Zane > Recent Status Updates

A whole bunch of useless backstory. Marazin teaches young Louis to govern. Louis ends the Fronde when he's 17. Kings are to devote their lives to governing.

Belloc sees natural conflict between Monarchy and "Money-power" the latter exploiting mankind. Men are either governed in monarchy or aristocracy. This governance unifies the state, gives internal order, and protects from foreign aggression. Monarchy alone protects against money-power as aristocracy tends to become plutarchy when morality degrades. Monarchs don't because they are too rich to bribe.

There's a lot here so I'll be brief. Money is a commodity just like every other thing that people want. People choose this commodity for particular reasons, and it naturally becomes the medium of exchange. For most of world history, this was gold or silver. When people have a demand for money, the "price" or efficiency of money goes up while the price of goods goes down and vice versa. Amounts of money don't matter.

Rothbard today explains that states need support from a majority of their populations. To obtain this, states employ intellectuals to create ideology. These intellectuals exist almost solely to give legitimacy to the state or discredit its detractors.
States use systems designed to limit their power, to obtain legitimacy.
States die either by conquest from other states, or revolution of their populations.

I read about how the state is the only organization that uses a monopoly on force to fund itself. They do this because they are a part of the unproductive class, as opposed to the productive class who uses free trade to fund themselves. Frantz Oppenheimer calls these means of producing wealth "political" and "economic" means, respectively.

Today I learned about what woods were the best for what things. To have good neighbors you have to be a good neighbor. What skills one needs in order to build a log cabin. It is really amazing how people lived back then, and I feel like I should preserve these traditions to the best of my ability.