It’s a problem that is fundamentally rooted in using the initiation of force to get things done

Stefan Molyneux  | Free Domain Radio

“…Yes, of course the general population has been raped and pillaged by the financial sector; but what is astounding to me… they know that the government has been complicit in all of this stuff. They know that the government is dependent on the financial institutions for money to continue to bribe the general population into getting votes. They know that the government has started unjust wars and been responsible in America for the murder of hundreds of thousands of foreigners and tens of thousands of Americans. They know that the government kidnaps people and throws them in jail for non-crimes like having unpopular bits of vegetation in their pocket.

They know all of this about the government. What is their damn solution to the problem of financial corruption?

Let’s have the government do something about it. Let’s have the government put a tax on financial transactions. Let’s have the government repeal the repeal of glass steagle. Let’s have government swoop in and do all of this wonderful stuff because these financial institutions are like wayward children that have eaten too much candy and the government like a parent needs to come in and take away all the Halloween bags.

It’s completely insane. The government, of course, is fundamentally behind all of this. The financial corruptions that they’re protesting are a mere affect of the fundamental problem in society which is always and forever a moral problem. Not a problem of legal technicality. Not a problem of financial rejiggering. Not a problem of insufficient oversight.

My god, they passed over 50,000 pieces of additional regulation during Bush’s term, when he was supposed to be the big deregulation guy. It’s all madness. They’re out there camping as part of the way the system’s cancer grows, which is that they’re out there protesting against the affects of government power, which is financial corruption. What they want to solve the affects of government power is more government power and that is horrendous; they don’t know the degree to which they are contributing to the mess and creating even more disasters in the future…”

“…Whenever you have a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. When you have a government, almost nobody can think of any other solution than: pass a law, have more regulation, give the state more power and that’s going to solve everything. Well the state has been growing in power, fundamentally, ever since 1913, ever since the English gave them the ability to type whatever they want into their own banks accounts. The state has been growing like a cancer.

The state has more power now than any government in history has ever dreamed of having and the problem is getting worse and worse. The correlation of the problems getting worse and the state growing is very clear; because violence causes destruction. It’s like heroine, it gives you short term high and a long term catastrophe. So you need to stop asking the government to solve problems. Ask the government to start solving problems in the way you’re solving your problems which is peacefully, non violently without the opinion backed by a gun we call the law. Get the government to start putting down its guns, start controlling human beings in the way that you’re protesting.

Then you’ll be taking a genuine step forward, not just to solving these problems; but down the road to genuine human liberty. Until you are willing to stop asking people with guns to solve problems, you have no right to expect those problems to be solved…”

Violent Statists Occupy Washington D.C.

One of the driving forces that keeps statism going, is the fact that statists see violence from the state, as a solution to society’s problems. They are frequently calling on the state to utilize violence, coercion and theft, against various aspects of the population, to achieve their desired ends.

What these statists fail to realize, however, is that statism and violence, are the root causes of many of the problems in society. The big companies that statists often bemoan, are allowed to become so large and powerful, primarily due to regulations which keep competitors from competing for their market share. These regulations are enforced by government violence and coercion.

When statists call for more taxes and regulation, they are unknowingly enabling the already well connected corporations to maintain their strangle-hold on the market. They then see the side effects of these policies, which destroy the economy and the marketplace; they blame the free market and capitalism, then call for additional centralization of power in the hands of the state.

What you end up with is a self-reinforcing cycle which erodes the free market and replaces it with crony capitalism, where corporations and the state work closely to maintain the status quo.

The Federal Reserve Is Playing Defense

October 1, 2011
Gary North | LewRockwell.com

You probably missed any media coverage of the September 26 speech by Federal Reserve Board of Governors member Sarah Raskin. The media ignored it. You would be wise not to ignore it.

There were a few brief news reports about it. There was no detailed analysis. The media usually ignore speeches by any FED Board member other than Bernanke.

Raskin’s speech reveals what is slowly dawning on the public. The economy is getting worse, and the FED is powerless to stop it.

Her speech was an attempt to reassure her listeners that the FED really does know what it’s doing, contrary to the evidence. The Federal Reserve has spent 45 months trying to deal with the sagging U.S. economy. Nothing is working. It looks as though nothing will work. But she wants us to believe that it’s not the FED’s fault. She did not say whose fault it is.

I have offered a line-by-line analysis of her speech. If you have money in a retirement fund, you would be wise to read it. I have posted it here.

