This is a particularly good article that one of my former professors wrote a few months back.  In this article he describes how governments use crises like the 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centers to push certain agendas; notably the curtailment of civil liberties, economic freedom, and personal mobility.

By Lloyd Brown-John, Special to The Windsor Star December 5, 2008

At best, it was perversely amusing and at worst, it was sheer hypocrisy. Big Three automaker executives pleading before a U.S. Congressional Committee for support for their industry. The auto industry is in crisis so to whom do pontificators of the free market system turn? Why, to government, of course.

What BJ does not mention is that there really is no so-called “free market” in that the financial and economies of the world are still very heavily controlled by governments thru the influence of big business.   Yes, big businessmen often rotate between public and private roles; hence, this is how corporations get their lobbying interests passed thru (the politicians often leave the private sector for the public one).

All over Canada and U.S., those who preach for reduced government involvement in the economy and society are suddenly in the face of perceived crisis making appeals to governments for bailouts, guarantees and enhancements.

Yes, of course they are, because bailouts, guarantees and enhancements are pretty much free public money to be dumped into private corporations’ pockets by the hand of their public-sector buddies who often have very well-knit connections thru lobbying.  Who wouldn’t want free money?  What corporation wouldn’t want more regulation with the effect of choking out competition as regulations do?

I am neither disputing either their right to make appeals or even that such appeals should go unheeded. Rather, I want to illustrate a point and that is that even the most conservative business executive, when faced with a crisis over which they apparently have little control, can become implorers of government intervention into the free market system.

It should be noted again that the author of this article is a public administration professor;  basically a shill for government involvement and intervention in the supposed free market.  It wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to say that his interests lay in promoting government public administration as the saviors rather than leaving the economy to private interests (where it should be).

Crisis does that to people. Crisis brings forth subdued resources and talents. Persons who risk their lives to save people in a burning home rarely are able to explain their behaviour in rational terms. None of us is trained to deal with emergencies, but some are exceptionally capable of handling crisis situations. Others falter and, in neither instance, are most able to explain their actions. Likewise, governments are ill-prepared, yet fully-equipped to engage in macro-crisis management.

Yes, governments are fully-equipped to handle macro-economic management like a bulldozer is equipped to perform fine gardening on a sunday afternoon.  Governments time and time again have been proven to be extremely wasteful, inefficient, and cannot possibly forecast or manage an economy as well as private interests can.  When I say “private interest” I mean the pricing signals generated by millions of people buying and selling on an open market.  When government intervention comes in, it makes a mess of the natural signals given off by millions of people; it heavily distorts the market.

Unfortunately when a public crisis emerges, almost invariably, we presume that in some form government will shoulder responsibility and manage the crisis. We absolve ourselves and turn to governments.

This mind set has been prevalent especially so since the advent of Keynesian economics which highlight government intervention, insane spending, and economic control of the market.  Would we not have had Keynesian economics’ (or ‘the government will save us’ mindset among the public) stranglehold on the mind set of politicians and bureaucrats, things would have been much different and people would not look for help from the government.  The problem has always been that government has been controlled by a few wealthy people who have pushed for control of the market and people thru the hand of government.

Our financial and automotive corporate executives have more or less said, “Yes, we made the financial mess but you — government — will have to clean it up.”

Yes, they say this because they want more regulation and control imposed on the “evil free market” because these regulations restrict and impose new barriers to entry into business for small-time players.  As an example, carbon taxes have been touted by big oil companies to be a good thing for everyone, but the real truth is that oil companies want these so-called environmental regulations because it restricts competition. (link)

Naturally, we all should appreciate that governments alone have a capacity to universally impose solutions to problems during periods of crisis. After all, governments in democracies exercise virtually absolute legitimate authority. The recent minority Conservative government’s throne speech offered insights both into how a refreshed government proposes to deal with an economic crisis and how, to some extent, that same government will employ the crisis to pursue its own conservative agenda.

Governments exercise absolute legitimate authority because they have a monopoly on the use of force through the judicial and law enforcement systems, especially through the military.  When’s the last time a politician has truly listened to and taken their electorates’ opinions into consideration and implemented plans for the common man?  Governments are violent thugs and have been proven to be all thoughout history.

