recession and interest rates fall.

The yield curve is highly inverted as we close out the year, and a deep recession looks likely in 2023. This will have a great impact on all asset prices, including gold. It will also depend on the actions taken by central banks, and the Federal Reserve in particular.

We can fully expect that real estate and stocks will go down in 2023. The declines have already begun, and the decline in the Nasdaq has really begun. To be sure, in early 2020 I thought it was crazy that the Nasdaq was going to hit 10,000. I thought it was a bubble then. With the massive sell-off in 2022, the Nasdaq is now slightly above the 10,000 mark.

So the question may not be whether gold will go up in price in 2023. It is more a question of whether it will do better than most other investments, and I think the answer is yes.

In the 2008 financial crisis, gold went down. But it didn’t get hit as hard as stocks and housing, and it went back up rather quickly. The same thing could happen in 2023, especially if and when the Fed reverses course and stops its monetary tightening.

Dollar Strength and the Fed

One of the other factors to consider when looking at the gold price is the relative strength of the U.S. dollar. In 2022, the euro actually fell below the dollar, although it has gained back some of its losses at the end of the year.

But the overall strong dollar (relative to the other major currencies) has been a weakness for gold, at least for Americans. If you look at the gold price in euros, it is much stronger these days and not far off its all-time highs.

Investors are taking the Fed seriously about tightening its monetary policy to get price inflation under control. Of course, the high price inflation is a result of the Fed’s previous policies, but the Fed seems to be the only major central bank that is serious about getting it under control.

Maybe that will all go out the window with a bad recession in 2023. It may go out the window if major financial institutions get in trouble. But for right now, the Fed continues to tighten in the face of an inverted yield curve.

The Fed is not going to reverse course just to save the stock market, at least as long as price inflation is above 3%. But if we have a deep recession and consumer demand plummets, it is possible that price inflation could go down significantly in the coming year.

If the Fed reacts and starts expanding its balance sheet again, then I believe gold will enter a new bull market. If the Fed just stops tightening but doesn’t move to an easy money policy either, then expect almost everything to go down.

But again, gold will go down less.

So even if gold isn’t going higher in 2023, what are your alternatives? I don’t recommend a large position in stocks or real estate right now. I certainly don’t recommend cryptos. Maybe some bonds are a good idea for diversification, but they have risks too.

That leaves gold and cash. I think gold is a great form of diversification right now. It may not shine brightly in 2023, but it may be the least bad option at this point for a good chunk of your portfolio.

If and when the Fed starts loosening again, then all bets are off. I expect gold to go higher, and I expect gold mining stocks will have the potential to go up in multiples of where they are now.

The ruling class have always been against the people, at least in the United States for anyone alive today. However, the ruling class are more exposed today for a variety of reasons.

Technology is likely the number one reason, as people can communicate and disseminate information almost instantaneously. We no longer have to rely on just the establishment news sources to get information (or disinformation).

There are other reasons as well. Donald Trump helped to expose the establishment. Sometimes it wasn’t on purpose. The Ron Paul presidential campaigns woke up a small segment of the population, and many of these people are still trying to spread the message of liberty. There is a stronger libertarian movement in the U.S. today than at any time in the last century.

The ruling class itself has overplayed its hand. You can see this with Donald Trump. They try so desperately to smack him down that they just look pathetic at times. They have also become more bold in their rhetoric and their actions, which have been especially evident since the COVID hysteria began in 2020.

Since the ruling elite are more exposed, they are also fighting back. They are digging in hard, and they are out to destroy those who threaten their power.

This is why online censorship has become so prevalent. The government and the powers-that-be would prefer that some people know they are censoring rather than risk information getting out there that would hurt them.

When something looks bad for the establishment, they are often choosing the lesser of evils. It is better for the establishment to have everyone just think that Jeffrey Epstein was murdered than to risk having him reveal any secrets. It is better for them to withhold documents on the Kennedy assassination than for people to find out what really happened.

More people are better informed today because they are paying attention and because they have alternative sources for information. This is a great risk to the ruling class, and they know it.

This makes it an incredibly opportune time to smack down the ruling class and to gain greater liberty. But it is also a very risky time because the ruling elite will not easily relinquish their power.