I do not expect many people to read it. People are too busy. Bernanke knows this. The other Board members know this. They give their speeches, which get little coverage. They receive little criticism. They receive little applause. They have little power.

The Federal Open Market Committee has the power. Every eight weeks, the FOMC makes decisions in closed-door sessions that affect a billion people.

Then why read speeches by members of the Board of Governors? Officially, they are the government’s only source of indirect control over the FOMC, which is made up of presidents of the regional Federal Reserve banks, who in turn are appointed by regional FED banks, which are privately owned.

Members of the Board are appointed by the President. Their organization’s Web address ends in .gov. Legally, the Board is in charge of the entire system. This is a convenient myth for public consumption. Operationally, the Board acts as the mouthpiece of the New York Federal Reserve Bank. The New York FED is the most important private economic organization in the world.

Board members are apologists for the New York FED. When I say “apologists,” I mean this in the theological sense: “apologetics” – the defense of the faith. I do not mean it in the sense of offering an apology. The FED never says it is sorry for anything it has done. That would be perceived by Congress and the public a sign of weakness.

THE SYSTEM OF REPRESENTATION

The main spokesman for the FED is the Chairman of the Board of Governors: Bernanke. He is legally the agent of Congress. He is operationally the barrier between Congress and the New York Federal Reserve Bank.

This is how all government agencies work, and the Board of Governors is a government agency. The head of every cabinet-level department is appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate. He serves at the convenience of the President. He imposes the President’s wishes on the bureaucracy.

In a pig’s eye.

The Secretary of Education is close to impotent to change any major policy. There is only one way to change policy: stop all funding to every branch of the bureaucracy that implements the old policy. Fire them all. Sadly, this is illegal. They are protected by Civil Service law.

Well, then, just stop the funding the old policy. Shut down the departments. Move all employees to other departments.

Legally, this can be done. It is never done. There would have to be hearings before both houses of Congress. Endless hearings. The American Federation of Teachers would scream bloody murder, meaning the nearly permanent senior officers in the AFT would scream bloody murder. The hearings would go on for years. Then the President leaves office. His reform program ends.

The bureaucracy cannot be fired. The newly appointed Secretary of Whatever goes out on the hustings to give speeches to special-interest groups related to the Department of Whatever. He has little authority over the day-to-day operations of the department. His task is to defend the budget and the reputation of “his” department.

Officially, the departmental Secretary is the agent of the Administration. Operationally, he becomes the agent of the department he oversees for a few years. He will leave. The employees will remain. If you want to grasp this system in two minutes, watch this segment from Yes, Minister.

Members of the FED’s Board of Governors are appointed for 14-year terms. We read:

The full term of a Governor is 14 years; appointments are staggered so that one term expires on January 31 of each even-numbered year. A Governor who has served a full term may not be reappointed, but a Governor who was appointed to complete the balance of an unexpired term may be reappointed to a full 14-year term.

Once appointed, Governors may not be removed from office for their policy views. The lengthy terms and staggered appointments are intended to contribute to the insulation of the Board – and the Federal Reserve System as a whole – from day-to-day political pressures to which it might otherwise be subject.

There is no industry-related agency of the U.S. government that is more insulated from politics. Therefore, there is no agency that is more completely under the domination of the industry that it is supposed to control. (The CIA and the NSA are not representatives of industries. They are separate fiefdoms.)

If the United States Army were this insulated from politics, the USA would live in a militarized society. The Army would run the show. Its only major rivals would be the Air Force, the CIA, the NSA, the FBI, and the Federal Reserve. To imagine that Congress would have any say in such a society would be naive. The defense industry would be the premier industry in the society.

Our society is a bankers’ society, meaning a handful of large banks. The supreme mark of this is the openly announced independence of the Federal Reserve from politics. No other agency of government has publicly claimed this degree of independence from politics, which means independence from the voters.

In every textbook on history or politics that mentions the FED, the author assures the readers that this utterly undemocratic arrangement is for the good of the people. The fact that the arrangement is a flagrant violation of the religion of democracy, which governs all tax-funded educational institutions, is never mentioned in polite circles.

So, our elected officials are not the operational agents of the voters in matters of banking. They are the operational agents of the big bank cartel.

Until the crash of 2008, most voters were unaware of this system of representation. But that crash changed the old climate of opinion. The reason was Ron Paul. His candidacy for the Republican nomination for President in the second half of 2007 got the message out. Then the crash and the bailouts confirmed his message.

