The Satanic Core of Libertarianism
As we can see from de Mandeville’s Fable of the Bees, Satanist propaganda is at the core of Libertarian doctrine and Austrian Economics.
by Memehunter for Henry Makow.com and Real Currencies
In Proof Libertarianism is an Illuminati ploy, we covered the Jewish Money Power’s ongoing involvement in Libertarianism.
In The “Catholic” Wing of Libertarianism, we explored the Jesuit a.k.a. Illuminati connections with Libertarianism.
In this article, we delve into another creed which is at the root of Austrian economics and modern Libertarianism: Satanism.
The obscure hero of Libertarianism: Bernard de Mandeville
Born in Rotterdam in 1670, Bernard de Mandeville came to England in the wake of William of Orange’s accession to the throne. A doctor by profession, Mandeville became better-known as a satirist. More importantly, Mandeville was also a Satanist, linked with the Blasters and Hell-Fire Clubs of 18th-century England.
Although Mandeville’s name has been all but erased from contemporary mainstream economical discourse, many free-market thinkers lavish glowing praise on his insights.
In a lecture delivered at the British Academy in 1966, Friedrich von Hayek extolled Mandeville as a “master mind” and “great psychologist” whose theories anticipated those of David Hume, Adam Smith, and Charles Darwin, and praised his poem The Fable of the Bees as a “remarkable” work.
According to Hayek, it is through the work of Carl Menger, the founder of the Austrian School, that Mandeville’s ideas “returned to economic theory” by way of 19th-century German historian Friedrich von Savigny.
Ludwig von Mises also paid tribute to Mandeville in his Theory and History, observing that
“He [Mandeville] pointed out that self-interest and the desire for material well-being, commonly stigmatized as vices, are in fact the incentives whose operation makes for welfare, prosperity, and civilization.”
Even John Maynard Keynes, surely not an Austrian, recognized Mandeville as one of his foremost precursors in The General Theory of Employment and Money.
These days, Austrian economist Gary North introduces The Fable of the Bees on his website as “the most important poem in the last 300 years”.
But what is so special about the Fable of the Bees that this fairly obscure poem, and his author, could have inspired such eulogies from Hayek, Mises, and Keynes?
Good comes from evil, and other perversions
Mandeville’s Fable of the Bees or Private Vices, Publick Benefits was initially published in 1705, but was reworked and supplemented with abundant commentary over the next 25 years.
In his writings, Mandeville argues that liberty represents man’s uninhibited pursuit of his natural, evil instincts, and that, rather than being evil, selfishness and licentiousness lead to prosperity.
According to Mandeville, evil is “the grand principle that makes us social creatures, the solid basis, the life and support of all trade and employment without exception”.
Adam Smith, influenced by Mandeville, came to the conclusion that individual self-interest is the pillar of a prosperous society. Hayek and Mises went further and railed against altruism and solidarity as hindrances to a society’s economic success.
Of course, Smith is right to identify the added value brought by the division of labor and to point out that producers and sellers are primarily motivated by self-interest. But that does not mean that self-interest should be hailed as the most fundamental principle of civilization. To assert this is plain evil.
Mandeville also claimed that inequality generated talent and art, and that a nation’s wealth was predicated on the maintenance of an underclass of poorly educated laborers.
Following in Mandeville’s hoof steps, Mises defended inequality, emphasizing that “men are born unequal and that it is precisely their inequality that generates social cooperation and civilization.”
The “right to allow your child to die”
To his credit, anarcho-capitalist Murray Rothbard distanced himself from Mandeville’s ideology. However, the same Rothbard advocated for parents to have “a legal right not to feed [their] child, i.e., to allow it to die”, and for the emergence of a “free market in children”.
Since Rothbard’s system denies that humans may have moral obligations to each other, he ends up with a philosophy that rejects outright aggression (the “non-aggression principle”) but allows outright neglect, even to the point of causing death.
This is the evil outcome of taking the libertarian ethics to their logical extreme. Clearly, the “non-aggression principle” is necessary but not sufficient to design a just and humane society.
Satanic ideologies in modern Libertarianism
Below are three well-known quotes, one from a famous Satanist, one from a prominent Libertarian author, and one from a leading Austrian economist.
Alastair Crowley’s Law of Thelema reads thusly:
“Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law”.
Ayn Rand’s literary character Howard Roark proclaims in The Fountainhead:
“Man’s first duty is to himself. His moral law is never to place his prime goal within the persons of others. His moral obligation is to do what he wishes, provided his wish does not depend primarily upon other men.”
Finally, a passage from Mises, who admired Rand’s elitist stance:
“The ultimate end of action is always the satisfaction of some desires of the acting man. Since nobody is in a position to substitute his own value judgments for those of the acting individual, it is vain to pass judgment on other people’s aims and volitions.” (Human Action)
Beyond differences in wording, and even though Mises’s version is more nuanced than Crowley’s or Rand’s in-your-face statements, these three extracts are essentially saying the same thing.
Let that sink in for a while.
Now, it is one thing to point to similarities between Satanism and Libertarianism. But, as we have seen with the Fable of the Bees, Satanist propaganda is actually at the core of the Libertarian doctrine and of Austrian economics.
The Satanic-Libertarian connection is very much alive today. Libertarian candidate Ron Paul, a self-avowed Rand admirer, may strike the right chord on many topics, but he has been linked to the Illuminati and has been seen displaying Satanic hand signs.
The Satanic dialectic
The Austrian School is not the only economic school infected with Satanism, far from it. Like Hayek, Keynes was a member of the infamous Fabian Society. He was also known as a child molester. Karl Marx was himself a Satanist.
In fact, Socialism, Zionism, and Satanism were originally joined at the hip: 19th-century Jewish activist Moses Hess, an influential precursor of modern Zionism, was also an early proponent of socialism and a collaborator of Marx. It was Hess who initiated Marx and Engels into Satanism.
The end goal of all these ideologies is domination by a transnational, oligarchic, Satanic, Illuminati elite. Marxism and Austrianism both oppose nationalism and support free trade.
Mises’ collaborator, the arch-Zionist, Jesuit-trained, high-ranking Freemason Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi summarized the Illuminati dialectic thusly:
“The fight between Capitalism and Communism over the inheritance of the beseeched blood aristocracy is a fratricidal war of the victorious brain aristocracy, a fight between individualistic and socialist, egoist and altruist, heathen and Christian spirit.
The general staff of both parties is recruited from Europe’s spiritual leader race [Führerrasse] the Jews.”
Rising above the Illuminati dialectic
To be sure, Austrian economics and Libertarianism have introduced useful concepts in both ethics and modern economic theory. The same can be said about Keynes and Marx. Illuminati ideologies always contain some savory morsels of truth, in order to make the Satanic deception more palatable.
Our challenge, in rising above this Illuminati dialectic, is to chew on these nuggets of wisdom, and to spit out the evil lies and half-truths that defile them.
In the end, the real war waged by the Illuminati is a spiritual one. It is not merely about which monetary system is conducive to prosperity or which economic model is optimal. It is not solely about which political system is superior. It is, at heart, a battle for our souls.
Special thanks to Anthony Migchels
(h/t to deadeyeblog regarding Marx’s position on free trade)
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I’ve always considered Libertarians on the creepy side but now I know why. However, the main thing you are missing and the best way to stay out of the way of these people is to stop swearing oaths. I would say that the oath is the lowest common denominator that Satan uses to get people into his realm of thought and actions.
http://verydumbgovernment.blogspot.com/2010/02/stop-swearing-oaths.html
http://verydumbgovernment.blogspot.com/2010/03/swear-and-oath-tell-lie.html
By swearing oaths, people are giving themselves over to Satan without even realizing it. It is easy to stop doing. I appreciate the information, not take it to the next step and stop the swearing of oaths. This takes the satanists power away. What to get rid of a satanists, just start talking about God’s commandments.
These are the two basic issues I work on the most: eliminating the swearing of oaths, and I like to talk about God’s commandments. The other stuff is good to know, but in order to turn anything around, everyone will have to obey the commandments, because anything less will fail.
Amazing how almost everything seems to link back to Enlightened French, at least when it comes down to our current political and economical systems.
Anyway, what happened to your article “The Ultimate False Flag: Adolf Hitler” ?
A few years back I decided to focus completely on the Money Power’s control of the Money Supply. I try to avoid other issues, even though I feel very strongly about another few issues too. But I feel I can add most value in discussing the monetary aspect of it all. So I deleted a number of articles that could offend people that would benefit from the Money Power/Usury analysis.
