Divine Intervention

Here's some good news for anyone looking to use the religious objection argument to avoid the vaccine.

Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò has written a letter where he lays out several reasons why the vaccine should be avoided, and he calls on all Christians to avoid it for religious reasons.

The archbishop goes so far as to call the vaccine satanic, and implies by this that the pope is an agent of evil for promoting it; even demanding it used by his employees.

I have long thought of the pope an impostor. His Marxist inclinations and politically correct pandering to climate hysteria and other false religions makes him anything but a good Christian, and I'm glad to see that someone within the church is finally calling him out on this.

Carlo Maria Viganò

By White House Image/Lawrence Jackson - This file has been extracted from another file: Carlo Maria Viganò in 2013.jpg , Public Domain, Link

Inflation Anxiety

I read the other day that there's a rotation out of gold and into Bitcoin. I found the claim strange, considering the recent surge in search interest for gold. This doesn't look like an environment in which people drag their physical gold to market in order to swap it for something as speculative as crypto.

I concluded that the ones swapping gold for crypto are traders in derivatives rather than physical gold, and it appears that I was right. This article in the German financial paper Handelsblatt notes that interest in physical gold is up on the year while interest in derivatives are down.

The author adds that this trend, while particularly strong in Germany, is global. Traders are abandoning their derivatives in gold, while savers are adding to their physical holdings. Savers are flocking to physical gold for inflation protection. They are not buying crypto, which is increasingly the domain of traders.

This rotation has the short term effect of suppressing the gold price, because derivatives are sold in larger nominal values than physical metal is bought. However, this will do little to push the price of crypto higher, because traders are likely to buy the derivatives rather than the underlying asset. These derivatives are not settled in crypto, and are as a consequence relatively inert when it comes to setting prices.

The wedge formation in the gold chart is thus explained. The rotation in derivatives is keeping a lid on the price to the upside, while physical demand is setting a floor to the downside. There's a battle of sorts between traders in derivatives and savers in physical, and we're nearing a conclusion.

If current inflation anxiety subsides over the short term, we might see a price drop below the wedge that will take months to repair. However, if central bankers fail to relieve people's anxiety, we'll soon see the price of gold starts on it next leg up.

Rococo Cup with handle

By Vincennes Porcelain (France, circa 1739–1756), Francois Binet (France, active 1750-1775, born 1731) - Image: http://collections.lacma.org/sites/default/files/remote_images/piction/ma-31852871-O3.jpg Gallery: http://collections.lacma.org/node/229367 archive copy, Public Domain, Link

Misplaced Defeatism

Most people don't want freedom. They want the privileges and sense of security that comes with playing a subordinate role to government.

This has become abundantly clear over the last few years, and many libertarian have adopted a defeatist attitude because of this. However, their pessimism is misplaced. There never was a time when a majority strived to be free, and there never will come such a time. But that hasn't prevented us from having had periods of much freedoms in the past, and it will not prevent us from enjoying freedom in the future.

The defeatist attitude is based on two misconceptions about the world. One being the assumption that we must for ever live with our current system of nation states. The other being that democracy is the superior political system, without which no freedom can exist. Hence, it's generally believed that we cannot be free unless we can convince a majority to vote for more freedom.

But none of this is true. The nation state is a wobbly political experiment of relatively recent origin, and democracy has nothing to do with freedom.

Truth is that no more than 7% of people desire sovereignty, and this has probably been a constant throughout history. Yet, periods of freedom have nevertheless existed, and the reason for this can be found in the default political organization that nature, aka God, has endowed us with.

In the absence of government, the family becomes the political nucleus from which alliances of all kinds arise. The head of the family becomes king and his wife is queen. They choose in turn to engage in voluntary exchange with other individuals. They can choose a subordinate role by earning wages, or make investments on an equal footing with other sovereigns, or some combination of this.

Young people are typically more inclined towards wages, because it offers the dual benefit of earning a salary while learning a trade. The older we get, the more we long to be sovereign in our own domain. There's a natural progression in our lives from subordinate to more prominent positions. But some are fully at ease with a position of subordinate service for the entirety of their lives.

All sorts of arrangements can be formed in this way. The natural order of things provides a balance of freedom and safety for everybody. The subordinate seek careers as servants. Those inclined towards sovereignty pursue that as a goal. Others again like to mix and match.

There's a place for every inclination. Everyone can achieve the sort of freedom they want. All of us can become king in our lifetime if we so wish, because sovereignty is not actively opposed by a ruling elite. However, only 7% want to be truly sovereign. Most people prefer a more subordinate role. But this is not a problem. On the contrary, it's a strength.

The natural arrangement, aka God's Kingdom on Earth, doesn't require everyone to be intent on sovereignty. 7% is ideal in that this provides every household with one king and one queen.

The majority of people will thrive in a position where they have their own domain that they rule as king while they remain in service to an employer. Corporate climbers are typical of this kind of people, and can often earn very well. However, some will want more autonomy. They choose to go it alone, even if it means a modest living compared to the top brass in service of the most mighty of kings.

Once this is understood, it's clear that our problem is not our fellow men, but the system that we all too often support to our own detriment. Party politics is a waste of time. Nationalism and other types of authority worship is equally counterproductive.

