The incredible Stupidity of GOP Taxes

Since the 90s we've had a cycle of the GOP running the same con over and over again. Initially some of the more sane Republicans would push back. It was George Herbert Walker Bush who called Reagan's economics a con, "Voodoo Economics" and who helped coin the term "trickle down economics." The more honest cons in the Reagan Administration soon knew that their con didn't work. David Stockman would admit it later. Summarized in the famous quote:

“None of us really understands what's going on with all these numbers.” —David Stockman

The Atlantic Magazine describes his cognitive dissonance in an article titled "The Education of David Stockman." The entire Reagan Administration knew from 1981 on that lowering marginal taxation on the wealthy and making up for tax cuts with cost shifting to workers, doesn't help the economy.

Big Lie

Even so “trickle down” was very popular among the "donor class", so its shills held (and still hold) their noses and supported the con anyway. They rationalized that if they adopted the Hitlerian Big Lie principle and repeated a lie often enough it becomes an article of faith.

Investopedia, Voodoo Economics

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1981/12/the-education-of-david-stockman/305760/

Consequently, among republican business preachers and operatives, this con is an article of faith. kind of a 13th commandment.

₽rivateering and Smuggling

Elements of Privateering

Original Definition:

Legalized theft and warfare against commerce on the high seas.

Modern Defintion

Usurpation of Government or public functions for private profit

₽rivateers engage in the following:

Filibustering
Private warfare against unorganized places or countries the country the privateer is at war with.
Smuggling
Usually private sea captains would do legal trade with whoever they could. But often privateers would engage in illegal smuggling if it made them money.
Slave Trade
Privateers often combined private warfare elements with smuggling by grabbing people for sale like they were any other good for sale. The Navies would even recruit their own sailors by grabbing them from ports and "pressing them" to service. Privateer sailors were often little better than slaves.
Piracy
One reason that the saying "Dead men Tell no tales" is that if a privateer took a prize of a ship not at war, if nobody survived to rat them out, and no evidence could be found of a crime, the now pirate could continue to pretend to be a privateer. This led to some confusion among pirate captains. The famous Captain Kidd of the 1700s went to England to argue his case that he had been a legal privateer, not a pirate. He was hung as a pirate. Many pirate/privateers got away with that.
Private government and colonization.
Private government was always an element in privateering. King James granted them the East India Company charter in 1600. This was the real beginning of the Tory Party and of the movement to modern Privateering. But when Christopher Columbus got his permission to sail west, it was with the aim of establishing private government in the lands he discovered.

Privateering And Large Scale Swindles

The theme of piracy and privateering to describe our current economic system, much of our current political system, and the ideology of our modern Republican Business classes. Not that Democrats aren't sometimes pirates and privateers. It is just not their stated ideology.

Privateering is at the heart of the worst of modern capitalism; the "privateering spirit. As I've noticed before privateering is defined as using private enterprises to accomplish missions assigned to government. Initially the term was window dressing for legal piracy. As I've noted before both the British Navy and the USA navy emerged from the private navies of legal pirates like Sir Francis Drake. The successful descendants of pirates became the lords and barons of British Society, and more importantly of British foreign trade, adventurism and the admirals of the fleet.

For more Information on this history:

Origins of the East India Company

Pirate Contracts

The heart of the matter is that modern business relies on contractual relationships, and ₽rivateering relies on the inequity of contracts that involve power relationships. The difference between a pirate and a privateer is that privateers are bound by contracts that grant them license, and use those contracts to abuse law and power.

To illustrate, Pirates, were simply outlaws. For that reason pirate ships often were more democratic and the officers and crew more free, aboard ship, than the crews of privateers, who were often little more than slaves to ambitious, greedy power hungry captains. However, the ideal privateer operated his ship as if it were a pirate ship and treated their crew with respect. Thus the lines between pirate and privateer were often blurred. On land they had to follow rules. At sea "dead men tell no tales" was often practiced to avoid getting caught by officials while robbing and stealing at sea while ostensibly doing legitimate business. The result was the legal pirates were often hanging known pirates. Privateers have always tended to be pirates. But pirates rarely get to be privateers unless they can manage to avoid being caught.

Modern Privateers

Modern privateers don't need eye patches, peg legs. They wear Armani suits and carry briefcases. They enslave through contracts, loans, lawsuits and hostile takeovers. No need for cannon. They frequently own (or are) Judges and law enforcement. But when the cops are the criminals, who will enforce the law? Piracy led to privateering and privateering enabled:

• Private Warfare, Filibustering, legalized robbery and looting.
• Conquest and colonization
• Vast estates for the successful Pirates
• Layers of Oppression

Power establishes Inequitable relationships established through abusive contracts and debt. The robbed can be robbed over and over again. Privateers would do anything for trade goods and property:

• Smuggling to acquire trade goods
• Monopoly over vital properties
• Rent from that property

So the irony of modern privateers is that often they are playing all sides. Robbing people, and arresting robbers. Smuggling and arresting smugglers. Bribing people and taking Bribes. Piracy attracts con artists and grifters. A Grifter is a con artist who has a plan B for avoiding getting caught. Grift + Drift to new marks. Privateering only works when the pirates can attract a crew and governments can hire them. Since it is based on looting, it hollows out any actual capital that might have been there.

Modern pirates operate through the use of contracts, courts and information and power disparity. This post is about their historic involvement in drug smuggling.

Privateering, smuggling & Piracy

Some key Definitions, Piracy

First, piracy is a term for theft and the thieves who commit those thefts. It is also used in other contexts, such as labeling those who use copyrighted material without permission. People usually restrict the meaning to thieves operating on the seas. Piracy has been a feature of world history since at least the 14th century BC, when pirates were described in Egyptian and Canaan correspondences. The Sea People's who disrupted Minoan and Mycenaean life, were pirates. So were both the Greeks and the Trojans.

http://maritime-connector.com/wiki/history-of-piracy/

Privateering

When an entire nation engages in piracy, it is considered legal by the State and the term for that is “privateering.” The distinction between privateers and pirates is often a corrupt barely legal one.

Privateering and Admiralty courts

Moreover, the term itself "private + teering" implies private warfare, private government, and government sanction and allocation of loot. In the European World and the British one, specifically, Admiralty courts adjudicated loot from the sea, both that acquired through privateering and "salvage." Admiralty courts and similar, through auctions served the role of legitimizing loot, slavery, salvage, and thus laundering proceeds from smuggling, buccaneering, piracy, "filibustering (private warfare), traditionally, for centuries. They have ranged from laundering implicit corruption (we didn't know!) to explicitly corrupt money laundering.

