What Every Citizen Must Know About Government Finances

Good citizens know as much about freedom, government, economics and laws as their president, prime minister, justices, governors, senators and other officials.

When a lot of the citizens are good citizens, freedom flourishes. When only a few are good citizens, freedom declines.

This is an incontrovertible law of human history. It is always this way. No exceptions.

So, just using finances as an example, here is a basic citizen’s quiz:

1. Can you explain in detail what inflation is, what causes it, how it is related to a gold/silver standard, and how it always gives more power to the elite class and less to the middle and lower classes?
2. Can you explain the differences between free banking and fractional banking, in detail, and how the two influence societies in drastically different directions?
3. Can you explain the differences between free-enterprise banking and central banking, and what is the relationship between the government as the taxing power and the government as central banker?

These three questions in large part separate the elite ruling classes from the regular people in modern nations.

If you know these things, you understand the essence of the modern economy and can be part of the solution for your nation’s decline and the current losses of freedom. If not, you are naturally part of the problem.

The answers to these questions are clearly outlined and explained in Murray Rothbard’s book, The Mystery of Banking. It’s the quickest way I know of to quickly understand finances at the level (or higher) of our national leaders.

There is a name for a society where a small upper class understands these three questions (and a few more like them), and uses this knowledge to rule over the masses who do not understand them. It is aristocracy.

In our day it is more often referred to as elitism, meritocracy, or even democracy. Although this is not the dictionary definition of these words, it is the actual reality in every modern nation called a “meritocracy” or a “democracy.” And in truth, this system is highly anti-merit and anti-democratic.

A democratic-republican system can only last if the regular people understand finances as well as their rulers. Again, there are no exceptions to this rule in all of history.

Fortunately, just knowing the answers to these three questions flips this switch, and almost anyone, pretty much everyone, can learn these three things.

But will you do it? Or, if you already know these three answers, will you help others learn them? Only you can decide.

Oliver DeMille is the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and USA Today bestselling co-author of LeaderShift: A Call for Americans to Finally Stand Up and Lead, the co-founder of the Center for Social Leadership, and a co-creator of TJEd.

Among many other works, he is the author of A Thomas Jefferson Education: Teaching a Generation of Leaders for the 21st Century, The Coming Aristocracy, and FreedomShift: 3 Choices to Reclaim America’s Destiny.

Oliver is dedicated to promoting freedom through leadership education. He and his wife Rachel are raising their eight children in Cedar City, Utah.