If Americans are not doing some serious soul-searching in the midst of this crisis, they need to start. Where America goes from here is not some sort of esoteric debate. What we do at this point has life or death consequences. Get it wrong, and suffer more death, suffering, and impoverishment. Get it right, and America moves toward life, health, liberty, peace, prosperity, and harmony.

What everyone needs to recognize is that they are facing a choice of systems, not a choice of people. Either stick with the same systems or switch over to new systems. That’s the choice now facing the American people.

Let’s examine four systems under which we currently live and have lived for decades.

America’s economic system

This is a centrally planned and centrally managed system run by the federal government. Its central aim is to “wage war on poverty” by forcibly taking money from everyone and redistributing it to people in need, such as the elderly and the poor. It is based on massive confiscation of income and wealth by the Internal Revenue Service, in the form of income taxes and payroll taxes.

America’s healthcare system

This too is a centrally planned and centrally managed system run by the federal government. It is based on big, powerful central planning agencies like as the Centers for Disease Control and the FDA, as well as massive socialist programs like Medicare and Medicaid, both of which are responsible for foisting a never-ending healthcare crisis onto the American people consisting of ever-increasing healthcare costs that have bankrupted people or sent them into deep debt.

America’s monetary system

This too is a centrally planned and centrally managed system run by the federal government, specifically the Federal Reserve. From its beginning in 1913, its job has been to print up ever-increasing quantities of paper money to enable the federal government to fund the ever-increasing expenditures of the welfare-warfare state way of life.

America’s system of empire and foreign intervention

This too is a centrally planned and centrally managed system by the national-security branch of the federal government. Its job is to wreak death and destruction among foreigners and, in the process, bring ever-increasing amounts of taxpayer-funded largess to its army of well-heeled “defense” contractors, which are composed of former members of the national-security establishment.

Consequences of central planning

How are all these systems working out? Most, if not all, people would agree that they are not working out well at all. Together, they have either bankrupted people through taxes or debts or left millions of people without even enough savings to get them through a couple of months of unemployment.

And guess who is now paying the biggest price for the coronavirus crisis — seniors and the poor. That’s because the FDA, in all its central planning wisdom, prohibited the private sector from producing test kits that would have, without any doubt, significantly reduced the coronavirus infection rate.

How can they lower the infection rate if they don’t know who has the virus, especially since people who have the virus are infecting people for about a week before they show any symptoms? A massive number of cheap testing kits would have enabled people to ferret out quickly and early who was infected, enabling everyone else to continue working.

Given that their dysfunctional healthcare system has totally failed to stem the crisis, they have resorted to tyranny and oppression through a mandatory shutdown of the economy, sending millions of people into unemployment and even bankruptcy.

To relieve the financial distress from their destruction of people’s livelihoods, they are resorting to their dysfunctional monetary system. The Federal Reserve is now printing money like it was going out of style. Does anyone really believe that printing trillions of dollars is a way to relieve economic distress? It’s just another form of taxation, one that plunders and loots people, especially the elderly and the poor, through the massive devaluation of their money.

Meanwhile, their fourth dysfunctional system is ensuring that the national-security establishment will suffer no budget cuts whatsoever in order to enable to maintain its oversees machinery of empire and intervention.

Isn’t that ironic? Their four systems of central planning and management are responsible for massive death, suffering, and impoverishment not only here at home but also abroad.

A different direction

If you like how all these dysfunctional systems have worked out, are working out, and will continue to work out into the future, just continue supporting their existence.

But make no mistake: There is a choice to be made here because there are four systems that are opposite to the four systems under which we are are suffering. These four systems are as follows:

A free-market economic system

Under this system, everyone keeps everything he earns — 100 percent, which enables everyone to save lots of money. No income taxation and no IRS. It’s a system based on 100 percent voluntary charity. This was America’s founding economic system for more than 100 years. It produced the wealthiest and most charitable society in history.

A free-market healthcare system

Under this system, the private sector and the free market are entirely responsive for healthcare. No more having to get permission from federal bureaucrats to produce test kits or anything else because the federal government will play no role whatsoever in healthcare. A total separation of healthcare and the state, just as our ancestors had the wisdom to separate church and state. This was America’s founding healthcare system and it lasted for more than 100 years. It produced the finest healthcare system in history, one in which healthcare costs were cheap and affordable and in which doctors and hospitals treated the poor for free on a purely voluntary basis.

A free-market monetary system

Under this system, the free market determines the currency that is going to be used. No more Federal Reserve and no more legal-tender laws. For more than 100 years, America had the finest monetary system in history, one based on gold coins and silver coins. A free-market monetary system would improve upon that concept.

A limited-government republic with a small, basic military force.

No more national-security state and no more foreign military bases and foreign interventionism. No more sanctions, embargoes, invasions, occupations, wars of aggression, torture, state-sponsored assassinations, secret mass surveillance, and other destruction of civil liberties. America was founded as a limited-government republic, which lasted for more than 100 years.

The same old direction versus a new direction

So there you have it: Four completely different systems from which to choose. Americans should choose wisely. Your lives, health, and financial well-being and those of your loved ones, friends, and neighbors depend on it.