Letters of Marquee

The vehicle for traditional piracy was the "letter of marquee." That was a contractual instrument that granted and individual or bearer, the right to "take prizes" from ships belonging to a country the contractual authority, government, was at war at. The concept of "letter of marquee" was also behind some early corporations such as the East India Company, from around 1601, which is one of the models for the modern corporation. They would grant the company or bearer, the power to wage private warfare, on the seas and often on land as well, to raid, steal, attack and capture enemy ships. Sometimes pirates would have letters of marquee from both sides of a conflict so they could simply attack anyone passing thru a chokepoint.

Privateering as barely legal piracy

Thus privateering has traditionally represented legalized robbery under cover of contract. Essentially privateering enabled economic royalty, as the companies granted this power could govern their crews as they pleased. Some privateers behaved like pirate ships and treated their crew well. But many employed the sailor as slave model of governance. Privateers, warships and private shipping in general in general, were infamous for beatings, whippings, poor food, low pay and tyranny, (defined by John Locke as power exercised for Private, separate advantage) over thier crews. Pirate ships were often a model for rough democratic governance. Ironically legal pirate ships, not so much. The purpose of privateering was to acquire property for private ownership. The attitude of privateering is anything for a buck.

For more on what Privateering is:

Elements of Privateering

Privatization historically is a tool of Privateering

An Ideology of Piratical Banking

Freedom versus Free booting

Thus the enemy of liberty is in fact privateering because privateering is the conversion of what should be ruled for the common good into private property ruled for the advantage of the few. Privateers were pirates, who, operating under a Letter of Marquee, were authorized to engage in private warfare on behalf of the State. Generalizing that meaning, privateers are those who engage in commerce, warfare, theft, espionage or any other action, under the protection of Government. Privateers are private government. That privateers originally were also pirates, often from the point of view of other countries who had issued no such letters, just illustrates the barbarity of the practice. Privateering is as old as piracy. Vikings were only pirates to the people of the lands they predated.

The Rough Democracy of Pirates Versus the Tyranny of Privateers -- Tom Paine

Even classical pirates, lived lives, internally that were governed by democratic rules. When Thom Paine served as a privateer:

“At sixteen, in 1753, he brought it off. He shipped out on a privateer — a private warship authorized by the English government to attack and loot commercial vessels sailing under the flag of any nation with whom England was legally at war.”

He tells of that experience that he experienced good captains and bad captains. The Good captains treated the crew with respect. The bad captains whipped and beat their crew and looked down on them as little more than vermin. The British Royal Navy whipped and beat sailors. Pirates and the better Privateers, motivated them.

A Privateering Tradition As the Foundation of the West

The tradition of both the United States and the British (including Scotland and all of Ireland) is founded on privateering. The major Sea Captain Families even called themselves "Sea Dogs" and they'd later branch out into other businesses. But most of their businesses were or derived from Privateering. Thus Privateering involves the Following Activities, when either barely legal or they don't get caught:

• Privateering: Piracy as legalized theft of enemy ships and cargo.
• Smuggling: Piracy as semi-legal smuggling, trafficking, which also included the slave trade and enslaving captured persons.
• Filibustering: Piracy as waging war, "marines style", on people on land, sometimes as mercenaries. This was termed filibustering
• Chartered Privateers: Privateering on large scale via privately or publicly chartered companies such as the East India Company, corporatism
• Colonialism as Privateering: Privateering extended into the form of creating colonies, enslaving locals, importing slaves, exploiting slaves, exploring, exploiting and extracting loot from the land so colonized.
• Land Pirates, Grifters, Swindlers, Bankers and Monopolists

Financial Capitalism as Laundering ill gotten goods. Most money is either some kind of private debt, or in emergencies it might be recycled loot. It always comes from labor in some way. Financial Capitalism arrogates wealth and uses some of it to generate more wealth. Actual capitalism mixes labor with wealth and winds up a public good even when not intended to be.

European Thievery and Frederick Douglas

Thus Privateering is at the root of the modern world, European Adventurism, and European Thievery. Often it was excused as "saving" benighted souls. But more often the souls that were reduced to abject subjection were originally noble souls reduced by the forces of kleptocracy and kakacracy. From the Point of View of European ship captains and many of their crew, taking slaves on the "Guinea coast" of Africa was simply yet another way to make a living. But from the point of view of their victims, such as Frederick Douglas describes in a famous quote:

“The more I read, the more I was led to abhor and detest my enslavers. I could regard them in no other light than a band of successful robbers, who had left their homes, and gone to Africa, and stolen us from our homes, and in a strange land reduced us to slavery” -Douglass, p84

An Ideology of Piracy

Privateering has even become an ideology. Modern Pirates don't have peg legs or carry a saber. They wear suits and carry brief cases. They seek to privatize, "enclose the commons;" take what had been an institution, property or service that is intended for the public good, and turn it to private control. This is not "free-market economics" it is free booting economics. The ideology of piracy is expressed by people like Donald Trump who say we did wrong by not seizing Iraqi Oil fields when we invaded Iraq. That is what pirates do.

I've written about this before so I may come back to this post and put in references. I just wanted to make it plain (and relatively succinct) what I'm talking about when I talk about privateering.

Substantive vs Procedural Due Process

I am incredibly worried about #Trumpenfuhrer and his power. If we hope to fix our immigration mess, it has to start with recognizing that there is such a thing as "Substantive Due Process" and a reaffirmation of basic Human Rights and Inalienable Rights theory into the law.

Affirming Substantive Due Process

Flores and Reno, did believe in substantive due process, and they worked out a settlement Agreement in 1997 after "over a decade of litigation responding to the U.S. government’s detention policy of children. The agreement set national standards regarding the detention, release, and treatment of all children in immigration detention and underscores the principle of family unity." [Settlement]

Immigration Courts as Unjust Administrative/Admiralty Courts

The Tyranny of Mock Courts

This is pure Tyranny and breaking International Law: [UNHCR Child Asylum]

To me there is a process issue in the awful oppression of our Immigration and Naturalization Courts and ICE. This oppression is the expression of a corrupt administration. But it is inherent in the constitution of the Immigration System. The fact that we have administrative courts at all is an inheritance of our Colonial and Feudal origins. I noted the injustice and wealth favoritism of our system when I made the half joking, very serious comparisons between admiralty courts and administrative courts in this previous post:

Tribunals, Admiralty Courts, Privateers versus Common Pirates

The Authoritarian Playbook

Trump is following an Old playbook.

The Dictator's playbook is old. This list is inspired by an article in "Raw Story," but it is a list I already had so this is my version. I've been writing on this for a long time. So this post is a place to put related posts.