Also it started to interfere with the Gelre: ‘normal’ people must pay with the Gelre.
North published a poem to refute Mandeville’s.
Here is a portion of it:
…
The doctor, Mandeville by name,
Gained more than fifteen minutes’ fame.
He wrote his poem as a tool
To undermine the Golden Rule.
His poem challenged Western morals.
It launched a century of quarrels
About the role of moral rules,
And whether they are preached by fools.
…
http://www.garynorth.com/Bees.pdf
And Dr. North, a Calvinist, supports Satanism here exactly how?
The article simply mentions that Gary North introduces the Fable of Bees as “the most important poem in the last 300 years”.
There is no claim that Gary North personally supports Satanism.
By saying that putting money in the bank and gaining interest is ok, but borrowing at interest is not. That’s Gary’s great interpretation of the bible. That’s his 20 volume tome. I kid you not. Here’s the source: http://www.garynorth.com/public/4007.cfm
You know what this device is called? Blame the victim. The debtor.
Don’t quote gary. He’s a bought and paid for whore. He’s no christian. going to church does not make man christian.
“Don’t quote gary. He’s a bought and paid for whore. He’s no christian. going to church does not make man christian.”
…and you are qualified to judge this? Good luck with that. Romans 14
that’s a fair point, about his christianity. But that he’s a bought and paid for whore is simply a matter of fact.
I respectfully disagree with the author. Self-interest, which means the interest or advantage of one’s self, is not necessarily evil in and of itself. We all have self-interests. Yes, some people will use self-interest in evil ways; yet, some people will use self-interest in good ways. One seeking to better himself financially is not evil. As the author noted, “Adam Smith . . . came to the conclusion that individual self-interest is the pillar of a prosperous society.” Yes, I agree with Smith and we all ought to seek prosperity by toil, not by theft of Peter to pay Paul. If I use self-interest to advance myself financially, then not only will I win, but also my neighbor will win. In other words, if my neighbor is in need of something, then I may loan him some money. Or I may donate money to charities or to churches. The fruits of my labor are mine and mine alone. I may do whatever with it as I please so long as I do not trespass against my fellow man (individualism).
I gather a strong disdain of individualism by the author. Individualism does not mean one is heartless. Individualism is the antithesis to collectivism. Individualism believes in liberty; whereas, collectivism believes in coercion. If you take coercion out of the equation, then it becomes individualism. People who say that individualism is self-interest, selfish, self-centered, and egotistical fail to see that collectivism also has the same attributes; yet, those attributes get a moral upgrade under collectivism since it is done in the name of an abstract group. Rand said to beware of altruism. I disagree with her views on altruism. If you ask me, Rand gave individualism a bad reputation. Both collectivism and individualism believe in altruism. Where the two differ is how to carry out altruism. Do we do it under coercion of government? Or do we do it under voluntary and mutual cooperation?
God wants His creature, i.e., man, to love, to honor, to respect, and to discipline (as in educate, guide, and punish) his fellow man. I think the author and I would agree that man needs man. However, I think we would disagree on how to make that practicable. Man is meant to be liberated from his fellow man, neither enslaved nor robbed by government, i.e., steal (taxation) the fruits of labor of Peter to pay Paul.
Man is meant to be liberated from his fellow man, neither enslaved nor robbed by government, i.e., steal (taxation) the fruits of labor of Peter to pay Paul.
The printer of the currency may steal by inflation as well as taxation.
“The printer of the currency may steal by inflation as well as taxation.”
I concur. To prevent that, the money power in the United States of America belongs to the Congress and the Congress alone. Now one may argue that is not the case owing to the influence of the private money interests.
The Congress specifically has the power “[t]o coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures.” Article I, Section 8, Clause 6.
“The Framer who perfected the design of our country’s monetary system was a man who had spent most of his life struggling with-and publicly condemning-a fluctuating medium of exchange.
That man was Roger Sherman (1721-1793), a delegate from Connecticut. It was he who, on August 28th, 1787, proposed that the states sacrifice the power to participate in paper money schemes. When it was counter-proposed that the states allowed by Congress make other things than gold and silver coin a tender in payment of debts, we’re told by James Madison that Sherman exclaimed, “We are making these measures absolute. This is a favorable crisis for crushing paper money. If the consent of the Legislature could authorize emissions of it, the friends of paper money would make every exertion to get into the Legislature in order to license it.”.
The reader of Madison’s Notes on the Debates of the Convention would naturally infer that Sherman was prejudiced against paper money. But where is any material explaining why Sherman disliked paper money? None can be found. There’s a black hole in history where Roger Sherman’s monetary philosophy should be.
Admitted[ly], other people have written that paper money is evil.But they weren’t the Framer of the United States Constitution’s monetary clauses.”
Here is his book:
http://www.rogershermansociety.org/caveat.htm
In my humble opinion, paper money is worse than coin money. Many founding fathers despised paper money. They knew the private money interests love paper money since it may be manipulated easily and bring economic hardships. Here is a good article about this very topic…
http://www.hourofthetime.com/wordpresstest/?p=7943
“If what is used as a medium of exchange is fluctuating in its value, it is no better than unjust weights and measures, both which are condemned by the laws of God and man.” Roger Sherman
Sources of influence behind Article I, Section 8, Clause 5.
http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/tocs/a1_8_5.html
The founding fathers were greatly influenced by both English common law and Biblical law. Sherman’s statement about unjust weights and measures and the concurrence of the powers to coin money and fix the standards of weights and measures in the Constitution are examples of that influence. For the framers of the Constitution, money was a weight of precious metal, not weightless paper with pretty designs. The value of money was its weight and fineness and its value could be accurately determined. Thus, the framers elected coin money over paper money. According to the sources above, “standard of weights and measures” simply means a weight or measure fixed and prescribed by law to which all other weights and measures are required to match.
Are you two honestly suggesting that Roger Sherman was the intellectual force behind America’s currency? He fought to insert the “gold and silver” language into the Contracts Clause (Article I:10), which is often misrepresented as demanding a gold / silver national currency, but which in fact says that STATES must settle their debts with the federal government in gold and silver.
The national debt and currency were purposefully left as a matter of legislation, which is explained at length in the Federalist papers, Hamilton’s reports on public credit and national banking, and the fact that the first thing congress did was to establish the First National Bank to create a public debt monetized by mostly paper money.
The reason Jefferson and the rest of the “anti-federalists” openly opposed the Constitution was in reaction to these types of republican principles endorsed by the majority of the founders (Hamilton, Washington, Franklin, Adams, etc.). In 1789, America had no gold – they could either borrow it from Europe at great interest, or establish a national bank whose credit was based on the faith and credit of the American people.
If anything, we should be blaming fools like Roger Sherman that the first national bank had any gold deposits or bond-holders at all, rather than being what Hamilton intended, which was a purely public and “fiat” institution.
Regarding Article I, Section 10, Clause 1, the influences may be read here:
http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/tocs/a1_10_1.html
I am not suggesting Mr. Sherman was the entire intellectual force, but he had his role. Yes, Article I, Section 10, Clause 1 states that the several States may make gold and silver coin a legal tender in payment of debts. Your point?
The Constitution is precise and there is no delegated power to the General Government to establish a national/central bank, period. The First and Second Banks of the United States were unconstitutional. The current Federal Reserve System is unconstitutional as well. Money is simply a common medium of exchange between the people. Money is the genus whereas coin, paper, sticks, shells, rubies, etc. are the various species. The Constitution explicitly requires coin, neither paper nor other specie. If you were to ask me, I would rather carry coin around than paper. Paper is only good to wipe my rear or to burn for heat. Coin is made of metal and that metal may be gold, silver, platinum, lead, copper, bronze, etc. It does not matter what the coin is made of; rather, it matters that we return to our constitutional money and constitutional money power, i.e., coin and the Congress!
Then you disagree with the writers of the Constitution and the first congress, who created the first national bank with their second act of legislation. The constitutionality of a national bank, and the exclusive prerogative of congress over the states in matters of money, was later confirmed by McCullough vs. Maryland.
And how do you figure the congress will control the money supply without a central bank of some type?
In article I section 8, the word “coin” doesn’t mean metal coins – it’s used as a verb and/or proper noun, variously, which is why they capitalize it in “foreign Coin” and “current Coin”. The Coin of a nation is what we might call currency.