To be fair, some governmental, collectivist programs may be considered to be beneficial to populations, but when looking at the whole picture, many of these peograms are doomed to fail because the way monetary system is structured, it becomes apparent that the entire system is doomed to fail.  For instance, fiat currency has been implemented and distorted by government with the abolishment of hard money standards (gold, silver).  No longer does capitalism work for the common man (as it was intended to do).

Employing a crisis to manage a specific policy agenda is not new. Throughout the world, post 9-11, governments employed — and still employ — the threat of terrorism to impose constraints on individual rights and freedoms. Many governments, already inclined to authoritarianism, used self-serving interpretation of crisis management to further restrain their citizens.

He makes a good point here for sure.  I highlighted this in the first paragraph.

Fragile freedoms and modest rights were further eroded not only by enthusiastic regimes in many countries, but they were also aided and abetted by a rapidly developing technological industry where the rewards are extensive for innovative and creative ways of watching, snooping and hiding from citizens.

It is this industry which has given us a technology to completely hide an active battlefield tank and its heat imprint behind a curtain of reflective materials. It is the same high technology industry which now offers airport security the opportunity to evaluate your personal body parts as prospective security threats.

I believe he is describing the military-industrial complex that former President Eisenhower warned us about many, many years ago, but the author of this article probably didn’t want to spook people with so-called “conspiracy theories” when in fact it has been proven that the military-industrial complex is responsible for wars and bloodshed with profit and control as the main motivator.

Soon we may have Ontario drivers’ licences which will contain details of your existence which details eventually should be available to anybody either with a scanner or exceptional hacking ability. Crisis offers opportunity and many technology industries are jumping at those government-induced opportunities. Of course, there is a symbiotic relationship as high-tech security related industries induce governments to consider even more invasive forms of “security” systems.

Throughout history would-be dictators, despots, and politicians have used “terrorism” (notably false-flag terror) to create events where citizens acquiesce and beg their so-called representatives to “save them” from the disaster that unfolded. When false-flag terror is mentioned, this is often a pseudonym for the often planned events necessary for citizens to give up their freedom. It has been used time and time again throughout history by dictators looking for easy ways to control and decimate populations.

Notable events in history which have been proven to be planned and conspiratorial in nature have been the burning of the Reichstag Building in Germany by supposed communists, when in reality it was proven that it was secret agents commanded by shadow governments to carry-out terrorism and blaming it on a created enemy.

This rush to encase our lives in alleged security networks is one issue. The other is a broader approach which the throne speech signalled to employing an economic crisis as a base from which new, unrelated, policy initiatives may be launched.

The warning, for example, to federal public servants that the government would legislate solutions to ongoing collective bargaining was very quickly followed by an agreement between the treasury board and public service unions. The throne speech warning appears to have been heeded.

Yet there remains a multitude of opportunities for the minority Conservative government to pursue specific policy objectives under a pretext that they are in some manner related to managing the economic crisis.

The very term “public interest” is regularly employed as a guise for specific government policy actions.

I would not dispute the current federal or even provincial government’s right as a governing party to pursue its own particular public policy agenda. Policy initiatives will be couched in terms of “public interest” and, whenever possible, cloaked in current crisis management spin. That is the prerogative of any government temporarily imbued with legitimate authority and political power.

What I urge, however, and based upon experiences after 9-11, is that we as a public always view with some skepticism claims both that a policy initiative is invariably “in the public interest” and, more specifically, that it is part of the government’s overall plan to manage the economic crisis.

Crisis is opportunity.

The Vietnam War was another notable event, specifically the Gulf of Tonkin Incident where “rather than being on a routine patrol Aug. 2, the U.S. destroyer Maddox was actually engaged in aggressive intelligence-gathering maneuvers — in sync with coordinated attacks on North Vietnam by the South Vietnamese navy and the Laotian air force. ‘The day before, two attacks on North Vietnam…had taken place,’ writes scholar Daniel C. Hallin. Those assaults were “part of a campaign of increasing military pressure on the North that the United States had been pursuing since early 1964.” (link)

The opportunity for you, the reader, is to become more aware that the currency you are issued by your government is destined to become worthless because history shows that fiat money eventually becomes worthless as politicians cannot help themselves but to spend it out of existence.   Gold and silver are the only reliable alternatives to fiat money in this day and age of hyperinflation and deflation.