1. Lie Often, Lie Big.
2. Target, Challenge and Coopt Institutions that Enforce Accountability.
3. Consolidate power by putting sychophants in key positions (military and law enforcement).
4. Target, Attack and Control the Press.
5. Target & Scapegoat minority groups, rivals and foreigners.
6. Target, Vilify as Enemies and bad people, protesters, minorities and scapegoats.
7. Find and Recruit the Angry, dogmatic, disaffected, ignorant and fearful.
8. Rile up the Mob, but exclude anyone not onboard.
9. Play on Religious, Ethnic, Racial and cultural prejudice.
10. Enforce identity of the movement and leader.
11. Enforce Personal loyalty in key institutions.
12. Indoctrinate thru Repetition belief in alternative facts over facts.
13. Relentlessly go after disloyalty and criticism.
14. Instigate and use violence to beat down opposition verbally and physically.

Selective Service Versus Standing Armies

We are Facing Standing Armies

This post follows: http://holtesthoughts.blogspot.com/2018/03/select-militia-national-guard-and.html

More about what Standing Armies

A Standing army:

“....unlike a reserve army, is a permanent, often professional, army. It is composed of full-time soldiers (who may be either career soldiers or conscripts) and is not disbanded during times of peace. It differs from army reserves, who are enrolled for the long term, but activated only during wars or natural disasters, and temporary armies, which are raised from the civilian population only during a war or threat of war and disbanded once the war or threat is over. The term dates from approximately 1600, although the phenomenon it describes is much older.” [quote from Wikipedia but also in my other sources]

But here is the thing, standing armies used to also serve as police, "peace keepers", enforcers, and often lived off the land as land pirates when governments were tyrannical or occupying hostile territory.

.... which means that modern armed forces; police, security guards (private armies), and similar; also are standing armies, because they are permanent, professional and sometimes they act like occupying forces when they operate in (or as if in) occupied territory.

Pirates of PenceTrump

Trump the Pirate

Once there was a pirate,

Who danced on the deck of his ship

While Sailing on his Hunts

And giving the authorities the slip

 

The Very Stable Genius

He started to Dance!

I am a very stable genius!

I am the smartest in the world!

Nothing ever gets past me

Unless I let it go

 

I am a very able womanizer

The women always love me

When I see a woman that's pretty

I grab her by the kitty!

Grifter Trump

He continued:

I am the greatest Pirate!

the world has ever seen!

I promise my mates the world.

Then I pocket the gold

I sell them Warfs and Docks

Take their money and then go!

They wonder where I went

When their gold is in my hold

Watch out for the Pirate King!

My Father gave me money

I borrowed more from Italians

I blew it on Casinos

That started loosing money

So my Daddy bought some chips

And gave them to me as a gift.

 

I am a billionaire in every way!

Because I collect peoples money and never pay!

If you loan me money.

I won't repay

If you work for me.

I'll promise you wages you'll never see!

 

Eventually even the Italian Mob,

Didn't want to do business with me.

But the Russians did!

The Russians love me!

They give me everything I want!

Just so long as I don't recognize them

When the FBI comes to call.

(Truth is I'm afraid of them,

putting me to the wall!)

 

I am the Greatest Lover Anyone has Seen!

I go after the women,

Grab them by the kitty!

When I look in the mirror

I see someone pretty!

It costs me a pretty penny

But it is amazing what money will buy.

This is the only place I have to pay

Or I'm afraid the mud will fly!

 

I went to Russia

to build a Tower!

When they stalled

All I could do was glower

I hosted A Pageant

Watched all the girls

Dressed or undressed, what a time!

The Russians say they took a video

I say it is a lie.

Though when I'm alone privately

I like to watch!

 

The pirate Putin picked me

Said Run for President!

I could get in front of crowds

And preach Nationalism my way.

The only book I ever studied

Was Hitler's Speeches, or was it Mein Kampf?

I don't read much, but Ivanna said it was by my bed.

Candidate Trump

I am the greatest candidate you've ever seen!

My Grifting always entertaining

My Fleecing always Clean!

Why I'm a Grifters Wet Dream!

 

My Organization is Beautiful

A well oiled machine!

My Crew is always dutiful

Only to me!

The way it should be!

 

Says Pirate Trump to his Crew

When the HMS Mueller comes in View!

He opens his gun ports.

What will I do...

To be continued....

Benefit Versus Ability to Pay

I wrote on the question of Taxation based on ability to Pay or Fee for Service in 2015. It laid out the role of Edwin R.A. Seligman (1861-1939) who was a young disciple of Henry George. This subject comes up again as the question of "Benefit versus ability to Pay" that is the subject of this piece. This piece is a follow on the last post on

Nature's Tax Collectors

Who I identify with Pirates

In that piece I noted that according to the author, taxes should be:

• Taxes are a duty of citizenship.
• Taxes should be proportionate to the "faculty" or ability to pay of taxpayers.

Nature's Tax Collectors or Oligarchs?

What I didn't completely understand when I wrote the previous post in 2015 was the role of rent seeking, privilege, or the privateering that goes into the income of the wealthy and connected. Fortunately a number of my friends and a great man and his disciples, Henry George, Edwin Seligman and Thomas G. Shearman captured the extreme peril of not taxing privilege.

If you don't regulate or tax unearned income from privilege, then you get corruption, bad economic outcomes and oligarchs.

The Benefit of Unearned Income

People have been conditioned into embracing bogus ideas. There is a strong effort to forget the former and embrace the following pseudo-principles, that aren't really as old as they are argued to be. "Classical Economics" never really taught them. And Neo-liberalism teaches them, but they are propaganda:

1. Those who benefit from a thing should pay for it.
2. No one should pay for another person's benefits.
3. A person earns whatever he gains, however he gains.
4. The exception is the poor, who never deserve to keep what they earn.
5. Taxation is the government stealing from the privileged.
6. Taxation should be a "fee for service," and no more.

But guess what, rent seeking means that:

1. The wealthy benefit from a well fed, healthy and prosperous customers, renters and employees.
2. Almost everyone is paying for the benefits of the wealthy.
3. Unearned income means unearned. Income derived from privileges and properties like land, corporate, contract or monopoly is only partly early earned. But for the most part is almost entirely unearned. Most great wealth earn money from money, debt or ownership instruments. Pirates and privateers don't always deserve to keep what they took.
4. The people who deserve to keep their income are those who labor, sell, and work for a living.
   And those who are poor, ill, young or aged, deserve our support.
5. Privateering rent seekers are essentially stealing from government. Hence me calling them pirates.
6. Taxation is about regulating excessive issues of private money and privilege not just a "fee for service."