The big point here is that you’re arguing that the founders didn’t understand what they themselves had written, and a central bank with paper money just appeared out of nowhere, against their intentions. You can’t wish Alexander Hamilton out of existence because of an unfounded paranoia about paper bills.
“You can’t wish Alexander Hamilton out of existence because of an unfounded paranoia about paper bills.”
No, but I can wish that Aaron Burr had shot him sooner.
From Bouvier’s Law Dictionary, Revised 6th Ed (1856) :
COIN, commerce, contracts. A piece of gold, silver or other metal stamped by
authority of the government, in order to determine its value, commonly
called money. Co. Litt. 207; Rutherf. Inst. 123. For the different kinds of
coins of the United States, see article Money. As to the value of foreign
coins, see article Foreign Coins.
Here’s a thorough historical review of the topic, which supports my position:
http://www.economicstability.org/history/the-coinage-clause-in-the-constitution
An excerpt:
“The ratification records contain substantial discussion of the question whether the Constitution would permit the federal government to emit paper currency. Just as the ratifiers had to select a meaning for tike uncertain constitutional phrase “ex post facto Law,”298 so too did they have to determine a meaning for “coin.” The evidence suggests that the meaning the ratifiers chose was broad enough to include the power to “coin paper.”
Like many aspects of the Constitution, the nature of money was left ambiguous on purpose. The Constitution provides the spirit, and laws provide the details. If the Constitution demanded gold or silver, why would it allow congress to regulate its value? Isn’t the whole point of gold currency to let the market – not the law – determine the value of the currency?
Yes, Aaron Burr – a disgraced British spy and traitor – better represents the American tradition than Hamilton, who was Washington’s right-hand man in the American revolution, and designed the country’s economic and infrastructure policies. The two Dutch guys writing these articles are more American than you are. Why don’t you move to Austria and count your gold?
It is instructive to read The Coinage Act of 1792 to discover how the 2nd Congress coined money and regulated its value prior to the National Bank’s creation:
http://www.constitution.org/uslaw/coinage1792.txt
There was even a death penalty for employees debasing the coinage. Oh, my!
As far as “coining” paper money, from wiki:
“The Bureau of Engraving and Printing has its origins in legislation enacted to help fund the Civil War. In July 1861, Congress authorized the Secretary of the Treasury to issue paper currency in lieu of coin due to the lack of funds needed to support the conflict. The paper notes were essentially government IOUs and were called Demand Notes because they were payable “on demand” in coin at certain Treasury facilities. At this time the government had no facility for the production of paper money so a private firm produced the Demand Notes in sheets of four. These sheets were then sent to the Treasury Department where dozens of clerks signed the notes and scores of workers cut the sheets and trimmed the notes by hand. Gradually, more and more work involving currency and government obligations, including engraving and printing, devolved to the Treasury.”
It’s tough to wage war when coin is required for payment.
@deadeyeblog
Again the Constitution is very precise. The Constitution calls for coin, not paper. Coin, as a noun, is defined as “[p]ieces of gold, silver, or other metal, fashioned into a prescribed shape, weight, and degree of fineness, and stamped by authority of government with certain marks and devices, and put into circulation as money at a fixed value” (Black’s Law Dictionary). Coin, as a verb and seeing that used in the Constitution, means “[t]o fashion piece of metal into a prescribed shape, weight, and degree of fineness, and stamp them with prescribed devices by authority of government, in order that they may circulate as money” (Black’s Law Dictionary). Wharton enlightens, “Strictly speaking, coin differs from money, as the species differs from the genus. Money is any matter, whether metal, paper, beads, shells, etc., which has currency as a medium in commerce. Coin is a particular species, always made of metal, and struck according to a certain process called coining” (Wharton’s Law-Lexicon).
To John, Black’s Law Dictionary was first published in 1891. The Wharton book was also published in the late 19th century, in England. By that time “coin” and “paper” had an entirely different political context than in 1789.
To Paul, here are some images of the paper notes issued by the first bank of the United States: http://www.tomchao.com/ob/ob27.html
Did I mention Hamilton’s bank bill sailed through congress and was signed by George Washington? To read most online accounts, you’d think this was the most unpopular bill in history. That’s because those accounts are written by anti-nationalist free-traders like you who think Thomas Jefferson is the fulcrum of US history.
One suggestion when you use the US Constitution is that it was never signed and it is not operative today. The Bill of Rights are a joke, and if you don’t believe me, just wait until you get into some kind of trouble (I hope you don’t) and then try to use them. The real law is guns and ammo and there’s really no intellectual way to discuss that.
Here in California we have at least three versions of a constitution: 1849, 1878, and 1966
Look at what the 1849 version says about banking:
“Sec. 34. The Legislature shall have no power to pass any act granting any charter for banking purposes; but associations may be formed, under general laws, for the deposite of gold and silver, but no such association shall make, issue, or put in circulation, any bill, check, ticket, certificate, promissory note, or other paper, or the paper of any bank, to circulate as money.
Sec.35. The Legislature of this State shall prohibit, by law, any person or persons, association, company, or corporation, from exercising the privileges of banking, or creating paper to circulate as money.”
http://www.sos.ca.gov/archives/collections/1849/full-text.htm
That’s right banking is “unlawful” in California, yet we have loads of banks. Reading any written is completely unreliable, and this has always been a source of frustration as the government’s actions do not match their written words.
To attempt to make a logical argument out of constitutions or other written laws is going to be completely frustrating because most governments don’t hold to their written laws.
Al Thompson
http://www.verydumbgovernment.blogspot.com
To me, that sounds like private credit creation is illegal in California, though it doesn’t address state or national banking. Nonetheless, I agree that realpolitik is more “real” than the law in many cases. The first step is to figure out what you want, start agitating, and change enough minds until conventional wisdom reaches a tipping point to change reality.
@deadeyeblog
The Constitution does not call for paper money. The Constitution calls for coin money. Coin does not equal paper and paper does not equal coin. Coin and paper are two different species of money. If the framers of the Constitution wanted paper money, then they would have done so; however, they did not. Madison explains the nature of Article I, Section 8, Clause 5 in the federalist papers. I have defined the terms for you and you refused to acknowledge them based on “different political context than in 1789.” That is a foolish and circumventing language. The Constitution requires coin money, not paper money. The Constitution does not delegate any authority to any department of government to establish a central/national bank; therefore, the First and Second Banks of the United States were unconstitutional and the current Federal Reserve is unconstitutional. The Constitution is precise.
You are forgetting the main theft: Interest
http://realcurrencies.wordpress.com/2012/01/17/budget-of-an-interest-slave-2/
Interest is one of the big culprits. Here in the US, the income tax only pays the interest on the perpetual debt. (See Grace Commission report.) The income tax goes against Judeau/Christian teachings because a man is entitled to the fruit of all of his labor. Since interest is stealing, no man should participate in any transactions with interest.
I concur. Interest is/was the most vile invention of man. Interest is nothing more than double profit or racketeering. Interest is theft whereas principal is legitimate. For example, if you asked me to borrow $500.00, and if I loaned you $500.00, then you will be indebted $500.00. You pay back the $500.00 as soon as possible. That should be the end of it, right? No! Bankers decided that a simple debt is not enough, thus they created interest to make double profits. Going back to the example. I loan you $500.00 and you are indebted $500.00. I tell you that I will charge 3.5% interest on the debt and I will give you six months to repay the debt and added interest. Five hundred dollars + 3.5% interest for six months = $105.00. I made an extra $105.00 on the debt. That is literally theft! It is racketeering and deception. We must end interest completely.
I couldn’t agree more and would like to hear more people say it so simply and clearly.
Well, I am not sure if it is this simple.
Yesterday I saw “tegenlicht” with the writer of 5000 years of debt D Graeber. What he states / shows is that debt and serving debt and interest have always been around. As I understand his point of view, it is the balance in power between the two parties, or the lack of it, which is in the end the problem.
So if equals are in debt, and one can’t serve the interest to the other, you ‘adapt’ the deal, and continue. The problem is with an unknown institution, where it is not possible to adapt the deal if it becomes impossible to handle it.
IMO the problem is that with fractional reserve banking interest should be forbidden. Here you create money out of nothing and if interest is charged that is very benefcial for the ‘banker’. In normal situations, if you borrow some money from a friend who has worked for this, at least you should compensate him for it.
interesting stuff….