Key to success is to start building the alternative right away, without waiting for a majority to condone our actions. Once we realize that we have nature, aka God, on our side, this becomes less daunting. We are not rebelling against nature. We're doing the exact opposite. We're taking advantage of the fact that our goal is the default arrangement that nature itself has provided for us. We don't have to exert energy to keep our system together. That's a problem faced by our opponents, and the reason we will succeed while they will fail.

We can all create our own kingdoms and become as sovereign as we possibly can. I've done this myself, and the results have been pleasing. I love the fact that I don't have to consider what people think about my opinions. I might be materially poorer than my relatives in Norway, but I don't have to hang a rainbow flag in front of the office building where I'm a CEO on pride day. I don't have to support the vaccine mandate. I can do what I please, and that's more important to me than a salary tied to the political correct nonsense of our day.

Café de Flore

People - By Arnaud 25 - Own work, Public Domain, Link

A Medieval Court

The state and their affiliated banks and registry offices can confiscate our house, bank accounts and paper assets at the stroke of a key. This is a reality that I came up against back in 2017 when I was on the hook for a confiscatory tax payment related to my relocation to Portugal.

The way around this was to transfer my wealth to my wife and children, and to buy physical gold.

I have since conducted my affairs through this arrangement of proxies. At no point is anything directly associated with me. I own no real estate, I have no bank account, and I have no paper assets. Everything is owned by my wife and children. Not even the gold is mine. It belongs to my son in Porto.

I describe this arrangement in my book on the matter, and I can attest that I have had no problems with it in the five years that the arrangement has been in place. My children accept my authority, and my wife acts obediently as a proxy when it comes to bank matters.

Our arrangement has the feel of a medieval court; a little like a game of chess. I'm the king of the board, slow moving and not very apt at throwing punches, but nevertheless the piece most directly associated with the player. My wife acts as the fast moving queen, and my children are the knights and bishops. The point of the game is to gain control of the board while protecting the king, who directs the game from his protected position.

My wife and children afford me protection at no cost to themselves. They are all better off as a consequence of our arrangement, and my wish for them is that they too will withdraw from the grip of the state at some point. My children will themselves become sovereigns as they grow older, and my wife will have even less to do with the state once she chooses to retire from her present job.

This is an ancient arrangement, often described in fairly tales. There's progression from servant status to status as sovereign king. Once sufficient funds have been acquired, the prince becomes a king and the princess a queen.

The great value of this may not be immediately apparent. However, it's becoming increasingly important to implement something like this in order to protect our personal wealth and freedom. The state of Australia is confiscating wealth form its citizens for trivial and highly artificial reasons, and other states are likely to do similar things in the years to come. Anyone determined to resist tyranny without loss of property must therefore take action to protect themselves.

Keep in mind that the tyrants of the world will threaten to throw people in jail if they don't pay their fines. That's an outcome that the king must accept. The king must remain calm when threatened by the state. He mustn't fold simply because his phone glows hot with threats from agents of the state.

My experience is that the state doesn't in the end act on their threats. No-one came to our door to arrest me for not paying my taxes. However, that might have been different if I was a more prominent person. Part of my strategy is therefore to remain an obscure outsider and move things forward through the network effect that comes with example, kindness and honesty in  my relations to friends and family.

If I can influence two or three people to act sensibly in the face of tyranny, and they do the same through their own personal success and god example, things will snowball into an unstoppable movement without me ever playing a central part of anything.

The winning move is not to attack the opponent directly, but to take care of our own affairs in a way that makes us sovereign within our own realm.

Chess

By Bubba73 at English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, Link

Aunt Augusta's Sister

Aunt Augusta, who died from the virus back in January, had a sister who vowed to get herself vaccinated as soon as possible to avoid a similar fate. Unlike Augusta, this sister was in good health. We visited her in July, and she showed no lack of vitality. However, soon after our visit, she was diagnosed with cancer, and she's now dead.

Wax plant

Like a William Turner Painting

The La Palma volcano is spewing smoke and ash, turning the landscape into something reminiscent of a William Turner painting.

La Palma volcano

God Moves in a Mysterious Way

William Cowper said it well back in 1774; God, aka nature, moves in a mysterious way. This is evident from the way the totalitarian agenda is unfolding. Not only are the enemies of freedom making increasingly stupid and desperate mistakes, all sorts of odd and unexpected things are happening as well.

The US president's press secretary has fallen ill with the virus, despite all the rules and regulations. That's hardly good news for vaccine zealots and mask Nazis. It's very difficult to spin this into some pro-vaccine story. Even with their best efforts, the spin doctors will fail to hide the fact that the emperor is naked.

Meanwhile, in the European Parliament, there was a moment of truth. Libertarian anarchist dogma related to the true nature of the state was recited by members of parliament. It was pointed out that the state never in history worked for the good of the people they claim to represent, and that there's no reason to think that the current push towards tyranny is any different.

How did such ideas penetrate the walls of one of Europe's most totalitarian institution?

The Emperor's New Clothes

By Vilhelm Pedersen (1820 - 1859) - English Wikipedia (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/47/Emperor_Clothes_01.jpg ), Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4038625