How A Passport Became A Prison

How quickly we forget.  It has been less than a century since walls have been erected, worldwide, to limit our movements, yet many of us seem to think it’s “always been this way”.  And the only way we are now allowed to travel internationally is with the permission of our slavemasters (country) using a slave card (passport).

A SHORT HISTORY OF SLAVE CARDS

Things resembling passports can be traced back to the time of the Persian Empire in about 450 BC when an official serving King Artaxerxes I of Persia, asked leave to travel to Judea, and the king granted leave and gave him a letter “to the governors beyond the river” requesting safe passage for him as he travelled through their lands.  But, this is hardly the purpose of a passport today, despite what it may say inside the cover page.

Up until 1914, there were only two countries in the world that required you to have a passport if you wanted to enter – Czarist Russia and the Ottoman Empire. Anywhere else, you could come and go as you pleased.  It was then, with the outbreak of World War I, European governments introduced border passport requirements for security reasons (allegedly to keep out spies) and to control the emigration of citizens with useful skills, retaining potential manpower. These controls remained in place after the war, and became standard procedure… and this has led, over time, to the worldwide limitation of travel except by the permission of the government of each country.

There are now 196 tax farms (countries) in the world and you will need a passport to enter any of them.  But, worse, because they have greatly controlled movement and all institute varying levels of government controls on economic transactions, they have caused a great amount of dislocation.  This dislocation causes great stress as, for example, when a country like China goes from decades of Maoist communism to a form of free market communism, it can cause great changes around the world as a wealth of new, cheap labor comes into the market.

It is these stresses, caused by government involvement in the movement and freedom of humans, that has people in other parts of the world calling for more government involvement!  The self-licking ice cream cone that is the state knows no bounds.

BUY AMERICAN!  HIRE AMERICAN!

This, to some extent, leads to xenophobic reactions and is helped along as people in various countries are taught by both their public indoctrination system (schools) and the propaganda on their nightly news to fear and hate people in other countries.

In the US, for example, there are two groups who complain about jobs and borders:

The “Buy American” group.  They complain when a company chooses to produce products in a country other than the US and then sell those products within the US. Somehow this destroys jobs in America.

The “Hire American” group.  This group complains when individuals enter the country “illegally” and who are willing to work without the permission of the state for a lower wage than the state allows. Somehow this steals jobs from Americans.

Both groups misunderstand the root cause of the conflict: the vampire leviathan state that limits the freedom of all who wish to build a better life for themselves.

“Buy American” is the cry of protectionists and special interest groups such as labor unions. Unwilling or unable to compete in the global marketplace, they push Big Government to restrict trade with other tax farms in order to raise their own wages. Of course this does nothing but act as an inefficiency tax on the Americans who are forced to purchase the overpriced goods. Overall this hurts other parts of the economy, as consumers simply have less money to spend on other goods.

An unintended consequence of this protectionism is often that the beneficiary of the tariff or trade barrier gets addicted to the subsidy and grows fat and lazy. For example, the steel industry in American has demanded protection since its inception. To this day the steel industry still demands protection.  As recently as 2002, GW Bush placed a 30% tariff on foreign steel products.  These industries remain “infant industries” that will forever need coddling by the corporate welfare state. The rust belt of the midwest is a testamanet of the destruction wrought by these policies.

Recently, there is a new addition to the “Buy American” crowd: the righteously indignant “locavore”.  This breed of bigot lives mainly in urban areas, but demands that all of their food be grown within an arbitrary distance of their house. They mix a blind faith in the pronouncements of global warming conmen such as Al Gore with a close-minded desire to “keep” their money in their community.

We recently surveyed the origins of the food in a Canadian grocery store, and the results were astounding.  The produce of nearly 100 countries was represented in the well stocked shelves. To go back to the world that existed when everyone “ate local”, in Canada, would mean subsisting on a diet of roots, tubers, dried buffalo meat and seal blubber for six months of the year. Mmmm mmmm, seal blubber!

International trade benefits everyone, and for every dollar that goes from the USA or Canada to purchase food in another country, money flows back in the form of exports to the rest of the world.