Why would your friend need ‘compensation’? What does he lose when lending you the money?
How much compensation?
Like $300k interest on $200k loan over 30 years? That’s what you pay for a mortgage.
Like 45% of you disposable income? That’s what we lose to interest passed on in prices by producers.
Usury is exploitation. If your friend can’t miss the money, he shouldn’t lend it.
Lending with the purpose of gaining is Usurious Usurpation.
“Usury is exploitation.’
Then don’t borrow money and allow yourself to be “exploited,” especially by borrowing “money’ created from thin air by bankers.
Rent a house instead.
But everyone deserves to own their own home!!! Just listen to Alan Greenspan, George Bush, and Barney Frank!
The basic struggle is between Christ’s ‘Your will be done’ and Crowley’s ‘my will be done’.
It is about Christ’s ‘one cannot serve two masters’.
A man in Christ is a non-conformist, building on self-reliance. His breakthrough realization is that his real self interest is loving God and his brothers and sisters.
i don’t think anthony disdains individualism. he actively supports cooperative individualism, which is quite different from the tyranny, “force”, and “coercion” of pure individualism, anarcho-capitalism, their guns, their fences, their toll booths, and their army of rent and interest collectors, as well as their mafia who hit people up for protection and the serfs who voluntarily negotiate a contract and tributes with the local land baron for the right to live and work.
Property is theft! Anarchy is violence! Anarcho-capitalism is theft!
Collectivism is a theory and practice that believes that the abstract collective is superior to the individual and each individual has no rights. That his work, his body, his mind, and his personality belong to the collective. That the collective can do with him as it pleases, in any manner it pleases, for the sake of whatever it decides to be its own welfare; therefore, each individual exists only by the permission of the collective and for the sake of the collective. Collectivism believes in coercion to accomplish its goals.
Individualism is a theory and practice that believes that the individual is superior to the abstract collective and each individual has rights, which cannot be taken away from him by any other individual, nor by any number, group or collective of other individuals without consent; therefore, each individual exists by his own right and for his own sake, not for the sake of the collective. Individualism believes in voluntary and mutual conduct to accomplish its goals.
Yes, and the Money Power provides us with totalitarian ideologies on both sides of the spectrum. From Libertarianism to Communism. In short: the dialectic.
So the opposite of Communism is Libertarianism Anthony? Well, that couldn’t possibly be good could it? Oh, hang on. Communism has killed more people than anything in the history of the world. Imagine if those libertarians took over and, erm, left you alone.
You underestimate the murderousness of capitalism Andy. The US was arguably the second biggest killer of the 20th century. The UK was the most horrible empire of the modern age.
The Money Power rules through dialectics: they create seemingly opposing ideoligies, that’s how they work. Both ideoligies are corrupted and contain the seeds of ultimately desired synthesis of thesis and antithesis.
You are confusing western crony capitalism (mercantilism) with Libertarianism here. Libertarians who are consistent in their principles would, indeed, leave you alone. If coercion and murder is Satanic then Libertarians, by definition, cannot be Satanic. Satan does not believe in the Non-Aggression Principle. Communism almost certainly does, at least insofar as it is required to enforce the dictates of that system. To distort an ideological system and then present that distortion as a refutation of the principle is a straw man argument.
Anthony, the defining feature of capitalism is voluntary exchange. Your equation of the out of control fascist military industrial complex to capitalism is bizarre. Once again, the corporations that own the military-industrial complex gain their coercive monopoly powers FROM GOVERNMENT.
Yes, of course there is a dialectic. It is ‘left’ versus ‘right’ hence the two parties that claim to support those views. And while people argue over petty issues there is bipartisan agreement on everything that strips power and rights from the individual and gives it to the government.
I don’t agree with your idea of capitalism. Here’s my take on it: http://realcurrencies.wordpress.com/2011/12/20/what-is-capitalism/ Its essence is control of the money supply, keeping it scarce, using that control to finance what they want and starve the rest. the idea that monopoly is dependent on government is just foolish. read this: http://realcurrencies.wordpress.com/2012/07/26/the-few-banks-that-own-all/
The entire world economy, all the major banks, energy, pharmacy, food, it’s all one massive monopoly. Don’t believe me? Read the article. This monopoly outguns any government on the planet.
There’s really no point in debating an issue until both parties can agree on definition of terms. Time is a scarce resource that is too often wasted when noone is on the same page.
This is actually a crucial point, so it’s really bizarre that there is no textbook definition of capitalism while all the ‘experts’ continue discussing it.
At any rate: the ‘free market’ aspect is senseless: there is no free market in capitalism. ‘Competition is Sin’ (rockefeller) and Rothschild agent Karl Marx explained that capitalism tended to monopoly. In fact, Rothschild himself wrote in the Protocols that: 7. Capital, if it is to co-operate untrammeled, must be free to establish a monopoly of industry and trade (protocol V).
Capitalism is the system where capital dominates labor through control of the money supply. I think that’s a reasonable definition, but I understand it’s not a common one. The more regularly attempts at definition seldom add up under even somewhat closer scrutiny.
Hit reply to read squashed text
Wordpress bug.
Individualism is the flowering of society regulated a certain way. The market exists only when certain sociological conditions are met. The interaction of individuals in market exchange requires the establishment of prior conventions. Property (exchange of right to control or possession or usafruct), contract, peace, and, to really get it going well, exchange mediation tokens. I am not discussing the establishing operations, whether social contract (rationalist) or social evolution or human nature — but I am saying that if you change conditions the market system can appear or disappear and that both communism and libertarianism of the “anarcho-capitalist” variety will make it disappear. If you take “Anarcho-Capitalism” out of Libertarianism you are left with “Liberalism” and that is what social crediters, Thomas Jefferson and Anthony Migchels are.
Libertarians of the Anarcho-capitalist school deny that the market rests on any sociological preconditions or sustaining conditions. The law enforcing contract, the writing of laws, the buying of regulators, the subcontracting of government to corporations — the Anarcho-Capitalist views all of this as proper and in fact ideal. But the truth is that a regulation must be above and outside the market system in order to maintain the market system. Let me now be more specific. Anarch-Capitalism sees nothing wrong with private control of money supply and credit and they see nothing wrong with monopoly – either monopoly over enterprise or monopoly over credit. They want a gold system — pretending that the market system will then rest only on the human race and human action in a world of resources — so that money supply is regulated by the market determined and natural land endowment of sources of gold – inflation only a function of gold mining. They do not see that gold is cornered. That wealth bends law allowing John D Rockefeller to control everything through his railroad monopoly and J P Morgan through his bank monopoly. That gold in private hands can be used to expand and contract credit at will. That even on a gold standard the monopolist can expand credit and contract credit creating business cycles in which his own going long and going short can be coordinated until he gains all power.
Anthony Migchels is right. Usury is an excrescence of the market system and a deleterious one. And to make usury the monopolist of money supply is to ensure a monopoly that will become totalitarian in the end. The mistake of Austrian Anarcho-Capitalism — I am speaking of those who give themselves the name “Austrian today”: — Eugen Ritter von Böhm-Bawerk would agree with Migchels as he did with Aurthur Kitson on occasion — or let us say, the mistake of Anthony Migchels critics is that they view money as a commodity that is “selected” by its favorable attributes to be money and that gold is the winner of this process of natural selection — and that to regulate the mining of gold or its exchange — monopoly “cornering” notwithstanding — is to tamper with the free market which, they can, can only end in misery. I agree with Migchels, and have even on occasion said it myself, that money is a pre-conditon to market exchange, to an elaborate division of labor based on exchange. The monetary system supports the exchange system. And the conditions to a successful monetary system are not “laissez-faire” and night-watchman government. The “Austrian conditions” have led to Rothschild’s global plantation. A monopoly run by the managers selected by the world’s creditors who have captured ownership of the assets of the planet by manipulation of the money and credit system and the market speculation system that has allowed them to take maximum “insider” advantage of their money monopoly. The world of John Galt (Ayn Rand’s here) is in reality the world of Blankfein and Soros and Murdoch and the Libor bankers. In fact Gary North and Lew Rockwell are mere apologists — not economists at all — but shills hired to defend the usury and gold system. You see economics like government should be above market influence. The market economy gives us an abundant life full of possibilities of people satisfying each other to their own advantage only when usury and money supply control are not in the same private hands. New money entering the system should never be the perrogative of the gold monopolist who decides to deposit some of his private hoard of gold in a bank to increase its reserves (in a fractional reserve gold system) or to deposit his gold in a bank at interest so the bank can lend exactly that gold (in a 100 percent reserve system). Either way the gold monopolist can play with macro variables (price levels) and speculate on cycles of inflation or deflation – of boom and bust – that he himself controls and profits from. When a monopolist sees that possibility for himself he quickly hires shills who will pretend to be economists to sell Anarcho-Capitalism, as is now being done under the “Austrian” label. Ludwig von Mises had a lot of good to say — but very little of it is really original. And certainly his anti-positivist stance — the axiomatic praxeological approach (neo-Kantian) is as absurd as the dialectical materialism of the communist. Market systems that produce abundant wealth and prosperity for all is not something that is attained by laissez-faire.