This had not happened in the history of the Federal Reserve. The FED’s Board is now playing defensive politics. Yet, legally, it is not a political institution.

This is why people should pay more attention to speeches by members of the Board of Governors.

RASKIN’S SPEECH

I will only go over the highlights here. I have covered the speech in detail elsewhere.

Like all members of the Board, she is burdened by the inescapable reality of the sagging economy. Unemployment is over 9% two and a half years after the beginning of the recovery. This has never happened before.

Housing prices are still falling. The bubble that popped in 2006 is still in decline. There is no sign that we are close to the bottom.

Consumer spending is stalled. This is a mark of government and central bank policy failure for a Keynesian economist. The only worse mark is falling spending.

She praised the FED for falling interest rates. She claimed that the FED’s monetary policies have achieved this positive result. What she, Bernanke, and other Board members never mention is this: falling interest rates are the universal mark of a recession in progress. Investors buy bonds in order to lock in an interest rate. They see this as safe-haven investing.

Falling rates since 2007 have been the result of investors who have moved their capital to government bonds. But FED officials claim that FED policies achieved this. So, Mrs. Raskin said this.

Rather than reviewing the vast academic literature regarding the effect of conventional monetary policy, I will simply pose the counterfactual question: What would have happened to U.S. employment if monetary policy had failed to respond forcefully to the financial crisis and economic downturn? Economic models – the Fed’s and others – suggest that if the federal funds rate target had been held at a fixed level of 5 percent from the fourth quarter of 2007 until now, rather than being reduced to its actual target range of 0 to 1/4 percent, then the unemployment rate would be several percentage points higher than it is today. In other words, by following our actual policy of keeping the target funds rate at its effective lower bound since late 2008, the Federal Reserve saved millions of jobs that would otherwise have been lost. Of course, substantial uncertainty surrounds various specific estimates, but there should be no doubt that the FOMC’s forceful actions helped mitigate the consequences of the crisis and thereby spared American families and businesses from even greater pain.

The FedFunds rate is the rate that applies to banks’ overnight lending to each other. Demand for this type of short-term funding collapsed in 2008. Banks have increased their holdings of excess reserves to $1.7 trillion. This is why we are not seeing hyperinflation. Bankers are afraid of another recession. They want money in the bank.

The FED can take credit for having given credit to big banks in the big bank bailout of October 2008, which was opposed by voters. The FED could argue along these lines.

It is true that interest rates fall in a recession. The last time in American history that we have seen rates this low was in 1933. But, because the Federal Reserve bought nearly worthless Fannie and Freddie bonds at face value from the government after Hank Paulson unilaterally nationalized the mortgage market in September of 2008, and because the FED swapped at face value its portfolio of highly liquid T-bills for illiquid toxic corporate bonds held by large banks, we are not in a depression. Which do you want: low interest rates with 9% unemployment or 12% unemployment. Those were our only choices in 2008 and 2009. Trust us.

But this is not the Party Line at the FED. The Party Line is that the FED’s increase of about $2 trillion in its portfolio was the source of bank stability, corporate survival, and an acceptable though unfortunate unemployment rate of 9.1%. The FED pushed down interest rates – rates that would have stayed high, contrary to all historical records of recessions. That saved the American economy and the world economy.

Raskin heaped great praise on the FED.

Given the magnitude of the global financial crisis and its aftermath, the Federal Reserve clearly needed to provide additional monetary accommodation beyond simply keeping short-term interest rates close to zero. Consequently, like a number of other major central banks around the world, the FOMC has been deploying unconventional policy tools to promote the economic recovery.

This is exactly what we would expect from one of five members of a government Board that governs monetary policy, and which is supposed to be held responsible for failure. But, as the video from “Yes, Minister” indicates, no one is ever supposed to be held responsible in a government agency. She thinks they deserve a round of applause.

My FOMC colleagues and I have recently been faced with complex decisions about the use of unconventional policy tools under extraordinary economic and financial conditions. And while we may not all agree with every decision, I believe that the public can have a very high degree of confidence in the fundamental integrity and soundness of our decisionmaking process.

My response is to give them a standing zen ovation: the sound of millions of one-handed people clapping.

CONCLUSION

Mrs. Raskin offered no evidence for hope of reduced unemployment, revived business investing, or increased consumer spending. She was remarkably silent on these issues. She reaffirmed the decision of the FOMC. It will be mid-2013 before the FED dares reverse its present policy of twisting.

