The Morning Roar: Russia, China, And Iran Are Willing To Drop Dollar, The Explosion Of The “Sharing Economy,” And Gun-control Advocates Dislike Facebook’s Policy Change On Firearms
Happy hump day! Here's the Wednesday edition of The Morning Roar!Russia, China, And Iran Are Willing To Drop The DollarCould the end be near for the US dollar’s status as the reserve currency of the world? If Russia has their way the petrodollar and all of the benefits the United States citizens have reaped could soon be a distant memory.Zerohedge has a report on the potential impending demise of the dollar via Voice of Russia:
Voice of Russia reports citing Russian press sources that the country's Ministry of Finance is ready to greenlight a plan to radically increase the role of the Russian ruble in export operations while reducing the share of dollar-denominated transactions. Governmental sources believe that the Russian banking sector is "ready to handle the increased number of ruble-denominated transactions".According to the Prime news agency, on April 24th the government organized a special meeting dedicated to finding a solution for getting rid of the US dollar in Russian export operations. Top level experts from the energy sector, banks and governmental agencies were summoned and a number of measures were proposed as a response for American sanctions against Russia.
Russia alone cannot inflict significant damage to the dollar, but when trading partners in Iran and China agree to trade in Rubles or Yuan, then some serious, lasting damage can be done to the dollar. Vladimir Putin will be visiting Beijing on May 20th. The beginning of the end of the dollar could be mere days away. The Explosion Of The “Sharing Economy”The amount of technological innovation occurring today is truly breathtaking. It is amazing to see personal and social connections driving many of today’s latest and greatest start-ups.Services like Lyft, Uber, Airbnb, and Kickstarter have shaken the entrepreneurial business model to the core and proven that traditional barriers to start a business of your own have been relaxed. An article in Reason points out that some on the left who are traditionally not friendly to capitalism have embraced businesses built through social networks by branding them as a “sharing economy.” The author, Jim Epstein, argues that we should embrace the support from these unlikely backers, even if they have different reasons for justifying their support.
In these brewing public policy battles, many advocates for limiting the role of government don't talk like libertarians. They refer to these new online marketplaces as "the sharing economy," a phrase that's clever branding but too broad to be very meaningful. They argue that these companies represent a new paradigm for American capitalism in which trade (at last!) benefits individuals instead of multinational corporations. The higher purpose of these sharing economy ventures, they assert, isn't making people freer, richer, and happier as customers, workers, and entrepreneurs, but reducing energy consumption and staving off the Malthusian apocalypse.Sharing economy defenders may be on shaky ground intellectually, but their effort to rebrand capitalism is winning converts and swaying regulators. If mushy phrases and misguided ideas provide cover for, say, Occupy Wall Street protestors to turn up at a demonstration to save Airbnb, libertarians should rejoice.
Personally, I’m not a fan of the phrase “sharing economy.” In my view what we are seeing is social businesses filling the gaps that have been allowed to form due to the misallocation of funds by the various localities, cities, states, as well as the federal government. For decades the State has manipulated the market through regulation and the spending of tax dollars.For example, the State has tried to centrally plan transportation through awarding taxi medallions and funding public transit, but they have failed to meet the demands of the market because they have not allowed human action to determine where funds should be allocated. The internet and technological boom in the last twenty years has given the people a way to go around the State’s regulations and connect with others in order to meet society’s transportation demands. Lyft and Uber are perfect examples of this phenomenon.I cannot wait to see the businesses that will be developed in the near future. There are many more gaps that need to be filled due to the State’s mismanagement. Perhaps the next great “social business” will be created by someone reading this article, or maybe even by the person writing this article (I can dream.)Gun-control Advocates Dislike Facebook’s Policy Change On FirearmsYou know Facebook is doing something right when they have the gun-control crowd all fired up. Guns.com has a report touting the effectiveness of Facebook’s new firearms policies and surprisingly Facebook decided to rely on the social networks community to keep guns out of the wrong people’s hands.
Back in March, following pressure from Everytown for Gun Safety, Facebook announced that it would make several changes to its policies regarding firearms that would work toward keeping guns out of the hands of those prohibited from possessing them: minors, felons, mental defectives, domestic abusers.When examining the policy changes, it became clear that there wasn’t a real overhaul to how Facebook users utilized the social media platform to discuss, buy, sell and trade firearms. In other words, there was no ban put in place blocking users from using forums to meet prospective buyers and sellers.Instead, Facebook enhanced its community-sourced policing, stepped up education and public outreach on the issue and ensured that rather obvious boiler-plate disclosures and acknowledgments, e.g. “Sellers and buyers must comply with all local laws,” were made visible on relevant pages.
Once again the true colors of the gun-control activists are shining through. They are not satisfied that Facebook has implemented a common sense policy that keep guns out of the hands of potentially dangerous criminals and continues to allow law abiding citizens to exchange firearms. They would much rather that Facebook ban the exchange of firearms altogether, thus punishing those that follow the law.The “gun-control” crowd does not want guns only out of the hands of dangerous individuals; they want nobody to have access to guns - except of course those that carry a badge for a living and are held above the law.Read The Morning Roar every weekday Monday-Friday!The Lions of Liberty are on Twitter, Facebook & Google+Receive access to ALL of our EXCLUSIVE bonus audio content – including “Conspiracy Corner”, “Degenerate Gamblers” and the “League of Liberty Podcast” by joining the Lions of Liberty Pride and supporting us on Patreon!