Property rights are not sacroscant when the rich got that way through rigging the game by setting up “Austrian” rules whereby usury and monopoly and speculation in manipulated markets and the resulting gigantic fortunes that makes a few billionaires the “big company store” from which everyone must buy etc.
All of this to say: I agree with Migchels.
To blame Austrianism for our problems is as absurd as blaming a bad odor in the elevator on the man who took the stairs. Gold, or whatever medium of exchange the market chooses, in the hands of the public at large, is the only method of ending Keynesian theft and government promoted monopolies. Morgans and Rockefellers only flourish when a government gun supports them. Sound money belongs in the same political class as constitutions and bills of rights. It controls the growth of power. Yes gold can concentrate in the hands of the idle wealthy, but counterfeit paper can steal the purchasing power directly from the poor and middle classes pockets.
Keynes advocated deficit-spending in recessions to increase aggregate demand, ignoring the longer-term effect of the deficit because “in the end we are all dead.” Keynes was right in viewing a shortage of aggregate demand as the cause of the depression, but he was certainly not original. His failing was in fixing the problem with deficit-financed fiscal spending. Austrians view over-production, rather than underconsumption as the problem, viewing monetary expansion doing violence to market signals resulting in people thinking that real demand has changed when in fact it is all money illusion, so they over-invest (or “mal-invest”) but in fact the real (rather than nominal) demand situation has not changed – and prices will rise eating away the “increase in aggregate demand that was originally viewed as a real increase in demand in terms of real goods and real costs of production. And so the mal-investment must liquidate and the economy must restart on a non-inflationary basis, according to the Austrians. But the underconsumptionist views this differently. And Keynesians contribute a worthwhile concept in taking about “less than full employment” — there can be and there certainly now are – unused productive capactiy and underutilized resources including human resources (the unemployed and under employed) – which could be employed with “helicopter money” (forget Bernanke — who has never resorted to helicopter money — the closest to which is social credit!). There can be a shortage of purchasing power that will prevent the market from sustaining all of the exchanges of value for value that are possible. Adding new money tokens — distributing them among consumers by helicopter money (rather than government or wall street direction of new spending) — results in increased demand, increased purchasing power, increased hiring power, buying power and debt paying power. It could have prevented the debt crisis meltdown – by putting money in circulation which would have prevented the great output and incomes contraction due to deflation, due to loss of purchasing power — a contraction that has a multiplier effect. Krugman is a Keynesian, and a dangerous fellow because he, like Keynes, advocates deficit-financed government spending. And while it is true that Keynes opposed the return to the gold standard in 1925 and advocated in 1944 the Bancor plan which would have phased out gold, the fact is that Keynesianism — controlling business cycles through government spending and taxation — actually protected the monetary system – thee dastardly doings of the bankers — from scrutiny — he directed attention to fiscal policy and taxation as the tools of Macroeconomics. Now to my point: Gold protects creditors from inflation but it does not protect borrowers from deflation. A gold standard gives central bank power to the private gold monopoly or cartel. Gold does not stop booms, because it does not prevent credit expansion. Whether to expand or contract credit is a decision made apart from whether money is metal or gold-fraction-backed money or pure fiat money. When the big boys lend all ships rise, when the big boys call loans all ships sink. Keynes sought to have government borrow from the big boys when the big boys contract their loans so that the government could fill the employment gap. etc. But the fact is that whether gold standard or “paper” — when the big boys call in loans they are after a big deflationary dividend on their money hoardings (paper or gold). The gold system has not stopped that. That is why I favor the Irving Fisher monetarism — to prevent over-indebtedness that leads to deflation through net interest drain — and why I favor the “helicopter mechanism” of social credit — as the best way to introduce an adequat supply of purchasing power without giving any one interest group (government tax consumers or speculators) the unfair advantage of being the only “first spender” of new money in a needed reflation. Austrianism is inferior to Monetarism and gold standard is inferior to social credit and fiat money. The “soundness” of an economy is based on money being kept at the right level for ample exercise of man’s productive abilities to meet man’s needs and aspirations. The gold supply would achieve this only by chance — and never if it is being used by those who have cornered gold to exploit everyone else. So there.
“The “soundness” of an economy is based on money being kept at the right level for ample exercise of man’s productive abilities to meet man’s needs and aspirations.”
…and just who has the requisite omniscience to do this?
Senator John Calhoun on free trade:
“The fatal effect of high duties on commerce is no longer a matter of speculation. The country has passed recently through two periods — one of protective tariffs and high duties, and the other of a reduction of duties; and we have the effects of each in our official tables, both as it regards our tonnage and commerce. They speak a language not to be mistaken, and far stronger than any one could anticipate who has not looked into the tables, or made himself well acquainted with the powerful operation of low duties in extending navigation and commerce. As much as I had anticipated from their effects, the reduction of the duties –the lightening of the burdens of commerce– have greatly exceeded my most sanguine expectation.
“It will be in vain for the advocates of high duties to seek for a different explanation of the cause of these striking and convincing facts in the history of the two periods. The first of these, from 1824 to 1832, is the very period when the late Bank of the United States was in the fullest and most successful operation; when exchanges, according to their own showing, were the lowest and most steady, and the currency the most uniform and sound; and yet, with all these favorable circumstances, which they estimate so highly, and with no hostile cause operating from abroad, our tonnage and commerce, in every branch on which the duties could operate, fell off: on the contrary, during the latter period, when all the hostile causes which they are in the habit of daily denouncing on this floor, and of whose disastrous consequences we have heard so many eloquent lamentations; yes, in spite of contractions and expansions; in spite of tampering with the currency, and the removal of the deposites; in spite of the disordered state of the whole machinery of commerce; the deranged state of the currency, both at home and abroad; in spite of the state of the exchanges, and of what we are constantly told of the agony of the country, both have increased –rapidly increased– increased beyond all former example ! Such is the overpowering effect of removing weights from the springs of industry, and striking off shackles from the free exchange of products, as to overcome all adverse causes.”
—Senator Calhoun started his (political) life as a supporter of central bank and tariffs; when he became an opponent of the Bank, he also became an opponent of tariff
This is just nonsense Andy. common nonsense with Austrians, I might add.
the point is: ‘free market’ sounds nice, but is there a free market? Of course there is not. the banks will always control any currency market. They don’t need Govt for that. they need Govt not to stop them. That’s quite another thing.
what is sound money? Many would say it is interest free/debt free money circulated by Govt. I’m not perse saying that’s true, but I am certainly saying that calling it honest money does not make it honest money perse. the bankers always plugged their gold standards as ‘honest money’. that’s a matter of historic record that Austrians conveniently forget.
What is a ‘free market’ worth, if bullion banks compete with offering gold based credit at 4,9 or 5% interest? While all the gold is controlled by the same banker families that run the printing presses?
You see? Hollow container words like ‘honest’ money, ‘free markets’, they mean nothing. Neither does ‘statist fiat violence coercion’. It means nothing. What is the proposal. How is actually working out. Who gains, who loses. These are crucial issues that hide behind the great words.
Austrians advocate a free market, they don’t claim there is one. That is a crucial point. Honest money and free markets mean money that is not prone to “divers weights and measures” and markets that are not regulated to favor one group over another. If these definitions are hollow then I advocate for a hollow world. You claim that banks always gain control of the currency system, I don’t assume that a bank is a forgone conclusion, particularly not a fractional reserve bank. Banks as we know them today have not always existed. Noone is forced to do business with banks, but life is made very difficult by government regulations if you do not. Fractional reserve banks exist because politicians wish to spend more money than they have. A banks “gold standard” is nothing more than a warehouse receipt for gold originally. Governments allowed them to default on those receipts when they overextended themselves. It was a legalized breach of contract enabled by the state. If this were enforced in favor of the depositors then the bank would have failed and people would have learned not to trust fraudulent institutions. The blame is the state’s not the banks, the banks simply took advantage of a good (for them) thing.