In August, we decided to be more specific about the timing, and our two most recent meeting statements have indicated that “economic conditions – including low rates of resource utilization and a subdued outlook for inflation over the medium run – are likely to warrant exceptionally low levels for the federal funds rate at least through mid-2013.”

So, we are still in the swamp of low growth. We will remain in it for a long time, politically speaking. She has issued President Obama a challenge: run your campaign in a stagnating economy.

She offered no analysis of the labor market. Yet her speech was entitled “Monetary Policy and Job Creation.”

This was a defensive speech. It indicates that the FED has no plan to get the economy back on track.

Falling long-term interest rates are the preliminary sign of a looming recession.

What will the FED do when recession hits next year, as seems likely? What rabbits will they pull out of the monetary hat?

The FED is on the defensive. Investors should take heed.

Classical Music Activates the Mind

I have long enjoyed classical music from the many great composers.  When I was in high school, I once had the opportunity to play the Tuba part of  J. S. Bach’s Tocatta and Fugue in D Minor adapted for wind ensemble.  Its was quite a challenge to play a piece which was intended for organ on a wind instrument, especially with all of the jumps between the top and bottom of the scale.

During the dozens of times I played it, during rehearsals, personal practice and concerts, I noticed new connections being made in my mind, new centers of thought and awareness activating.

I have always heard that classical music activates the mathematical centers of the mind.  I believe this is true and there’s probably far more going on than we are consciously aware of.

I hope you’ll take a moment to enjoy this Tocatta and Fugue video complete with a fascinating visualization, so you can not only hear the sound, but also get a sense of how the music is structured from a visual perspective.

Ducks in the Pond: August 25, 2011

I’m starting to get more into video recording, editing and publishing as a hobby. One of the first videos in recent times is this video of some friendly local ducks. This is some really relaxing stuff to just zone out and watch.

Chart Analysis: Tanzanian Royalty Exploration (TRX)

Let’s start by reviewing the period between April 2006 to January 2010.  This is when several levels of long-term importance were established.  Given the high at around $9 and the low at around $1.50, the fibonacci levels now influencing the share price are established.  Additionally, an up-trend was established, as indicated by the trend line from the dips in October 2008 and September 2009; this up-trend has remained in tact and serves as long-term support.

Here is a long-term chart for October 2006 to August 2011 showing the long-term up-trend with trend support at $5 and various reactions around key fibinacci support levels at 61.2% and 78.6%.

Here is the long-term chart for September 2008 to August 2011 showing the long-term up-trend with long-term trend support at $5.

Medium-term chart for October 2010 to August 2011, indicating a short-term range trade between long-term fibonacci levels 60.8% and 78.6% descending wedge with trend support at $5.

Short-term chart for March 2011 to August 2011, indicating a descending wedge formation nearing completion.

UPDATE: 9/2/2011

It looks like we have a short-term down-trend-line breakout on the 1-year chart in TRX.

TRX 9/2/2011 – 1 Year Chart – Tanzanian Royalty Exploration Corporation

Martin A. Armstrong on the S&P Ratings Downgrade of the USA

The following is a question asked to Martin Armstrong, author of the Pi Cycle Economic Confidence Model and former chairman of Princeton Economics International. Martin Armstrong is a bona-fide economic genius with a number of amazing predictions having come true to date. His words are definitely worth considering in your own planning.

Will a Downgrade of USA FROM AAA Really Mean Anything?

source: armstrong.org

The hype about Standard & Poor going to downgrade USA credit rating is just not important. Oh the
talking heads will cry the sky is falling. They downgraded Japan in 2002 and nothing took place. Not even their rates increased. The same is likely in the USA and quite frankly, if S&P really thinks they have that much power, they should stop drinking their own bath water.

Downgrades come AFTER the market has already shown its course of action. It is not like the rating agencies actually pontificate and then the markets wake up and say: Oh my God! Ratings follow the market activity and have no power otherwise. The credit rating they gave the CDOs did not convince people to buy them. Once the junk was rated AAA, they were good collateral for the REPO market. That was the key. They rated the junk AAA and that made it good collateral and that was the ONLY reason the stuff sold. Without that rating, the NY boys couldn’t sell anything.

When it comes to sovereign debt of the USA, we are talking about the US$ is the RESERVE currency. About two-thirds of central bank reserves globally is in dollars and the way those dollars are held is in government treasuries. Does anyone really think that if S&P downgrades the USA that its debt will not be sold?

