1. He claims "Historically, politicians have always fought for the power to create money out of thin air, so they can increase their spending without having to directly increase taxes."
Wrong -- Most wars are over land disputes, ideology, religion, economics or a combination. ...
Stefan didn't say politicians have always fought
wars for the power to create money. You implied that. There are many ways to gain political objective without fighting war.
... Please name one war fought over the issue of printing fiat. He certainly didn't ...
The Iraq War.
Was Operation Iraqi Freedom fought over land dispute? Ideology? Religion? Economics? That's certainly not what we in the U.S. were told. Iraq is nowhere near our borders.
We were specifically told it was over weapons of mass destruction (WMD), and further we knew where they were. Although I wouldn't hold my breath for an official government explanation of what went wrong let me propose a guess. Let me first remind viewers Americans in general didn't seem to be clamoring for war over WMD. There was also the
Rwandan Genocide in 1994 where 500K to 1M were killed with no intervention from the U.S. If we are so concerned for the well being and slaughter of distant people, why not?
The real downfall of Saddam Hussein was interests of a powerful nation (the U.S.) were aligned against him. An empire the size of the U.S. which doesn't produce much domestically needs something else to export to sustain a debt fueled economy: war. The Iraq war cost
over 2 Trillion dollars of additional U.S. debt. Second, as Stefan mentioned there are those who do profit from war and somebody got paid from those dollars.
Third, Saddam proposed selling oil for euros which threatened the
petrodollar. While Iraq wasn't the world's biggest oil producer, others could get ideas and Iraq was small enough to be made an example of. Combine all this with the fact Saddam wasn't the most saintly ruler and you probably have the real basis for that war. Now
that explanation I'd argue makes far more sense, and is certainly about the ability to continue printing fiat (the U.S. dollar).
... 2. Trotsky, Lenin, Pol Pot, Mao Zedong, Ho Chi Minh, Pinochet, Castro, etc.. These guys had nothing to do w banking. They are astute politicians and fierce military guys. Their power didn't come from raising money but politics and convincing people to follow them.
I'd agree with the fierce part.
... 3. Limiting money limits govt from printing to pay for war. Wrong again. Govt borrow money for war by selling (war) bonds. Or maybe raise taxes. Or they might borrow it from foreign banks. No govts can just print money for no reason. They can increase money supply in form of gov debt though.
You're missing the point. It's not printing money that restrains government. It's
cost. The two are not the same.
If the barometer for what people use as money is gold, something which government can't simply create to dish out, then people will feel the cost of things like war in a more pronounced way, rather then gradually over years by inflation.
... Anyways it was a goofy speech. ...
Maybe the speeches of George W. Bush in the lead up to the Iraq War were more to your taste.