Andy, I’m sorry, but this is just nonsense: fractional reserve banking was invented by the banks in the middle ages, when they were still gold smiths, you know that, don’t you?
“A banks “gold standard” is nothing more than a warehouse receipt for gold originally”: no way: the goldsmiths always lent out more than they had in store.
“Governments allowed them to default on those receipts when they overextended themselves. It was a legalized breach of contract enabled by the state.” the states allowed this, because they are subverted by the banks: they have made to believe that they need the banks for money themselves, instead of printing some.
“Noone is forced to do business with banks”, that’s just the typical austrian nonsense. Sure: nobody is putting a gun to your head. But there is also just practical need. That there is no outright force, does not mean people are not blackmailed and made dependent in more subtle ways. And not just by government, but most certainly also by the banking industry. And make no mistake, there is no government on the globe, not even the Fed govt, can even begin to compete with the banks in terms of raw power.
“The blame is the state’s not the banks, the banks simply took advantage of a good (for them) thing.”
And this is where you really completey overboard: oh, they’re just smart, rapign everybody for trillions, Govt allowed them, so it’s govt’s fault. Yes, govt allowed them and that speaks volumes about them, but the perp is the perp.
It is exactly this kind of completely immoral reasoning that is so worrying about austrian theory.
Austrianism is less concerned with morality than it is expediency, this does not make it inherently Satanic. Morality is a quality of men, not ideologies. Austrianism is an economic model, nothing more. The relationship is between an individual and God, not between his political ideals and God. Spurious ideals may induce a man to sin, but he cannot blame his ideals anymore than I can blame the presence of my gun if I were to shoot a man with it. The responsibility lies in my soul. Austrianism recognizes this and attempts to construct a model that works inspite of man’s inherent immorality. Rational self interest cannot eliminate sin, but if it is coupled with decentralized authority in as near a freemarket system as possible it might mitigate the evils of man’s tendency to concentrate his sins into vehicles of mass oppression. I choose my nonsense, you choose yours.
Just think about this: you are saying it all went wrong because govt allowed it.
Suppose there is no govt. You think the banks would not have done it?
“Suppose there is no govt.” I love doing just that… 🙂
If there were no government the banks would still try it, I’ll grant you. But how would they enforce their breach of contract? Market forces would quickly punish such actions. Would a banker use a gun on people to make them deposit their gold after being once burned? I own weapons too as do many of my neighbors. Banks couldn’t hire enough private Pinkerton goons to force anything out of the market without the ability to inflate and divert wealth to the state who then employ their own goons armed with guns bought by us through taxation/inflation, a far greater evil than interest/usury in my opinion. Fractional reserve banking would fail in short order without state coercion to back stop it. The nexus of bank and state is a chicken or egg argument that we could pursue for centuries and not resolve. We seem to only differ in whether we put the cart or the horse first.
People so often buy into these ‘benign selfishness’ memes and fail to recognise the spiritual trap into which they are falling.
Brilliant work Anthony.
Thank you Kevin, Memehunter deserves all the credit on this one though.
absolutely, btw.
@Paskey: “And Dr. North, a Calvinist, supports Satanism here exactly how?”
Kevin Boyle: “People so often buy into these ‘benign selfishness’ memes and fail to recognise the spiritual trap into which they are falling.”
Would you please explain the trap into which I seem to have fallen?
I was not referring to you but to North Paskey. I’m not saying North is a satanist. I’m saying he fell for what Kevin so powerfully stated.
Two who leap to mind on this theme are the Marquis de Sade who justified the sociopathic infliction of pain and ruin for pleasure and Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter who, at Harvard and for the Rockefeller Foundation advanced the idea of “creative destruction” — and as I think of it — Marx too, whose dialectical materialism assured us that progress is achieved when an anti-thesis destroys a thesis, that, history is advanced by destroying what is so that what is coming may be hastened in its coming – this being done by a conspiratorial elite as refined by Lenin. And I’ll even pinpoint the prime thinker of Zionism — Ludwig Gumplowicz – who is one of the great originators of sociology — a Polish Jew who wrote in German and taught in Austria — but whose works are all but impossible to find even in histories of sociology. Gumplowicz who viewed society as always a conflict of races — Razenkampf — that governments are established by conquest — as of invading nomads who settle in as the occupation in lands occupied by peasants — exacting tribute and becoming government, always with a racial difference between the masters and the slaves. Another Austrian Ratzenhoffer developed similar views — they formed the “conflict school” of sociology with later members of the school including Franz Oppenheimer (author of The State) and Allen Woodbury Small who Americanized the teaching by combining it with Herbert Spencer’s analysis which viewed an evolution away from the military and toward the industrial. Populists are closer to Herbert Spencer — while libertarians are for the anarcho-capitalism where organized crime is just a service that is offered to protect property rights (property laws actually) and to write them as the buyer sees fit for conducting Razenkampf. Gumplowicz was a revolutionary who set off bombs in his earlier days — Zionism and its attitude towards Israel, and the ruling elites and their attitude towards the common man — all derive from Gumplowicz — the real social scientist underpinning Zionism and the anarcho-capitalism of Rothschild. I don’t know much about Satanism or the Illuminattii, but I do know that secret societies become organized crime networks simply because the incentive is there — and an ideology grows to justify and glorify what is being done.
Anyway, thanks for cracking open this subject and starting us thinking.
ALL politicál movements or orgs are setup by banksters who also brought religions as prédecesórs of all these streams and ways.Banksters aka ex faraos aka askanazi aka ancestors of kublai khan.
Laying a stream up on a People ” humiliates criminálises make Them the “bád one” and THÈ enemy ÒR the “atheist whát gives an excuse to setup believers against Them an rob and rape All Their Possesions Children and Góod Luck away.
Politics even democracy brought by commiebanksterjews as some of the “hundréd of weaopnons and racial weapons to exterminate and plundér and lóot People and Races meanwhile anihilating Races with Races in endless racial hate&revengeseedings where the jewish hateseederrabbi and serial Child&Baby rapemaster also comes IN major Worldwide. Rabbis who are formed and raised by the banksterkastes with monarchprogrammings to anilhilate the World and Mankind.
Èven ALL politicál agenda problem issue IS FAKE and layed upon Us to anihilate pundér % lóót Us in the mean time kéép Us enslaved by neccesities Poorness and guilt or bills.
Befór they came We even had NO deseases violences rapes Fears wars politics or lack We Had GOD. We Were Happy
Thank You
lulz at eurotrash cranks.
Thanks Anthony,
I know it’s a tough (frustrating) fight taking on the goldsters, (I’ve given up).
Since I agree with you & Ellen Brown et al, I only have a question.
(if you have already addressed this issue, please point me in the right direction).
If government fulfills the role of creating new money, and if units of credit (dollars) are created to cover future productivity (private and/or public) as a loan, even at zero interest, then we still have to pay it all back, and it would then disappear / expire / be canceled out.
I don’t understand the logic of this ??
Credits representing new productivity would all eventually expire, but why?
If the issuance of new money = new productivity in dollars, why should it be created as a loan in the first place? Why don’t we just get to keep it forever?
Obviously, I’m missing something here…
Many thanks,
H
Hi Howg,
good question.
There are two options: create the money debt free, and create it as (interest free) credit.
Both are interest free, that’s the core of it.
If you create the money debt free, you can do it only once.
If you create it as credit, you can do it as often as the loans get repaid.
That’s the basic difference.
Here’s an example to further the point:
http://realcurrencies.wordpress.com/2011/10/07/the-problem-is-not-debt-its-interest/
i don’t like attaching faux libertarianism with jews and catholics since the old testament speaks out against usury and since catholics were a big part of the anti-usury social credit movement during the great depression. all 5 major religions are on the side of the greenbackers, not the side of the goldbugs. there is no need to fall in their trap. bankers are not jewish, christians, muslims, hindu, nor buddhist. none of the religions supports usury. they’re what this article calls them, evil.
Louis Even is a real Catholic
That’s the bottom line of course.
But the Jesuits are not ‘catholics’.
Real Catholicism, which has had nothing to do with the Vatican for a very long time, fought a major war against usury for centuries.
