The Gullible are Positive, but Can Be Deceived. Part 5 in the Approach to Life series

If the cynical stance is not the best approach to life, then does being gullible give better results?

Being gullible is the complete opposite of cynicism. Here you're very positive about what might happen in the future. You may not know much if anything about it, but you subscribe to the view that people are generally good, they won't do anything to harm you. Being gullible will certainly get you into some exciting situations, but can have adverse rather than beneficial consequences.

Do Politicians Take Advantage of the Gullible?
Many people are gullible. Those that blindly follow a politician's lead without thinking about the long-term consequences for either the country or even themselves are exactly that, blind followers.

You'll change your life by realizing how many people are willing, even eager to manipulate others in order to fulfill their own agenda. The high number of unemployed are victims of ostensibly sensible policies sponsored by politicians who love power, who want to be re-elected, and who don't mind how many people's lives they ruin in the process.

Do you just want a job, any job, or would you rather become wealthy? Before voting for someone, the secret of success is to find out how much experience they have in creating wealth for themselves, as opposed to just earning an employee's salary. If a politician has no practical experience in creating wealth for him/herself, how can he know which policies will create wealth for the whole country, including you?

There's No Free Lunch
Short-term thinking will tell you that a free lunch is a great idea, and a permanent free lunch is an even better one. Yet the long-term outcome of a desire to live at someone else's expense must not be that obvious - since it's generally ignored.

In a game of cards, if you haven't identified the patsy who's being fleeced, then that's you. You're the patsy! When you have a free lunch, someone somewhere will pay for it. You can change your life by realizing a permanent free lunch will need someone to pay for it permanently. In reality, there's no free lunch.

You pay for it one way or another
Some of the ways in which you pay are not so obvious, because opportunities which are NOT created are invisible. You lose job opportunities because the money taken in taxes from the rich cannot be used by the rich to create wealth for them and jobs for you.

Taxes increase as politicians look for yet more opportunities to purchase your vote with someone else's money. You'll change your life by understanding basic economic and political incentives.

Taxes which initially affect only the rich at a low-level continue to go up and eventually affect everybody - including you. The US income tax began in 1913 with a top rate of only 7 percent and affected less than 1 percent of the population. Now it has grown into a nightmare affecting us all*.

You pay through the decrease in the purchasing power of your money, general inflation, which nowadays has been euphemistically relabeled as quantitive easing. They misleadingly explain that quantitive easing is to stimulate growth or to buy assets, bonds, pieces of paper from the banking system. Yet devaluing the money is neither necessary nor inevitable. The secret of success is to understand why general inflation was zero - prices stayed broadly the same for a century - while U.S. politicians had the enforced discipline of the gold standard.

Why have house prices increased over the past several decades? Other things being equal, the value of your house hasn't changed. Its worth has stayed the same, but its price measured in dollars has increased - see the crucial difference here. It's the money supply, the quantity issued by the central bank which increases, which means the value of the currency decreases. Hence the nominal price of your house increases while its value - its worth - remains unchanged. General inflation causes the purchasing power of the money in your pocket to depreciate.

Inflation Ends in Hyper-Inflation
Germany knows the secret of success, it's one of the few countries that does not run a perpetual budget deficit. I'm told that German house prices have not changed in decades since their politicians don't depreciate their currency by printing money. Why not? Because Germany experienced hyper-inflation many years ago, and remember the valuable lesson.

Zimbabwe has just had the same lesson, issuing a one trillion Zimbabwe dollar note, that's one million million dollars, twelve zeroes - $1,000,000,000,000. And their paper currency even had an expiry date printed on it! Inflation was rampant, the value of their currency depreciated so fast that yearly inflation figures were meaningless. You needed to spend it as soon as you got it, because you knew that next week it would be worth less, if not actually be worthless.

Are politicians trustworthy?
Yet many if not most establishment politicians pretend that quantitive easing - printing money - is a good idea, which suggests that they are either economically illiterate or untrustworthy. Politicians are professionally trained to make even the most ridiculous idea sound attractive.The more sincere they sound, the better trained they are.

You'll change your life when you ask yourself is: Is anyone trying to buy my vote with someone else's money?

So if you see a politician promising you freebies for which someone else will pay, then run a mile. Such unsustainable promises can only end in ruin for almost everybody. Of course, he and his cohorts won't lose out, you're the one who will pay for it eventually.

Switzerland has eliminated this problem
The US constitution was the base for Switzerland's much improved system. The Swiss Federation limits taxes and federal power along with ensuring sound money. Competition between the cantons (states) guarantees policies reflecting your needs, and changeable borders allow you to move your property next door...

Most importantly, the improvements ensure that politicians have to sell each idea to the people, thus eliminating misleading attempts by smooth-talking sophist politicians to implement economically ridiculous ideas. As a result Switzerland and its people are among the wealthiest in the world. See the International Society for Individual Liberty article on the Swiss Canton system below**.

As always, the crucial question to ask yourself is: Will this idea or this action increase - or decrease - my freedom?

© Copyright worldwide Cris Baker, www.LifeStrategies.net All rights reserved. Republishing welcomed under Creative Commons noncommercial no derivatives license preserving all links intact, so please +1 and share this widely!

Food for Thought
"It is amazing that people who think we cannot afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, and medication somehow think that we can afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, medication and a government bureaucracy to administer it."

- Dr. Thomas Sowell, American economist, Stanford University Professor, syndicated columnist, prolific academic author.

* See economist Dr. Dan Mitchell's article.

** See the International Society for Individual Liberty article on the Swiss Canton system.