Benefit Versus Ability to Pay or Taxing Unearned Income

Related to the tax shiftability concern [See Progressive Versus Regressive] is the debate over whether the Single Tax was based on the “benefit theory of taxation,” where one is taxed on the benefits received from holding a land parcel vs. the “faculty” or “ability to pay theory,” where a tax on land gains is only collected when the taxpayer can easily pay the tax (without losing his land or going into debt to pay the tax). But that question is resolved when sees this as a tax on privilege and for regulating money.

The tax needs to be based on ability to pay. And it has to provide enough revenue to prevent inflation and regulate the money supply [see Money Privilege and Loot] The 1890 Plank says:

"To carry out these principles we are in favor of raising all public revenues for national, state, county and municipal purposes by a single tax upon land values, irrespective of Improvements, and of the abolition of all forms of direct and Indirect taxation." [Georgist Constitution]

Although many Georgists believe the Single Tax to be a form of property taxation, Henry George objected to property taxes because they targeted both land use (i.e., labor) and land ownership (i.e., potential ground rents) at the same time. George was concerned that, because a property tax is a direct tax on all aspects of land use and ownership, and demands a tax whether or not the landowner has access to the gain and is able to pay, that the tax would end up being falling on labor/wages. Any tax that can be shifted to ordinary people is not very progressive or fair and just. Thus what George was talking about was:

"not a tax on land, and therefore would not fall on the use of land and become a tax on labor."

Not a tax on land but on the:

"premium which the user of land must pay to the owner, either in purchase money or rent, for permission to use valuable land."

Which means that it was intended as a tax on what we now call capital gains. Thus anyone arguing over ability to pay/facility" versus paying for benefits, is missing the point. Taxation is also for the sake of regulating privilege. And also for making sure that such taxes were not shifted to consumers, workers or rent payers. More importantly, that such taxes weren't grabbed by Tongue eating Trolls.

Sources and Further reading

https://www.cooperative-individualism.org/george-henry-page.htm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pollock_v._Farmers%27_Loan_%26_Trust_Co.

For those with Facebook:

Rick's pages:

https://www.facebook.com/notes/common-wealth-tax/doc-120-the-1890-georgist-constitution/813168725462939/?hc_location=ufi

http://holtesthoughts.blogspot.com/2015/08/the-georgist-constitution.html

https://www.facebook.com/notes/common-wealth-tax/doc-161-poverty-is-caused-by-regressive-taxes-and-prevented-by-progressive-taxes/1498599096919895/

https://holtesthoughts.blogspot.com/2015/09/taxation-ability-to-pay-fee-or-taxing.html

Cooperative Individualism webpage [https://www.cooperative-individualism.org/george-henry-page.htm]]

Georgist Constitution

His copy is on facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/notes/common-wealth-tax/doc-120-the-1890-georgist-constitution/813168725462939/?hc_location=ufi

Where he explains the tax is on unearned economic rent:

https://www.facebook.com/notes/common-wealth-tax/doc-133-henry-georges-single-tax-a-tax-on-land-values-a-tax-on-economic-rent-a-t/918244508288693/

Natures Tax Collectors or Rent Seekers?

Nature's Tax Collectors

As noted Henry George put considerable effort working out principles of taxation. He wrote an opus about tax reform and gathered a huge following of progressives under the populist wing of the Democratic Party. Two of those were scholars and lawyers who would go on to support his movement after he died in 1897. After Henry George died in 1897 Shearman and Seligman went their separate ways. Though both articulated clear Gerogist Principles. They differed on some particulars.

"Henry George’s lawyer, Thomas G. Shearman, in “Natural Taxation” (1898) [referred to] certain kinds of people (rent-seekers)" as “nature’s tax collectors,”

A Grossly Unfair Tax system taxes unearned takings

Shearman noted that:

"if government failed to heavily tax (really, retrieve or reclaim) their unearned takings (while leaving their wages untaxed), a grossly unfair tax system would result."

It should be noted that the word rent and the word tax were once pretty much the same thing. The ability to collect rent was once a feudal right associated with barons, counts, dukes and kings. Economic rent is a privilege. Private collection of economic rent is privateering. During the late middle ages, sovereigns began to farm out taxation to "tax farmers" who collected taxes (rent) in return for a cut. There is a case to be made that tax farming was one of the reasons for the French Revolution. But that is another essay for another day.

Privateering

That term applies because it is private persons performing government functions. Privateers were originally pirates authorized to wage war on an enemy by stealing from them on the high seas. But as I explain in a series of articles on the East India Companies took privateering to a whole new level by privatizing war and colonialization in the East Indias. One of their first acts was to usurp the Mogul ability to tax people in the province of Bengal (now Bangladesh and neighboring provinces in India). Pirates and wealthy adventurers (legal pirates) are after loot.

Economic Rent

The easiest way to loot is to get the government to put property into their greedy little hands. The technical term for this is Rent seeking. Economic rent is the premium owners of vital public property charge for using vital public goods. Such people set themselves up with the privilege to provide a monopoly service that rewards themselves heavily. They are like the tongue lice that eat a fish's tongue, except they "eat" and acquire or usurp governmental powers. Sitting pretty such people live on economic rent.

Examples of Shearman’s concept that rent-seekers are “nature’s tax collectors:”

"Part of the rent a tenant pays to a landlord is a tax, and is really intended for the government so it can provide for the health, education, training, retirement, etc. of the tenant, but the tax is shifted onto the tenant if not collected by government from the landlord."

Of Course landlords and other rentiers don't see any mutual responsible to tenants, labor or those paying them economic rent.

An Ideology of Loot

My Friend Rick DiMare writes:

"Under neoliberal theory we’ve been duped into believing that rent-seekers (i.e., landlords, lenders, employers and speculators) are entitled to keep most or all their income, whether earned as a wage, or taken as unearned income.... We’re taught that government is terribly inefficient and inept when it comes to providing social services."

The con of Neoliberalism

This is a bait and switch argument, as the rentiers and their shills who make this argument don't feel any need to provide social services efficiently or at all. But it is the kind of deflection and distraction that pays people to shill for them. Part of economic rent is used to buy an ideology that justifies privateering. This ideology is rightly named neoliberalism. Although a more accurate term would be "faux liberalism" because it isn't intended to work as a body of policies and theory. It is just intended to justify the accumulation of loot by the privateers. The real justification for neoliberal policies is simply the Nietzchean "Will to Power" and unadulterated Darwinism sometimes justified by grossly heterodox theologies. [Ironically these are usually some of the same people who preach against Darwin].

For the Public Good becomes for Private Loot

Examples:

Land Property Power

"Part of the capital/land gain paid for an inflated land parcel by a land buyer"... ought to be "a tax which belongs to government for the benefit of the public at large, and ... not intended for the landlord or land speculator, so tax unfairness ... result[s when] ... land gain is not collected from the landlord by government."