There is a clear link between Jewry and Usury. Even the Q’uran mentions it.
But my position is really clear: (you probably saw the page ‘Is anti usury activism anti-semetic?’
“God Himself had this to say through the Holy Q’uran:
‘That they (the Jews) took usury, though they were forbidden; and that they devoured men’s substance wrongfully;- we have prepared for those among them who reject faith a grievous punishment.’ (sura 4.161)
Please remember the Q’uran orders Muslims to read the Torah and accept it as from the same Source as the Q’uran.
The simple fact of the matter is: not all usurers are Jews and not all Jews are usurers.
So we resist not Jews, or Jewry, but ‘those among them who reject faith’.”
I’ve been doing research…
“And Jesus went into the temple of God, and cast out all them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the moneychangers.” — Matthew 21:12 (KJV)
“If thou lend money to any of my people that is poor by thee, thou shalt not be to him as an usurer, neither shalt thou lay upon him usury.” — Exodus 22:25 (KJV)
“And if thy brother be waxen poor, and his means fail with thee; then thou shalt uphold him: as a stranger and a settler shall he live with thee. Take thou no usury of him, or increase: but fear thy God; that thy brother may live with thee. Thou shalt not give him thy money upon usury, nor lend him thy victuals for increase.” — Leviticus 25:35-37 (KJV)
“He withholds his hand from sin and takes no usury or excessive interest.” — Ezekiel 18:17 (KJV)
“Thou shalt not lend upon usury (interest) to thy brother, interest on the money, or on anything that is lent with interest. Unto a stranger thou mayest lend upon usury; but unto thy brother thou shalt not lend upon usury: that the Lord thy God may bless thee in all that thou settest thine hand to in the land whither thou goest to possess it.” — Deuteronomy 23.19-20 (KJV)
“He that putteth not out his money to usury, nor taketh reward against the innocent, he that doeth these things shall never be moved.” — Psalm 15:5 (KJV)
“Those who charge usury are in the same position as those controlled by the devil’s influence. This is because they claim that usury is the same as commerce. However, God permits commerce and prohibits usury. Thus, whoever heeds this commandment from his Lord, and refrains from usury, he may keep his past earnings, and his judgement rests with God. As for those who persist in usury, they incur Hell, wherein they abide forever.” — Koran 2:275
“God condemns usury, and blesses charities. God dislikes every disbeliever, guilty. Lo! Those who believe and do good works and establish worship and pay the poor-due, their reward is with their Lord and there shall no fear come upon them neither shall they grieve. O you who believe, you shall observe God and refrain from all kinds of usury, if you are believers. If you do not, then expect a war from God and His messenger. But if you repent, you may keep your capitals, without inflicting injustice, or incurring injustice. If the debtor is unable to pay, wait for a better time. If you give up the loan as a charity, it would be better for you, if you only knew.” — Koran 2:276-280
“O you who believe, you shall not take usury, compounded over and over. Observe God, that you may succeed.” — Koran 3:130
“And for practicing usury, which was forbidden, and for consuming the people’s money illicitly. We have prepared for the disbelievers among them painful retribution.” — Koran 4:161
“The usury that is practiced to increase some people’s wealth, does not gain anything at God. But if people give to charity, seeking God’s pleasure, these are the ones who receive their reward many fold.” — Koran 30:39
Pretty straightforward.
Amazing then, that our friend Gary can write 30 books about the economics of the bible explaining usury is just fine.
Or perhaps not so strange. Did you check the link to his ‘old testamental ways’ in the ‘Gary North’s Bluff’ piece?
Nice guy hey? I guess we now know why hates the state. He’d get arrested if he went out stoning gays and killing people who don’t submit to his belief system.
did you catch his comment about the rockefeller foundation and the corruption of academia? he is such the hypocrite.
basically same story, he’s also famous for resisting public education (which is understandable considering its true nature), but not because he’s such a libertarian, but because he wants to brainwash youth with old testamental theocracy.
Hey guys, interesting stuff.
Here you are talking about interest seemingly rejecting the notion (unless it never even crossed your minds) that it is no different than any other price paid to use someone else’s property.
Why is it not arbitrary to decry interest but ignore all other charges?
Why is it not arbitrary to consider money as somehow different than any other useful tool?
If you want to use my hammer I should be able to ask for something in return. If you want to use it indefinitely, I should be able to charge more or raise the price.
Why is it somehow different or immoral when you want to use my money?
I ask these rhetorically, but if there is some non-arbitrary reason why charging a fee for the use of money but not the use of a hammer, I would greatly appreciate it if someone gave it to me.
I am not saying that interest and fraud never overlap, but this is true with any economic transaction.
Usury in the “scriptures” is considered stealing. It is considered unjust gain. And if you think about it, interest steals from a man’s future earnings. So not only is the usurer committing the crime, but you could say that a man steals from himself by compromising the profit from his future work.
http://verydumbgovernment.blogspot.com/2010/02/scourge-of-usury.html
If usury is unjust gain, then it is stealing. Stealing violates God’s commandments so it should never be a part of any economy. If we removed usury from all economic systems, things would work just fine.
And since most economic systems use interest, you can see the failure. You don’t need to analyze it too much, because it was the interest that brought upon the ruin. This is why we have so many boom and bust cycles. Interest destabilizes everything in an economy. It is evil, and it get evil results.
How is it stealing if the person in debt entered the contract voluntarily?
Say I voluntarily decide to give all my food and money and shelter away. Then say I die of exposure and starvation. Are the people I gave my stuff to guilty of theft and murder?
Let’s look at Leviticus 25:35-37.
“If your brother becomes poor and cannot maintain himself with you, you shall support him as though he were a stranger and a sojourner, and he shall live with you. Take no interest from him or profit, but fear your God, that your brother may live beside you. You shall not lend him your money at interest, nor give him your food for profit.”
Seems like there is a caveat (he must be poor, unable to maintain himself, and a “brother”) on interest, not a prohibition on it.
But if I interpret it rather as a broad prohibition, I must interpret the rest of the passage in the same manner. Therefore, it must be criminal to sell food to not just poor people, but to anyone that is hungry.
How about Exodus 22:25-27?
“If you lend money to any of my people with you who is poor, you shall not be like a moneylender to him, and you shall not exact interest from him. If ever you take your neighbor’s cloak in pledge, you shall return it to him before the sun goes down, for that is his only covering, and it is his cloak for his body; in what else shall he sleep? And if he cries to me, I will hear, for I am compassionate.”
More caveats. “My people” and “who is poor”. And how about the cloak. What if he has more than one?
And Deuteronomy 23:19-21
“You shall not charge interest on loans to your brother, interest on money, interest on food, interest on anything that is lent for interest. You may charge a foreigner interest, but you may not charge your brother interest, that the Lord your God may bless you in all that you undertake in the land that you are entering to take possession of it.”
Interest sounds perfectly legal to me. And we could argue all day about who constitutes a brother, and who a foreigner in the modern era.
Nehemiah 5: 6-13
“Now there arose a great outcry of the people and of their wives against their Jewish brothers. For there were those who said, “With our sons and our daughters, we are many. So let us get grain, that we may eat and keep alive.” There were also those who said, “We are mortgaging our fields, our vineyards, and our houses to get grain because of the famine.” And there were those who said, “We have borrowed money for the king’s tax on our fields and our vineyards. Now our flesh is as the flesh of our brothers, our children are as their children. Yet we are forcing our sons and our daughters to be slaves, and some of our daughters have already been enslaved, but it is not in our power to help it, for other men have our fields and our vineyards.”
“I was very angry when I heard their outcry and these words. I took counsel with myself, and I brought charges against the nobles and the officials. I said to them, “You are exacting interest, each from his brother.” And I held a great assembly against them and said to them, “We, as far as we are able, have bought back our Jewish brothers who have been sold to the nations, but you even sell your brothers that they may be sold to us!” They were silent and could not find a word to say. So I said, “The thing that you are doing is not good. Ought you not to walk in the fear of our God to prevent the taunts of the nations our enemies? Moreover, I and my brothers and my servants are lending them money and grain. Let us abandon this exacting of interest. Return to them this very day their fields, their vineyards, their olive orchards, and their houses, and the percentage of money, grain, wine, and oil that you have been exacting from them.” Then they said, “We will restore these and require nothing from them. We will do as you say.” And I called the priests and made them swear to do as they had promised. I also shook out the fold[a] of my garment and said, “So may God shake out every man from his house and from his labor who does not keep this promise. So may he be shaken out and emptied.” And all the assembly said “Amen” and praised the Lord. And the people did as they had promised.”