When you deal in REAL money, there is a problem. How do you store it? You can’t just put a billion on deposit at a bank. They will sell it every night and don’t have to tell you. If the REPO market blows up and you go to the bank and say I want my billion, they lost it, and so you turn to FDIC to collect your $100,000. Right! The ONLY way to park serious money is in treasuries. If you have hundreds of billions, now you have the added problem of MARKET SIZE. You can’t just go to any country. Their debt structure cannot provide the ability to park serious money. This is the difference from taking personal economics and applying it to the whole world. It doesn’t work! Don’t worry. Be happy! Until we revise the world monetary system and the dollar is no longer the RESERVE currency, sorry boys, but you are spinning scenarios that scare people, sound good as talking points, but are just gibberish in the real world of serious money. Rates will rise because capital will shift out of bonds into assets not because of the S&P.

The Generational Bull Market in Gold: Why $1600 Is Just The Beginning

Gold benefits from: out of control sovereign debt, nanny states, media mind control, war, over-the-counter derivatives, unfunded liabilities, trillion dollar deficits, accounting fraud, artificially low interest rates, quantitative easing, loss of confidence in governments and paper assets. Gold benefits from these things because it allows imbalances to get out of control in a major way.

In just 5 years the gold market has bid up the price by $1000. It is likely that, in the next 10 years, the gold price will rise to at least $15,000.

Oh, and did I mention that nothing meaningful or effective has been done to address those issues listed above, which help to create a bull market for gold. That’s why these kinds of great movements of civilizations can last for a decade or more; because of the unwillingness of societies to solve their problems until its too late.

Gold is Not in a Bubble

Gold is mistakenly thought of as being in a “bubble”; however, gold has a history of being a currency of last resort when confidence-based systems fail. So when you have vast sums of “wealth” worldwide tied up in confidence systems, such as the US-Dollar and the US reputation is subsequently crushed, what you see in gold is actually a deflation of a world-wide bubble of confidence in paper assets.

If you consider the trillions and trillions of dollars, still tied up in questionable confidence-based paper assets, why should $1600 be the ceiling for gold? The US and other major debtor nations never stop raising their debt ceilings and never address the underlying problems, so why would gold stop reflecting these problems anytime soon?

What I believe you will see, over the long-run, is that the next 10 years will look like the last 10 years; but sharper to the up-side and more violent in its volatility as things become increasingly more unstable.

Gold went from around $250 – $1600 during this 10 year period (a 560% increase); it will likely go from $1650 – $15000 during the next 10 year period (an 800% increase).

Why Gold May Eventually Reach $15,000

Jim Sinclair is well known for his prediction of the rise in gold to nearly $900 in the 1980’s. The formula Mr. Sinclair used was roughly: the price gold would have to reach, in order to make the gold held by the United States equal to the amount owed to foreign creditors, on the international balance sheet of the US.

In the 1980’s that “balanced” value was $900. Today the “balanced” value would be $15,000+.

Jim Sinclair | Jim Sinclair’s Mine Set

Assumption:

Because gold is held by many central banks, once as a reserve currency but now as an inventory currency, it functions as a swing asset to balance the International Balance sheet of the US.

Central banks are sellers of dollars but still hold, by default, large dollar inventories.

China has hedged its dollar position 50% through commitments to long term dollar commercial agreements, pay in, mineral, and energy deals internationally. That is an act of pure genius.

We can assume other central banks still hold 90% of their reported dollar positions, on average unhedged by commercial obligation positions.

In crisis times, the US dollar price of gold ALWAYS seeks to balance the International Balance Sheet of the USA.

Therefore:

Take 90% of international US dollar debt less China and then add 50% of the US debt owned by China. Then divide that number by the ounces supposed to be owned by the US Treasury. The result is where gold wants to go.

In 1974 this gave me $900 gold. Now you do your homework, and submit your analysis to me. Do this, and I will give you Angels going to that price by a little known technique of Jesse Livermore that only works on gold after it has broken to a new high above all resistance.

Little by little I am passing on all that I have learned from Jesse through Bert to those that read every day in thanks for your support of me and mine.

Jim

When you evaluate recent data, with the above formula, you get the following:

source: Jim Sinclair’s Mine Set

Using the methodology you specified in your article today, I get a target price for gold of: $15,600.