That is just one example,

Banking Money Power:

"Part of the interest a borrower pays to a lender is a tax paid by the borrower to the government, but is intercepted or privatized by the lender if the government fails to collect the lender’s net unearned income.

Natures Bounty belongs to all of us

natural resources in private hands such as oil, trees, etc... all have a component that by natural right belongs to the public at large, or at the very least to the people who work to extract those resources, process, move and sell them. The ideology of privateering shields owners from any social responsibility. The ideology demonizes any public benefit as "socialism" and thus distracts people from even appreciating that they have a right to any reward beyond the peanuts thrown to them by monopolists or employers under their control. Nature's bounty should belong to all of us. But privateers covet and covet such properties in order to extract value from them they can convert to loot.

There are beautiful mansions in Britain that belong to people who using the British East India Company as their vehicle, systematically looted India. Castles and Mansions, world wide are built with loot gained from taking a good idea and building it into a vast and gargantuan fortunes. Much of that wealth is turned into treasure and unavailable to anyone. Pirates literally would bury their treasure. Modern looters bury their treasure in offshore banks.

Shifting Taxes to Rent

An unfair tax system is setup so that even taxes ostensibly intended to punish or control excessive wealth get shifted from the pirate captains to the crew. Avoiding that becomes difficult because of the armies of shills the wealthy will hire to gaslight the subject. But also because most people, even many Georgist, don't really understand the progressive principles behind taxing unearned rent, making taxes affordable and the principle of Shiftability. Sometimes what is intended as a luxury tax or punishment for bad behavior becomes ineffective at stopping the behavior but oppresses labor and capital instead. Moreover, much of what makes some people phenomenally rich is hidden private taxation. Rick notes:

"in addition to actual (overt) taxes on wages paid by an employee, an employee also pays a hidden (covert) tax whenever forced to accept a low or unfair wage for work performed (because of the employer’s monopoly advantage over land, corporate privilege, capital, etc.). Of course, the employer is entitled to a wage, which may be substantially higher than that of employees, but the employer should not be allowed to keep unearned net income or profits produced, nor should the employer be allowed to pay the net income to shareholders in the form of dividends. If this unearned income is not taxed or reclaimed by government, the tax system will be unfair, and the tax will have been shifted onto to ordinary consumers and the poor. A general “inflation tax” is shifted onto ordinary consumers if Congress does’t tax income received in Federal Reserve notes using highly progressive tax rates (under the currency-regulating Springer income tax)."

The only taxes that are not shiftable are:

1. Taxes on unearned income, i.e., Henry George’s “single tax,” which includes taxes on net rental income, net interest income, dividends, net corporate profits, capital/land gains, gambling winnings, etc.
2. Taxes on luxury goods
3. Taxes on estates, prior to 1916 known as legacy, succession or inheritance taxes

Further Reading

https://www.cooperative-individualism.org/george-henry-page.htm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pollock_v._Farmers%27_Loan_%26_Trust_Co.

For those with Facebook:

Rick's pages:

https://www.facebook.com/notes/common-wealth-tax/doc-120-the-1890-georgist-constitution/813168725462939/?hc_location=ufi

http://holtesthoughts.blogspot.com/2015/08/the-georgist-constitution.html

https://www.facebook.com/notes/common-wealth-tax/doc-161-poverty-is-caused-by-regressive-taxes-and-prevented-by-progressive-taxes/1498599096919895/

Abusive Contracts and Privateering

Incomplete Contracts And Large Scale Swindles

I've been using the theme of piracy and privateering to describe our current economic system This is because at the heart of modern dysfunction is elitism and a "privateering spirit." There are people who actually normalize the swindling but it is a sick ideology whether you call it "neoliberalism", "conservatism" or "libertarianism." At heart these people are pirates. But they are a special kind of pirate. They use privilege to Grift, make themselves oligarchs and legalize theft and contract abuse, privateering.

I started this post back last September but I wanted to examine a bit of history and read the Nobel prize winning research on contract theory, and digest what I was reading.

An Ideology of Piratical Banking

Accounting Money, Piracy and Credit

The theme of piracy and privateering describes our current economic system, both as a humorous metaphor and verifiable fact.  I've been referring to the GOP as the Grifters, Oligarchs and Pirates party for a reason. And that reason is that they've become, over time an ideology of legalized piracy.

Republican Money

Who is Sovereign Over our Economy?

We are being told that the government doesn't have enough money for the things people need and that the only sane alternative is austerity for the common folks. Of course the people telling this are granting themselves privileges and additional control over the money supply and economic resources. We are told our taxes are onerous in order to pay for those things. But then their tax cutting proposals involve austerity and hurt 98% of us while enabling them to pocket more money, buy back stock and maybe buy an extra Yacht without paying taxes. They are obviously lying, but even beyond that dishonest hypocrisy. The premise is a lie. Economists have known since Alfred Maynard Keynes, (at least) that austerity hurts the economy and that government spending stimulates it.

A Sovereign Republic

In A Republic, the economy is "our thing" [see: Definitions], Res-Publica. In a Republic, Supreme power is held by the people through their representatives. Therefore because the money power, which in any state belongs to the sovereign therefore theoretically must belong to the people.

Sovereignty

We are supposed to be sovereign over our own currency. Unfortunately, ever since the realization that there is never enough Gold or silver in the world to inflate an economy, countries have relied on borrowing for their money. The result is that few societies are in fact sovereign over their own money supply. In some cases it is because banks control the money supply and not the national treasury. In others it is because external countries do.

There are all sorts of theoretical movements that would change this. But most are confusing because they confuse how things actually are with how they should be. But the first step is to decouple money from privateering. The people of a region need to have some control over their money supply. Balancing Budgets is not responsible behavior, but printing money recklessly isn't either. So what should we do?

Irresponsible Money

A considerable body of theory has developed over time that demonstrates fallacies in how the money supply is created and used. Ignoring any part of that body of experience leads to disaster. Let me summarize some of that body:

• Commodity Money is unstable and leads to treasure accumulation and hoarding. Gresham's law states that "bad money" drives out good money." But it only applies to money as a commodity with some intrinsic value. People seek to save treasure for use in hard times. Money as Treasure tends to wind up in treasure chests and looted and buried by pirates. Gold and Silver Standards fail to stabilize for that reason.
• Money as Private Debt not only is equally unstable but when accompanied with interest it drives wealth into the hands of those who are owed and increases inequality. Private note money started as banknotes backed by gold or silver coin. The bankers would usually print more notes than the Gold or Silver they had in their vaults. The result was periodic "panics" followed by depressions as folks didn't have any money. Debt money results in people owing more than they can pay back. It bankrupts individuals and whole countries. Governments need to be able to count on people being able to pay their taxes. For that reason interest free debt should be part of government funding. Interest bearing notes only make sense for investments that generate revenue directly.
• Printing money without some sort of backing leads to inflation. Horrid examples like the Weimar Republic show what happens when one tries to inflate ones way out of private debt.

