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[ThatHawaiiGuy]

A Nation of Hustlers
by Bob Wallace

I keep one credit card with a limit of $5000. Seven years ago I had two with a combined limit of $30,000. The banks just kept raising the limit even though I never used it. I thought it was insane, because my credit line was more than my yearly income. Finally I sent the cards back because of the yearly fee, and got just one with a lower annual fee and a lower interest rate.

At that time, stocks were making about 30% per year. The interest rate on the cards was about 16%. It occurred to me I should buy stocks with a draft from the cards, then after a year take the profit from the stocks, pay the cards off, and end up with a profit free and clear. I didn't do it, though.

Later, it occurred to me I could have bought about $25,000 in gold coins, then declared bankruptcy. My debt would have disappeared, and I would have had gold coins, which now would be worth about $40,000. I didn't do that, either.

I wasn't concerned about the "legality." Most so-called laws are just words on paper, and are worthless. Natural Law – law discovered, not created – is the only true law. Sometimes the words on paper and Natural Law coincide. Usually, these days, they don't.

I did wonder about the morality of it. On one hand, for all practical purposes, the banks are part of the government. The government uses the banks to inflate the money supply through the use of fractional-reserve banking.

Most of the paper money floating around these days is counterfeit. The fact that the money is printed by the government is irrelevant. It's still counterfeit. It can't be exchanged for gold or silver, and there is no production to ultimately back it up.

What banks are doing, then, is lending counterfeit money to people, then demanding the counterfeit money back with interest. It's the same thing as if I gave someone Monopoly money, sat back, waited for the Monopoly money and the interest, then used what I got to buy real, tangible goods.

I've known people who have declared bankruptcy because they got themselves into a jam, usually with credit cards. They didn't mean for this to happen. They just got in over in their heads and couldn't dig themselves out.

I also know people who purposely went into debt, then declared bankruptcy. And here is the important question: is what they did moral, or a violation of some Natural Law?

On one hand, they're engaging in a case of "the robber robbed." The government is robbing them blind through taxes, inflation and regulation. They return the favor – robbing the robber – by refusing to pay back counterfeit money.

I've decided the problem here is one of hustling. The only thing that advances a nation is for the people to build better things. Better toasters, better cars, better software.

Hustlers, on the other hand, are just looking for loopholes in the law to make money. Money, I'll repeat, that isn't real money, but counterfeit.

What I would have been doing if I had bought the gold coins and then declared bankruptcy, is hustling. I would have benefited myself – sort of – but I wonder about the effect on me, as a person, if I had done something like that. Even if I had been engaging in a case of the robber robbed.

And what if everyone did it? The US would end up like Nigeria, with a bunch of morons sending me 10,000 911 emails scams, and actually thinking I'm going to give them my bank account number so some guy calling himself " Dr.Tums Rolaids" can put $20,000,000 in it.

All of the above is the result of a dishonest government that inflates the money supply. The kind of inflation we've seen over the past decade can turn people into hustlers. Look at Enron and other companies like it. They were run by hustlers who had more inflated, counterfeit money than they knew what to do with.

When there is no inflation, and the money is honest – with production to back it up – there can be no argument about the dishonesty of hustling. If I had bought the gold coins and declared bankruptcy, then I would have been stealing someone's money that they had lent me via the banks.

But with massive inflation, hustling becomes an iffy proposition. It's easy for people to convince themselves it's good, because of how they're being shafted by the government.

Looked at this way, the more inflation, the higher the taxes, the more the regulations...the more dishonest and hustling people become. Not because they want to, but because they have to, in order to survive.

Instead of people becoming more moral with government interference, they become less moral.

And that, I am convinced, is a Natural Law that no words on paper can ever repeal.




August 4, 2003


http://www.lewrockwell.com/wallace/wallace138.html