Most current TIC report: http://www.ustreas.gov/tic/mfh.txt

Total Foreign Holdings of Treasury Securities: $4,479.2 Billion
-Less : China – Mainland (1,144.9)
-Plus: 50% of China – Mainland 572.5

Adjusted Foreign Holdings of Treasury Securities $3,906.8 Billion

Number of Fine Troy Ounces held in Custody by the US Mint for the US Treasury: http://www.usmint.gov/downloads/about/annual_report/2010AnnualReport.pdf

Note to Financial Statements 6, “Custodial Gold and Silver Bullion Reserves”, page 59
Statutory value @ $42.2222 per FTO $10,574,053,000
Number of FTO 250,438,229

Valuation of Gold required to equal Adjusted Foreign Holdings of Treasury Securities
Adj Fgn Holdings $3,906,800,000,000
Number of FTO Gold at US Mint 250,438,229

Gold price Valuation $15,600

The Option to Protect Yourself is Still Available

So all of those people who complain about having missed their chance to protect themselves from what is to come are full of shit. Even if you can only spare a hundred or so dollars at a time to get a 1/10 ounce gold coin, or buy a few shares of a gold mine each month, you can benefit greatly by protecting yourself from the coming rout of inflation.

One interesting fact, is historically quality shares in gold mines have held a 3x leverage to the price of gold. This means that if gold goes to $15,000, the likely return on the share price would be at least 2400%. Junior gold miners can have an even higher level of leverage, given that their share prices tend to stay suppressed and then eventually explode when the fundamentals take over as gold rises.

Gold will be there for you to use when the value of everything else is called into question. It does not require anyone to perform on their obligations, as all paper assets do. Given that we are living in a vast sea of empty promises, is it any wonder that people are choosing gold and other precious metals to protect themselves?

George Washington, Political Parties and Lack of Principle

Today’s parties, the Republicans and Democrats, or as I like to call them Republicrats and Demipublicans, are not here to fix our problems. As George Washington recognized over 200 years ago, political parties are tools “by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people.”

Whenever I hear partisan talk, I am reminded of how easily people become tangled in the dialectic and effectively neutralized. Neither party is going to save us, no matter how it plays out, the only saving grace will come when people again become principled.

These people that put all of their energy into making sure their “party” gets in are incredibly naive and unwilling to face the fact that either party will do anything to get in power and stay there; neither has much in the way of principle. You can’t have good public policy without sound principles, there simply is no way to compromise; either you have sound principles, or you don’t.

“All obstructions to the execution of the Laws, all combinations and associations, under whatever plausible character, with the real design to direct, control, counteract, or awe the regular deliberation and action of the constituted authorities, are destructive of this fundamental principle, and of fatal tendency. They [political parties] serve to organize faction, to give it an artificial and extraordinary force; to put, in the place of the delegated will of the nation, the will of a party, often a small but artful and enterprising minority of the community; and, according to the alternate triumphs of different parties, to make the public administration the mirror of the ill-concerted and incongruous projects of faction, rather than the organ of consistent and wholesome plans digested by common counsels, and modified by mutual interests.

“However combinations or associations of the above description may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely, in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people, and to usurp for themselves the reins of government; destroying afterwards the very engines, which have lifted them to unjust dominion.”

–George Washtington

We’re In This Together Now

So often our ego gets in the way of really being there for our fellow man when it counts; truly being our brother’s keeper. We’re often so concerned with being the one who’s right or being superior, that these concerns often lead to hiding information to get the upper hand or turning a blind eye, when we could use our skills to help someone in a meaningful way.

Now there’s nothing wrong with being your best, per se; but it’s when we intentionally do things to aggrandize our selves at the expense of others, that we should really take pause. If we really are so great, then we shouldn’t need to hide things and screw over others to let the world know this. Simply acting with great awareness and equanimity, drawing on our abilities and our intellect; this will be all that needs to be done.

Its easy to forget, in a competitive civilization such as ours, that ultimately we are in this together. If we all become better, then everyone enjoys the benefits!

Even though we compete with each other in so many ways, the goal of this competition is to encourage each of us to become better; well, at it’s best, that is what competition does. At its worst, competition encourages us to push our fellow man down to get the upper hand, to hide information, to plot and scheme for unfair advantages.

Sometimes, you’ve just got to take a break from your own idea of personal advancement, to express care and compassion. Ultimately, your true advancement is bolstered by being able to help others along the same lines, because it teaches you, makes you better and makes you more fulfilled.