History hasn't been kind to either of Jefferson's opinions in that sentence. The US did abolish the central bank for a while and nothing good happened as a result. Also, military coups are a problem in many countries, but not the US.
Also fun fact - back when the US had private currencies, people WILLINGLY preferred to use them despite a gov currency existing. It is only after the government passed high taxes on these currencies(ie having to pay tax for each transaction to exchange them) that they went out of favor. If they were really so terrible, why did the gov feel the need to kill them?
Central banking is nothing but a power grab. The "it stabilizes the baking system" is nothing but a lie.
At least in the old wildcat banks, you had a shot of redeeming for specie if you went out to the sticks where the main branch was.
I'm not much of a historian, but are you referring to company stores? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_store
> Saint Peter don't you call me 'cause I can't go // I owe my soul to the company store
— Johnny Cash, Sixteen Tons
> […] even in [locations] that were not [poor], workers paid in scrip had little choice but to purchase goods at a company store, as exchange into currency, if even available, would exhaust some of the value via the exchange fee. With this economic monopoly, the employer could place large markups on goods, making workers dependent on the company, thus enforcing employee "loyalty".
Separating banking, investment banking, and insurance into separate legal entities and preventing the banks from consolidating into mega-banks prevented another a Great Depression for ~70years. Then roughly 8yrs after we repealed all that, we unsurprisingly had another Great Depression level financial crisis.
The Fed’s lending support, along with govt stimulus, prevented the actual depression from happening, so you could argue that the Central Bank does have some impact on banking system stability. But it was only necessary because we removed the structural regulation that had maintained a stable banking system for over half a century.
This is not at all clear.
> Separating banking, investment banking, and insurance into separate legal entities and preventing the banks from consolidating into mega-banks prevented another a Great Depression for ~70years. Then roughly 8yrs after we repealed all that, we unsurprisingly had another Great Depression level financial crisis.
Are we forgetting the inflationary period in the 70s? How the gold standard was lost during this time? All the emerging market crises? How the USD has lost 98% of its value since the 70s? How inequality is sky high due to interest rate suppression causing asset price inflation? How we have a massive trade defect leading to an extremely large negative net-foreign-investment balance? Does it makes sense to you that countries that are much "poorer" than us are lending us money?
> The Fed’s lending support, along with govt stimulus, prevented the actual depression from happening, so you could argue that the Central Bank does have some impact on banking system stability. But it was only necessary because we removed the structural regulation that had maintained a stable banking system for over half a century.
We trade depression for inflation then. Is this good? Bad? Not sure. We are living in that experiment though. One day this excessive debt and money printing will catch up with us. It has happened to every single fiat currency in history.
If you're against this, what you want is more inflation, not less. This is the entirely intentional result of the strong dollar policy.
By what metric has the USD lost 98% of its value since the 70s?
you're splitting hairs. 7x .02 doesn't change the trend.
You’re conflating a bunch of unrelated things. The single most economically devastating type of event in a banking system is a credit crisis or credit collapse [1]. That’s what both the Great Depression and the Global Financial Crisis were.
All these other things you reference pale by comparison in the level of harm they can inflict on society. Are they bad? Sure. Are they remotely in the same league of harm as the GD or GFC? No.
The point of structural banking system regulation is to prevent this worst case scenario, not to solve every single problem with the banking system. If you can prevent credit collapses from occurring then you’ve significantly improved the stability of the banking system.
The US financial crises--terrible as they are--are not even remotely comparable to the damage inflicted by a military coup. Putting these two things in the same category is a nonstarter.
That's not what happened. After the Great Depression, we have not had any crises matching was a a regular cycle before then.
In fairness, if Jefferson had his way, there wouldn't be much of a military around to plot a coup in the first place.
He'd also be considered a staunch non-interventionist were he alive today - "peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations and entangling alliances with none." Not much use for a standing army when that’s how you see your role in global affairs.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_1812#Unpreparedness
Apparently having a very small army didn't help when Jefferson's party wanted a war. I guess they over-rated state militias?
A lot of the founders' ideas didn't work out they way they hoped. (For example, they tried to prevent political parties and failed utterly.)
When people quote American founders out of context, it's as if it settles things, but they were just making it up at the time, often based just on what sounds good. Jefferson in particular was often a rather impractical man, but a popular politician who promoted a lot of bad ideas (and a few good ones) that made for good politics at the time. He's hardly the only one.
That was the general approach of the United States until ~ the early 20th century. Before that, the 'standing' military was generally tiny, the employer of last resort (criminals, drunks, etc.), and was greatly expanded by volunteers in times of warfare.
I wonder why
Private, untraceable, accurate, high capacity banks.
Standing armies’ threat to liberty isn't exclusively, or even mostly, via military coup, it's through acting without effective oversight against citizens when employed in a domestic security role, heightened by the separate culture and us-vs- them attitude standing forces create.
And, since the mid-19th century, it's mostly been realized in the US through standing paramilitary police forces rather than an normal standing military, as the former were established as permanent entities before regular standing armies in the US, and displaced regular standing armies from the dangerous domestic role that is the main underpinning of them being in Jefferson’s statement.