The Best Money is Sovereign Money

The conclusion from these observations is that money as notes issued by a treasury for the benefit of the people as a whole, is probably the best money,...

The Economy has to balance

But there are caveats. The government can't just print money in any quantity without consequence. Money has to be backed by economic activity. It is an investment in the economy by the Government. Benjamin Franklin suggested that notes be printed backed by real estate. But he didn't really understand that notes that are used in one place have to have similar value elsewhere.

Money has to be a unit of account backed by the ability to buy things and pay bills and taxes. That means it has to be "legal tender" for all debts public and private, and of a universal and fixed value.

The people have to be sovereign over its value. When money is issued to pay for bridges and roads, to keep farmers farming and merchants selling, it benefits the whole economy. But whenever the Government spends money into existence it is creating privilege, so that privilege has to either be taxed back or it will be leverage into more privilege and power.

Private Debt Money is Disaster Money

Studies show that private debt drives the business cycle more than public debt. Worse, private debt is driven up when money is scarce and wealth is concentrated. When people can no longer borrow, they can no longer buy, invest and they lose wealth they earned previously due to debt. Thus whenever we are using note money we have to use taxation to tax back excess money and reduce hoarding and to reduce the depredations created by inequality. That implies progressive taxation.

When whole nations are treated like scofflaw debtors, that drives austerity. Austerity creates degrading spirals of dysfunction. Nations need to ensure that money, created, goes into actual capital and actual labor. The value of the money in a country reflects the prosperity of that country and all its people. It also drives it.

No Need for fear of Deficits

If a Republic does not control its own money supply, then something is wrong with that Republic. It has become a tyranny run for "private separate advantage." In our current times, there is a degree of tyranny in much of the world, due to this being the case. We are so used to it we take it for granted. Those who have the strongest opinions about this feel jealousy, personalize and miscast the nature of this tyranny. It is not personal, it is a systemic problem. We could eliminate sovereign and individual debt issues worldwide by the simple expedient of allowing a part (or all) of national and state debt, everywhere, to be floated via the money supply rather than converted into bonds. Let the money float the economy, then tax back some of the benefits.

The Money Power should not be delegated

If a republic lacks power over its money supply then it is not fully Sovereign. However, Republics, all through history have not had power over their money supply, either because merchants would only accept gold or silver as payment, or because those who controlled the Gold or Silver had leant them money that was owed and the money they used was little better than IOU notes backed by debt owned by the State's Oligarchs or King. The use of commodity money and debt money is a drag on the world's economy. Debt is useful as an instrument for saving, but the money supply should be as sovereign as the term "all debts private and public" implies. Budgets should balance over the long term - a balance of non-interest bearing notes outstanding that is necessary to drive the economy.

Of course for Money to be fully Republican, the republicans have to be democratic republicans not Plutocratic ones.

Related Posts:

https://holtesthoughts.blogspot.com/2017/11/the-rights-dirty-little-secret.html

https://holtesthoughts.blogspot.com/2017/12/the-money-privilege-and-loot.html

https://holtesthoughts.blogspot.com/2017/07/greshams-law-as-tool-of-regulation.html

https://holtesthoughts.blogspot.com/2017/04/general-grant-and-mark-twain-greenbacks.html

https://holtesthoughts.blogspot.com/2015/02/satans-usury-john-turmel-and-some-basic.html

Related:

The Collective in the Federalist Papers

http://holtesthoughts.blogspot.com/2015/01/the-collective-in-federalist-papers.html

Definitions

https://holtesthoughts.blogspot.com/2012/08/definitions-related-to-democratic.html

http://holtesthoughts.blogspot.com/2015/01/the-collective-in-federalist-papers.html

Von Mises:

http://holtesthoughts.blogspot.com/2013/10/faulty-assumptions-and-verification.html

http://holtesthoughts.blogspot.com/2014/07/an-ideology-of-privateering.html

http://holtesthoughts.blogspot.com/2017/06/pirates-and-privateers-of-americas.html

http://holtesthoughts.blogspot.com/2017/06/franklin-as-modern-money-advocate.html

http://holtesthoughts.blogspot.com/2017/08/pirates-loot-and-east-india-company.html

http://holtesthoughts.blogspot.com/2015/02/two-generations-of-pirates.html

http://holtesthoughts.blogspot.com/2015/07/hamilton-on-money.html

https://holtesthoughts.blogspot.com/2014/03/corrupt-court-and-undue-influence-and.html

https://holtesthoughts.blogspot.com/2015/09/whigs-and-tories-guelphs-and.html

https://holtesthoughts.blogspot.com/2015/03/hamiltons-bank-plan-from-1781.html

Definitions:

https://www.henrygeorgefoundation.org/the-science-of-economics/economic-rent.html

The Money Privilege and loot

There are three kinds of property that determine society's prosperity. These are Land, Capital and labor.

• Land

“The entire material universe exclusive of people and their products.”

• Capital

“Wealth used in the process of production, which includes wealth in the course of exchange.”

• Labor

“All human exertion in the production of wealth and services.”

http://www.henrygeorge.org/def2.htm

These are the kinds of property that produce wealth.

Wealth and Treasure

However, for individuals, especially Westerners, what seems to be important is portable wealth. The more portable the better. The acquisitiveness of western people's is world in-famous. Tales of indigenous people pouring molten gold down the throats of captured conquistadors illustrate how others sometimes reacted to European adventurers seeking gold.

Treasure and Loot

Treasure acquired by theft, usurpation, conversion or warfare is also known as loot. Piracy and warfare, in search of exchange goods, led to colonialization, creation of factories for growing trade goods, and later to factories for automated production. All this was designed to create loot for the pirate captains. The west coined a word for legalized piracy, it was called privateering. It is said that if you scratch the history of almost any family, you find pirates and crooks as the founders. If English speaking people look down on Mafia, it's not because we never had our own. It was known as the English Aristocracy, and later, the brotherhood of the coast. The first Navies for both the Brits and the USA were pirate fleets. Spanish & Portuguese power was driven by privateering. It was called colonialism, but it was really an outgrowth of piracy. The Spanish had no claim to America, they came in to loot it. The Dutch and other European Powers all sailed the world in search of riches. When they engaged in labor or capital expenditure, it was after loot, not the greater good.