It will be incredibly dangerous for anyone to challenge particular individuals or agencies. If they are a threat to the ruling elite’s power, then they will be threatened and risk harm.

The best way to take down the ruling class and dramatically reduce the size and scope of government is to continue informing others and making them realize who their true enemies are.

If a majority, or even a sizable minority, are well educated and understand the benefits of liberty, then the people ruling over us will lose their power. They cannot rule for long without the consent of the people.

The social media companies have been engaging in widespread censorship, especially since COVID and the lead-up to the 2020 presidential election.  It isn’t just conservatives and libertarians being censored.  It is really anyone who is going against the establishment narrative who is vulnerable to censorship.

There have been calls from some people for the government to regulate social media companies to ensure free speech.  This is completely wrong and anti liberty.  It is especially crazy to suggest such a thing when it is the government that is largely behind the censoring.

If the government played absolutely no role in censorship, it is hard to say what would be happening now.  Maybe we would still see widespread censorship just because it is seen as the culturally popular thing to do.  Chances are, though, there would be a lot less censorship coming from big tech companies.

Property rights should be respected, so libertarians should not ever call for government intervention to prevent a private company from engaging in censorship.  The problem we have is that there is already government intervention, and it is unlawful and immoral.

It was already obvious that the government was, at the very least, pressuring social media companies to censor or hide anything of significance that went against the establishment narrative.  With Elon Musk buying Twitter and releasing documents, we now have the proof that the FBI and the executive branch (at a minimum) have been telling Twitter what to censor.

It would be naïve to think that this isn’t going on with other major social media and big tech companies like Facebook and Google.

My Blog

I originally started this blog using Blogger/ Blogspot, which are owned by Google.  At some point, I switched over to WordPress, which I actually don’t find that user friendly.  I also lost traffic when I switched, although some of that could have been my fault for broken links that were supposed to point back to my own posts.

I have used WordPress for quite a while now, and I can see the traffic.  It is far lower than it was when I used Blogger.  I have a small group of loyal followers who either get an email with my posts or check out my site periodically, but I still get some traffic referred from search engines.

I can tell you that I get almost no referrals from Google, which is the biggest search platform.  I get the most referrals from DuckDuckGo.  Maybe there are more libertarians or people searching for libertarian things on DuckDuckGo, but it shouldn’t be this imbalanced considering DuckDuckGo has a small fraction of the users as Google.

Interestingly, despite my many criticisms of Bill Gates, I do get some hits from Bing.  I get more from Bing than I do from Google.

I have no doubt that Google is censoring my posts because of what they say.  I have been a critic of lockdowns and COVID vaccines since the beginning of those things, and I have had my share of things to say about Trump (some positive and some not).

Google is hiding my posts on purpose because they go against the establishment narrative.  I used to get many hits coming from Google, even after I had switched to WordPress.  It was my primary source of traffic.  If you search for “libertarian investments”, you will probably find my site.  But if you search for words related to a post on the site, you probably won’t find it on the first page of Google results, if at all.

I’m just relaying this personal experience because it is indicative of what is happening.  The big tech companies are censoring content that goes against the establishment narrative.  And it is likely coming directly from the FBI or some other government agency.  Twitter wasn’t/ isn’t alone on this front.

Illegal Pressuring

Maybe this goes against the 1^St Amendment.  It certainly goes against the spirit of the 1^st Amendment.  But that says that Congress shall make no law.  And technically, Congress hasn’t made a law here except in that it funds the FBI.

If you want to look at the amendment really being violated, it is the same amendment that is violated almost all of the time.  The 10^th Amendment states that powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution are reserved to the States or the people.

There is no authority in the Constitution that grants any government agency the right to censor anyone, or to threaten any company to get them to censor anyone.

The people telling Twitter and any other companies what to censor are breaking the law.  They are committing a criminal act and should be prosecuted.  But the criminals are the ones in charge, so that isn’t happening.  We haven’t even seen an apology, let alone a resignation, from the head of the FBI.

Of course, Biden and company know what is happening and are in on it.  They are criminals as well.  They are trying to shut people up, and they are doing it by threatening the use of government violence.