Such a military force would be facing a very well armed citizen-led guerilla response.
Given the amount of private gun ownership in the US, holding on to power after a coup would prove a rather difficult proposition.
Unless enough citizens were on the side of the coup. I don't know why no one ever seems to acknowledge that as a possibility, especially after Jan. 6. Gun owners are just as driven by politics and ideology as anyone else.
Plus just because you have a gun in a safe and maybe sometimes shoot watermelons in the backyard with it doesn't mean you'll be effective in guerilla warfare against an actual military. I know Americans like to bring up Afghanistan and Vietnam as examples of guerilla warfare succeeding against the US, but fighters in both cases still went through training that would break the average American gun owner.
That was kinda the whole point of the revolutionary war. #DemocracySpeaksManyLanguages
As well-armed as the citizenry may be, the military is infinitely more so - they have, you know, tanks and planes and smart bombs - and in this fantasy civil war-esque scenario I don’t think the junta would be shy about exploiting that advantage.
Remove the part where it's easy to get things Stateside, and I assure you, a U.S. military coup/junta will be fighting a two sided war as well. Both internal from the populace, and external from former Allies who in no way, shape, or form are going to sit idly by and be threatened by a militaristic U.S. Armed Forces that's even remotely controversial enough to even be considered a coup by the populace.
People forget: The Army Sabotage Manual is public domain.
The military knows exactly the hell it will be entrenched in if it ever goes against the public's wishes. They literally wrote the book.
The entire public’s wishes, yes. Now consider what would have happened if the military leadership hadn’t resisted the call to join the January 6th insurrection — it’s much easier to imagine something like 90s Serbia where a substantial fraction of the population hopped up on propaganda supports the military efforts and will keep their neighbors from forming an effective resistance.
The US military problem would be that it has to subdue a population that has been socialized to resist (to the point that it already birthed paramilitary during the previous democracy) and constitutes the replacements for that military (and the industries necessary for supply) for coming generations. Hell, once it had a democracy the first time, it still went to civil war. Thinking about the short term doesn't get you much.
Predator drones, nukes, etc won't solve the problems that couldnt be solved in a foreign land. Domestically it would be harder and longer fought.
For example, let's say that the military made a deal with <insert the most extreme sub-faction of your least favorite party here>. Then they'd have people to install into the newly vacated positions of civilian economic administration, and in that, they'd have a way to motivate that faction to join them and support their legitimacy.
Meanwhile improvised bombs seem to be far more important to and effective for a modern insurgency than firearms.
Add in that it sure seems to be more common to read about private militias aiding an authoritarian coup than successfully resisting it and I think the pro-widespread-individual-firearm-ownership faction has an uphill battle just to demonstrate that the practice is a wash, let alone beneficial to the preservation of liberty and democracy.
There are a few cases of private arms being used in anti-corruption "wars" or stand-offs in the US, but at least as many in which they're used for essentially the opposite purpose (supporting anti-liberty, and especially racist, policies and actions). In any case, the national guard stepping in tends to end these in a hurry.
The notion that the 2nd amendment is vital to the preservation of liberty and democracy in 2022 seems to be dubious at best. I'm not in favor of a blanket gun ban but I think that particular argument in favor of gun rights—which seems to be what anti-gun-regulation folks fall back on very quickly, when challenged, which makes sense as it's the reason given in founders' writings and, arguably, in the constitution—is, at best, pretty weak.
Kurds in Northern Syria.
>US military is occupying
US military has presence and has engaged in (importantly) air support, but to call it "occupying" all the Kurdish territory is an intentional I think misrepresentation. It's hilarious that anyone would call it "occupying" when the boots on the ground were minimal to almost non-existent. I really don't need to go off these ignorant statements when I bore witness to what was happening with my own eyes, but I'm sure you know more from whatever you read on the internet.
Yes, [ although I suppose technically they are maybe not civilians once they pick up arms in a war. ]
> I pointed out how that is nonsense because they are being backed operationally by the most powerful military on the planet.
You have no fucking idea what you're talking about, and I have the memory burned in of many now dead faces in my mind of those who died with almost no "backed operationally" presence by the US. Imagine literally being told by some dude on the internet that my personal experience defending Kurds from ISIS is wrong because he thinks based on what he read on the internet that we were 'occupied' by the US. You can say whatever you like, I'm sure it will stroke your own ego to believe that.
I can recall sitting in a border town with literal children one building over sleeping with guns, hoping they would survive. A month later I found out several of them were dead. I personally viewed this town and there was not a single US soldier there, barely enough provisions to survive, and those defending themselves had essentially no US weapons.
The effort of the Kurds fighting Syrian government and ISIS is critical to their defense; the US contribution standing on its own is completely incapable of maintaining Kurdish Syria. The boots on the ground is by far Kurds (not part of Syrian gov) themselves, with arms largely either coming from those privately stashed or brought in via militia. In a number of attacks on Kurdish territory such as in Kobani, essentially anyone with arms engaged in defense with whatever they had.