Security Versus Loot

People derive their sustenance and prosperity from a combination of ownership/rule and labor. Lincoln noted that capital comes from mixing labor with items taken from nature's bounty. "Labor is prior to Capital." Wealth is produced by such labor. Wealth is fixed to land; houses, buildings, improvements to property in general and put back into producing things. Wealth devoted to production is capital. When people own their own tools and property the result is widely spread modest prosperity. A society with a large middle class is secure and prosperous. There is room for wealthy people in a healthy society.

Wealth versus Greed

Wealth that is portable and exchangeable is known as "treasure". It may be used as capital, exchanged for consumable goods, or used to buy land properties. Henry George conceded that those who create wealth through capital have a right to enjoy the fruits of their labor. He considered the fruits of exertion or capital to be "earned income." Economic rent is unearned income. When people monopolize property and then charge rent to use it, that too is mostly unearned. Wealth acquired by fraud, usurpation or theft is also unearned. Indeed it is unmerited.

Yet vast wealth comes from lending, either directly or through investment. Accounting wealth involves the creation of theoretical instruments that produce fixed amounts of returns, "interest". Sometimes that wealth has nothing to do with reality except as a demand on others. When individuals do it, it's called usury, when States do it, it's called war, embargoes, or invasion. In any case, it's bad news, and has been known as such for centuries:

Aristotle is attributed to explaining it:

“The most hated sort, and with the greatest reason, is usury, which makes a gain out of money itself, and not from the natural object of it. For money was intended to be used in exchange, but not to increase at interest. And this term interest, which means the birth of money from money, is applied to the breeding of money because the offspring resembles the parent. Wherefore of any modes of getting wealth this is the most unnatural.” [Quantum of Power]

Privateering

Pioneers in Economics laid out the benefits of a well governed economic system years ago. But people prefer to fight, play king of the hill, and lord it over others. A well governed system under Democratic, Republican and Commonwealth principles is boring compared to one where people are always fighting. So there are always folks who prefer to be pirates and have it all, manipulate crews to fight for them, then bury the loot because they don't know what to do with it otherwise. Private people acting as government are privateers. Privateers are like the Tongue Eating Louse that eats the tongue of a fish and then takes a bite out of everything the fish tries to eat. Privateers create corporations that tried to rule the world: Rhodes in Rhodesia, the East India Company, J. P. Morgan. They become oligarchs because they are rarely competent to rule a country. They want loot, they don't really want the common-wealth of a country, the common business of a republic or a federation, or the annoyances of democracy.

Now the privateers of the United States are trying to implement oligarchy by dominating the GOP and raising one of their number to the Presidency.

I've got a lot more to say, but that's enough for this post.

http://holtesthoughts.blogspot.com/2014/07/an-ideology-of-privateering.html

http://holtesthoughts.blogspot.com/2017/06/pirates-and-privateers-of-americas.html

http://holtesthoughts.blogspot.com/2017/06/franklin-as-modern-money-advocate.html

http://holtesthoughts.blogspot.com/2017/08/pirates-loot-and-east-india-company.html

http://holtesthoughts.blogspot.com/2015/02/two-generations-of-pirates.html

http://holtesthoughts.blogspot.com/2015/07/hamilton-on-money.html

https://holtesthoughts.blogspot.com/2014/03/corrupt-court-and-undue-influence-and.html

https://holtesthoughts.blogspot.com/2015/09/whigs-and-tories-guelphs-and.html

https://holtesthoughts.blogspot.com/2015/03/hamiltons-bank-plan-from-1781.html

Definitions:

https://www.henrygeorgefoundation.org/the-science-of-economics/economic-rent.html

To Govern utilities well local government must be involved

Governing Utilities well has requirements

To Govern utilities well:

1. Local Government must be involved in their management.
2. Utilities need to be part of Emergency Management.
3. We need republican forms to ensure they are well governed.
4. Republican Government is not "Socialism

Local Government is application of Principles of Subsidiarity

The Principle of Democratic Subsidiarity is based on the notion that:

“Subsidiarity is an organizing principle that matters ought to be handled by the smallest, lowest or least centralized competent authority.”

In Application in democratic societies, it is why the Constitution guarantees a "Republican form of Government to the States" and why the states should guarantee republican forms to local government. In application to public utility it why large monopolies and centralized utilities fail to deliver well. Utilities should be organized on republican forms with local governance. Central Governance is good for general, universal principles, but not for their specific application. One of the drawbacks of centralization is the converse of subsidiarity principles, that central government is often incompetent to handle local matters.

Corporations Hoarding Loot

Our Blindness towards Hoarding

Today I listened to an "economist" on Bloomberg talk about the slow US economy and how "neither fiscal nor monetary policy" could spur more growth. For him and the businesses he serves this is 'caused' by excessive "government regulation." We've been hearing this claim since the late 70s and from the 80s to about 2008 policy makers bought it. It is not true. But nobody debated him when he started. Now that the Trickle Down Crowd ideas have been refuted, they claim nobody knows what to do. None of that is true! What causes recessions and depressions is looting and the hoarding of that loot!

How Government is and isn't a Business

People in this country are really confused about how Government should function. Many think it should be run like a business. Indeed Government should be run like a well run business. But more importantly a well run business is a well governed business.

The reason people are confused about the relationship between business and government is that businesses are governing entities! When Government is run for the sake of Oligarchs only, it is tyranny and privateering!

The Lockean Definition of Tyranny is government for "private, separate advantage.":

We give the people within them the privilege of governing property, their own affairs and in return a sane society expects them to operate within the parameters of that title or charter. This corporate privilege allows Businesses to be run for the private separate advantage of the owners and senior management, within restrictions set by law. When everyone behaves it works for the greater good. When they don't, you get tyranny and privateering.

Government is a business of all the businesses, all the many factions and associations of the people within its jurisdiction. So it has to be run for the people's business, like a virtuous business, and not like a pirate camp.

Trump Goes Full Nixon

Trump gave a policy speech last night. He sounded so incoherent I fell asleep. Before he gave it I figured he might try something old as new (see: "Will Trump Create an American East India Company"). As bad as that idea was and yes the Robert Clive idea may be completely mercenary and privateering (and therefore so Trump) but at least it would have shown some imagination. He went Nixon instead. Incoherent and tricky.

He made three points that, like his Watergate-like corrupt politics remind me of 1969. His speech was pure Nixon:

Will Trump Create an American East India Company?

Trump is going to give a policy speech tonight. If he promises to keep troops in Afghanistan and the Mideast he'll be doing what every other flaccid spine Politician does to avoid humiliation, with one of these wars. I suspect he has another idea in mind; to privatize the war. Trump is a privateer, and as I wrote previously; Privatization is a tool of Privateering, and has been since a group of "adventurers" (pirates) and businessmen (same) petitioned for the Creation of the East India Company around 1600. This would duck responsibility for human life by offshoring it and shucking it off to yet another International Company.