It is a fallacy of the highest order to block international trade.  The logic used to justify it could be readily applied to tariffs and trade barriers between States, cities and even households.  ”Don’t buy Cincinnati produce!  Buy Clevelander!”

THE DIVISION OF LABOR

The Division of labor is the key to prosperity – as Adam Smith put it in “The Wealth of Nations”:

It is the maxim of every prudent master of a family, never to attempt to make at home what it will cost him more to make than to buy. The tailor does not attempt to make his own shoes, but buys them of the shoe maker. The shoemaker does not attempt to make his own clothes, but employs a tailor. The farmer attempts to make neither the one nor the other, but employs those different artificers. All of them find it for their interest to employ their whole industry in a way in which they have some advantage over their neighbors, and to purchase with a part of its produce, or what is the same thing, with the price of a part of it, whatever else they have occasion for. What is prudence in the conduct of every private family can scarce be folly in that of a great kingdom.

The “Hire American” group is afraid that illegal aliens who are willing to work in jobs that the average pampered, overweight and indoctrinated American wouldn’t stoop to, or dare commit the crime of working for below the state-enforced price floor of “minimum wage” are somehow “stealing” jobs from hardworking Americans or are exploiting the welfare state that the Fascist Nanny State has imposed on its citizens.

Nothing could be further from the truth. The 19^th century saw the greatest explosion of wealth the world has ever known – millions were lifted from poverty through the application of laissez faire capitalism and a policy of open borders allowed millions to come to America and make a better life for themselves and work co-operatively with others.

GIVE ME YOUR TIRED

The inscription on the Statue of Liberty gives you an idea of what the attitude of the USA towards the peoples of the world once was:

“Give me your tired, your poor/Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free”

Although, as can be seen from the poster below, by 1917 the meaning of “freedom” had already been contorted into your duty to “buy government debt to kill foreigners”.

Today the US resembles an armed police state – forcing those who wish to come and work to either subject themselves to the rigors of the bureaucratic nightmare of the USCIS or attempt a harrowing journey in which countless die each year.

Authorities have discovered 252 bodies in the Arizona desert over the past year — the remains of migrants who died trying to cross into the U.S. illegally. That’s a record, but overall the Border Patrol says the number of people crossing illegally is down. So, why the increase in the number of bodies? 

And on the flip side, it is now becoming harder and harder to leave.  Fences built on the southern border, drones flying the northern border, and cash sniffing dogs down every jetway all signify that while it may be hard to get in, it will soon be harder to get out (which is why we implore US citizens to get a second foreign passport, like in the Dominican Republic).

Per Bylund nicely describes the world that we have inherited

The pre-1914 world saw no immigration issues or policies, and no real border controls. Instead, there was free movement in the real sense; there were no questions asked, people were treated respectfully and one did not even need official documents to enter or leave a country. This all changed with the First World War, after which states seem to compete with having the least humane view on foreigners seeking refuge within its territory.

The “immigration policies” of modern states is yet another licensing scheme of the 20th century: the state has enforced licensing of movement. It is virtually impossible to move across the artificial boundaries of the state’s territory in the search for opportunity, love, or work; one needs a state-issued license to move one’s body, be it across a river, over a mountain or through a forest. The Berlin Wall may be gone, but the basic principle of it lives and thrives.

The greatness of what was once America was built on the sweat of millions of “undocumented” immigrants who just wanted a shot.  America is long forgotten, and now the US will fall as the doors close to the best and brightest.

Funnily enough, despite all of their misconceptions about how and where goods come from, millions of American families actually have it right when they bow their heads and thank Jesus for the food he lay before them each night.  They just pronounce “Jesus” wrong.

Despite passports having become prisons, it is more important than ever to have more than one passport – the reason is that most people reading this have a western country passport and the western states are in a state of collapse… and as they collapse they will squeeze their tax slaves even harder.  By having a second passport you can give yourself options when the time comes for the door to shut for your capital or yourself.  Subscribe to TDV today to learn more about getting second passports, geopolitically diversifying your assets and expatriation.

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