The only thing that will stop this is a mass awakening by the public.  The good news is that more people are awakening to the evil establishment forces.  The ruling elite criminals are not just Democrats, which many Republicans are starting to realize.

Elon Musk didn’t really tell us much that we didn’t already know (for those paying attention), but it is proof.  And it has also awakened more people and put the discussion out there.  More Americans are losing faith in the system, which they should.  Now they need to withdraw their consent.

We are told to follow the science.  We are told that the data tells us to get vaccinated.  We were once told that it was a pandemic of the unvaccinated.  We have continually been told that the COVID vaccines are safe and effective.

Where is the data?  The placebo groups in the vaccine trials were told to go ahead and get jabbed because it was so important to be vaccinated.  So we have no control group from the vaccine trials, which was done on purpose.  We do have a control group in the tens of millions of Americans who were able to avoid the shots, but there is no tracking of the impacts (on purpose).

In a recent NBC “News” article, it says all of these wonderful things about the COVID shots in spite of their shortcomings.  Yet there are two sentences that make a surprising admission.

“Six in 10 adults who died of Covid in August were vaccinated or boosted, according to a report by KFF, a nonprofit health think tank.  And for the most part, vaccinated people don’t avoid infections or reinfections anymore.”

So the establishment mouthpiece of NBC is admitting that the majority of COVID deaths are people who are vaccinated.  Now, I understand the counterarguments quite well.  There are more people who are vaccinated than non-vaccinated. Amongst older people, there are an even higher percentage of people vaccinated, and it is mostly older people who supposedly die of COVID.

Still, what kind of “vaccines” are these?  Does this really count for being “effective”?  If the majority of people who die of COVID are vaccinated, then the vaccines are doing a lousy job of being effective.

My guess is that the rate of vaccinated deaths is actually much higher than what is being stated here, if for nothing else that we have been continually lied to.  There are other reasons to doubt the data as well.

But even if we trust this data, it is not a good selling point for the vaccines.  And it is also the wrong overall measure.  The question isn’t whether the vaccines make you less likely to die of COVID.  The question is whether the vaccines make you less likely to die.  And this is the big missing statistic.

It actually goes beyond death too.  You can have a vaccine injury that does not necessarily result in a premature death but does result in a reduced lifestyle.  Let’s say I am told that a vaccine will reduce my risk of death by 50% for something that kills 1 out of 10,000 people.  But if I take the vaccine, there is a one out of a thousand risk of an autoimmune disease or partial paralysis of my body.  I would probably choose not to take the vaccine.

Still, even if we just use death as a measurement, we have to look at the overall mortality rate.  In the Pfizer trial (see page 23), more people died in the vaccinated group than in the non-vaccinated group, yet they hailed it as a success because there was one less person in the vaccinated group who died of COVID.

If a vaccine saves you from one thing but kills you anyway, then what’s the point?

It is very hard to get overall mortality statistics out of the CDC, but we know that there has been excess mortality since 2020.  The excess deaths in 2020 can be explained by COVID, or more likely, the mistreatment of people who tested positive for COVID.  The lockdowns and the fear of the virus could have also contributed to premature death for some.

So how do you explain that deaths were even higher in 2021?  Insurance companies have reported a spike in deaths since 2021 for younger (working age) people.  Wouldn’t the number of deaths go down with a working vaccine?

It is actually probably worse than this because some people died prematurely in 2020, which means the death rate should have gone down from there.  Think of it this way.  In 2020, you have a person who is 85 years old.  He gets COVID and goes to the hospital.  He is put on a ventilator and dies.  If he hadn’t gotten COVID and been put on a ventilator, maybe he would have lived to be 87.  But since he died in 2020, he can’t die in 2022.  So that is one less death for 2022 because it happened earlier.

Yet, in 2021, and probably in 2022, we are still getting excess deaths.  But nobody seems to want to talk about this except for the hardcore vaccine skeptics.

It would be interesting to know what percentage of the people who have died in the last 18 to 22 months were vaccinated as compared to the rest of the population.  It would be particularly interesting to know about younger people.

But we won’t see these statistics come out of the government or the pharmaceutical companies.  They don’t want them to be known for a reason.