I believe that Trump is going to try to establish an "American East India Company" to privatize our Efforts in the middle east ala Blackwater and Erik Prince's other freebooting efforts.

Freebooting, Vikings, Pirates and "it's just business"

Before we had the Mafia there was the "Brotherhood of the Coast". The Brotherhood of the Coast might go back all the way to the Knights Templar or much further. Piracy and freebooting along the coast of the North Atlantic are an ancient trdition. Freebooting has a long tradition in the North Atlantic that runs from the Bronze Age thru the Vikings, and to modern times.

Vikings Attack on Lindisfarne

Wikipedia dates the Viking age to a raid on Lindisfarne in 793:

"...the Viking Age began on 8 June 793[3] when Vikings destroyed the abbey on Lindisfarne, a centre of learning that was famous across the continent. Monks were killed in the abbey, thrown into the sea to drown, or carried away as slaves along with the church treasures."

But Scandinavians were spotted in Britain before the attack on Lindisfarne.

"Three Viking ships had beached in Portland Bay four years earlier (although due to a scribal error the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle dates this event to 787 rather than 789), but that incursion may have been a trading expedition that went wrong rather than a piratical raid. Lindisfarne was different."

Lindisfarne was different because it was not only looting it was privateering/war.

"The Viking devastation of Northumbria's Holy Island was reported by the Northumbrian scholar Alcuin of York, who wrote:

And it frightened the Anglo Saxon establishment

"Never before in Britain has such a terror appeared".[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viking_Age]"

Looking at other materials on the middle and dark ages, one finds that long before Lindisfarne there were pirates operating out of the Pictish lands (Scotland) and among the Britons and Irish themselves. And that the Angles, Saxons and Jutes, all practiced longship burials long before the Viking age officially happened. Those burials ceased when the Anglo Saxons became formally Christian. The Angles and Saxons were converted by a common effort from both Ireland and Rome. But Rome, through its agency in the Frankish Empire, was not just going after British Gauls and Germans, but Germans in Germany.

Thus While going "a viking" was a wonderful way to make money the motivation for the viking attacks may well have been self defensive war.

Charlemagne's attack on Saxony

The bulk of attacks occurred as Denmark was defending itself against Charlemagne and waging a defensive war against the Franks. The vikings weren't "pirates" they were waging war on behalf of governments (and were led by nobles so were part of government). They were "privateers" not "pirates."

In Charlemagne

This also can be said to be the beginning of a tradition of freebooting that continues to this day. Now those Vikings rapidly had gone from peaceful trading sea captains to ruthless warriors seeking loot, and the reasons are obvious to modern historians. They were at war with Christian Europe. Charlemagne had attacked Saxony and was at war with the North Germans. To the Norse, Christians were at war with them. Charlemagne had ruthlessly conquered and forcibly converted Saxon Germany and were a threat to their survival as a culture. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saxon_Wars]

Some Official histories tell us that the evil Vikings appeared out of nowhere and piracy went away when they became Christian. That is Bull. When William the Conqueror cross over from Normandy to England and marched to Hastings to fight the last Anglo-Saxon king, he sailed the channel in boats identical to Vikings ships in design. Why? Because the Normans were, mostly, descendants of Viking invaders. But it gets richer, there are links to piracy among the Celtic peoples of Britain, the Anglo-Saxons themselves and piracy never ended with the arrival of the Normans. The Normans gave way to British Pirates who predated across the Atlantic. Sir Francis Drake of fame in founding Virginia was a pirate. Some of his captains were also.

More importantly, the East India Company, was founded by high ranking pirates and was explicitly a piratical organization. The British Royal Navy has pirate origins. The United States Navy as well. The East India Company,

But of course when piracy is practiced by States (aristocrats are usually the leader of a small state) then the distinction between a brigand, a pirate, a warrior or a "privateer" is one of POV. The Northmen "pirates" were doing something perfectly legal (and lucrative) in fighting their enemies. It's no coincidence that the Viking age ended with the end of a period of warming in the North of Europe and the conversion of the last of the Vikings to Christianity. Christianity put a chill on all kinds of piracy by pagans, and Christian nobles enslaved the common people and weren't interested in free and bold vikings roaming untamed. They wanted good Peasants who paid taxes or fought in their wars.

Normans

But of course the viking age was followed by Crusades in the middle east and the Mediterranean, so maybe the Vikings didn't entirely give up. Maybe the end of the little warming just sent them south to greener (or at least warmer) pastures. Indeed the Christian descendants of Vikings became "Normans." And of course the Normans, Franks and other violent buccaneers were the ancestors of the Royal Houses of Europe (including Russia):

Wikipedia quotes "The 11th century Benedictine monk and historian, Goffredo Malaterra" who characterised the Normans thus [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normans]:

"Specially marked by cunning, despising their own inheritance in the hope of winning a greater, eager after both gain and dominion, given to imitation of all kinds, holding a certain mean between lavishness and greediness, that is, perhaps uniting, as they certainly did, these two seemingly opposite qualities. Their chief men were specially lavish through their desire of good report. They were, moreover, a race skillful in flattery, given to the study of eloquence, so that the very boys were orators, a race altogether unbridled unless held firmly down by the yoke of justice. They were enduring of toil, hunger, and cold whenever fortune laid it on them, given to hunting and hawking, delighting in the pleasure of horses, and of all the weapons and garb of war."[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normans]

And of course the Normans were all over the mediterranean Sea, conquering Sicily, Cyprus, looting, burning, conquering, destroying; allying with Turks against Armenians, with Byzantines against Turks, and generally causing havok in the name of acquisition all over Europe. So I guess the Vikings didn't really all get subjected to serfs. Some of them just went off trying to make names for themselves by freebooting all over the known world. And of course they filled orders like the Templars, Hospitaliers and similar that continued operation. So we can see that the tradition of pirates and privateers goes back, way back.

But of course privateering got it's rebirth with "Good Queen Bess" and her efforts to fend of the Spaniards. The British used local ship captains and let them loose on the Spaniards. But even before Sir Francis Drake and Good Queen Bess, privateers or pirates were active all over the Mediterranean in regard to the wars between the Turks and Christian Europe. The

Sources and Further Readings

This is one post of a series.

Post Script

I started this post more than 6 years ago as I developed the realization that piracy was alive and well, and embodied in the Corporate Form. It sat while I read articles, dug into the subject and learned that my intuition and observation was only the tip of an iceberg. So I finally finished the draft post that started the whole thing!