This has a bit more detail. It definitely comes down a lot harder on interest and mortgages. But it is still within the context of “brotherhood” not only in lineage but in faith. It also speaks literally of slavery. Are debtors enslaved today? Surely in a sense they are, but not in a truly “biblical sense”. Also notice the purpose of these mortgages. They were taken out to pay the king’s tax. So is the root of the evil in question interest or taxation (which is real theft)?
And Ezekiel 18:5-9.
“If a man is righteous and does what is just and right—if he does not eat upon the mountains or lift up his eyes to the idols of the house of Israel, does not defile his neighbor’s wife or approach a woman in her time of menstrual impurity, does not oppress anyone, but restores to the debtor his pledge, commits no robbery, gives his bread to the hungry and covers the naked with a garment, does not lend at interest or take any profit, withholds his hand from injustice, executes true justice between man and man, walks in my statutes, and keeps my rules by acting faithfully—he is righteous; he shall surely live, declares the Lord God.”
This may be ideal. But it is still a tall order. The command to feed the hungry and clothe the naked comes before the prohibition against charging interest. If it should be illegal to charge interest, should it not also be illegal to NOT share every spare piece of bread and article of clothing you have with every hungry and naked person one comes across?
Please read this and then see if you still want me to answer that question.
http://verydumbgovernment.blogspot.com/2010/02/scourge-of-usury.html
I will take a look at it soon and we can continue this conversation.
The reason I’m doing that is so you can have some context about what I’ll disclose about a valid question that you asked. Which referred to the “Jews” being allowed to charge usury to strangers.
This is a perfect example of scriptural inconsistency, and this is what is causing so much disorder.
I am going to read it tonight or in the morning and give it some thought.
Well said!! interest is simply the price of money. No one sells bread for what it cost them to make it, they sell it for a little more so that they can continue to make a profit and sell more bread. Everyone benefits!
“How is it stealing if the person in debt entered the contract voluntarily?”
This is the crucial ruse Keith. the question is: what choice did the person have? Could he choose between a 5% mortgage and a 0% mortgage? Or could he choose between renting at even higher cost, 5% at Bank of America and 5,1 at Citigroup?
This is how ‘choice’ in the libertarian sense always works out. This is how the tyranny of Monopoly Capitalism parading as ‘free markets’ with ‘choice’ and ‘liberty’ work out.
But you are arguing that interest is always bad, even when there is choice. Say I take out a loan for something I can live without. Say I knew what I was getting into. Say I knew that interest would be charged because I was told by the person I was borrowing it from that it would not be worth it for them to loan their money “at cost”. How in the world is anyone forced into this situation? Make no mistake, not all loans are given to the needy. I would agree with you that some loans should be charitable, but that it is not the responsibility of banks to determine who is needy and who isn’t. They are there to make loans to people that can pay them off, not take up the responsibilities of poor or the ignorant. If people slip through the cracks, blame their “brothers” for not taking care of their needs, or better yet, blame them for being to proud to accept charity, or live in a hovel because they don’t have the skills, health, or ingenuity necessary to live in a McMansion.
This is ALL the scriptures say: If your BROTHER is in NEED, do not charge them interest. This does not and can not translate into “if your CUSTOMER has a DEMAND, do not charge them interest.”
If there is choice there is no interest.
There is only interest if you can’t get it interest free! that’s why it’s so important to look behind the grandiose words: ‘choice’ ‘liberty’ ‘human action’; What is actually happening that is the questionl.
If you can go to a Mutual Credit Facility for a mortgage at 0% or bullion mortgage at 5%, where would you go?
Clearly you only go to the gold bank if there is no alternative, so no ‘choice’, even though you can ‘choose’ between hundreds of banks all offering the same silly specie.
End of story.
The same is true for when you purchase anything. There is no choice to get it for free unless someone gives it to you. In the case of money, this is known as charity.
I am not opposed to mutual credit, per se, but personally I would rather see my money appreciate with interest than depreciate with inflation. But these days the interest rate on savings is so artificially low that the average person probably wouldn’t notice the difference between the two types of banking. The problem with no interest is that it does not foster savings, and therefore drives investment lower than it would if people had incentive to save.
You don’t have to answer this of course, but could you give an indication of your asset position? Ie: are you ‘wealthy’ owning 500k or more?
or are you one of 50% of americans owning zero net assets or less?
“are you ‘wealthy’ owning 500k or more?”
God is not a respecter of persons, Why should you be?
Hey Paul, nice to hear from you again!
There is no valuation of the person involved in wondering about his wealth! I have something else in mind!
No. Hardly anything for assets. Low income. Only part time employed as a surveyor, landscaper, and frame builder.
That’s what I thought. It’s the same with most people that defend austrianism. Btw: I’m broke too. But here’s the deal:
1. we pay 300k for a 200k mortgage.
2. 45% of prices are capital costs, so even if we don’t have any debt outstanding, we lose 45% of our disposable income to interest.
3. all the interest ends up with the richest 10%, and eventually it all ends up with the ultra rich.
4. the total sum of the wealth transfer from poor to rich is anywhere between 5 to 10 trillion per year globally.
5. We could easily have interest free credit, even through fractional reserve lending (which would inefficient) but Mutual credit would ideal.
We are interest slaves. You are an interest slave. Austrianism AND Keynesianism exists to hide this fact from us. They both play different ends of the dialectic. You can read about in the the inflation vs. deflation dialectic.
In the interest-free economics page you’ll find a number of articles on the horrible damage that interest actually does. If you have not been exposed to that information, you should read it to understand what this blog is really all about. To understand what is really at stake.
Don’t adhere to some school of thought. Investigate them all and come to your own conclusions.
You and I are poor because of usury. In the middle ages men like us worked 14 weeks per year. That allowed them to feed their wife and kids, of which they had many. The rest of the time they were studying, building cathedrals, travelling throughout Europe.
Think about it.
Let’s keep it at this for now. Thanks for the conversation.
Can you both agree that if the lender can change the purchasing power of the dollars he will be paid back, and that his action of changing the purchasing power is not prohibited by the loan contract and this power is not understood by the borrower when to signed the loan agreement — that that would be wrong.
The textbooks of my college years all taught macro-economics with the assumption that savings equals investment. They even held this to be true in a depression because the unsold inventory was counted as part of investment, as investment in inventory. Thus the possibility of net interest drain was assumed away.
Today the cheating by lenders is committed at the macro-level. (One does not discuss deflation and its effect on aggregate demand in microeconomics.) Lenders can lend a lot all at once creating a boom. There will be price increases as well as output increases. But in these “good times” with prices rising, lenders will “cover themselves” against inflation by charging an inflationary premium to the “real interest rate” — and this higher nominal rate — the product of monopoly power or bargaining power over lenders — will mean higher interest rates and thus faster “interest drain” of purchasing power from the economy — killing aggregate demand as the flow of loans in begins losing to the outflow of principal plus bigger (inflation premium carrying) compound interest payments. This kills demand and thus revenue and hiring power and debt-paying power (and credit worthiness) leading to a reduction of lending — and so the boom has turned into a recession without “mal investment” being called in to explain the downturn. Now on top of this consider the LIBOR scandal — where interest rates have been fixed — low to make the houseing boom — and then the call of loans to begin the contraction — so that all of the housing that is mortaged is defaulted and passes into the hands of the creditors.
We see that interest is not the mechanism that equates supply and demand in the loanable funds market. The entrepreneurs will lend even at high rates in the inflationary boom — any rate to capture above normal profits that are obtaining. And in a downturn there is a rush for liquidity that not even zero-nominal rates will counter. (Today real interest rates are high, even though nominal rates are near zero — BECAUSE OF THE DEFLATION PREMIUM — a windfall increase in real bond wealth due to deflation — that money able to buy foeclosed properties, forced sales of privatized public utilities, lands and other assets and privileges — and our foreclosed homes which become the creditors rental properties.
This is what is wrong with interest.
But interest itself can be regulated so it is not harmful in this way. Require that banks only be savings deposit and lending institutions that make their living from the spread between what they pay time-savings depositors and what they collect from borrowers — and nothing else. One hundred percent reserve requirement — the savers give permission to the bank to lend their funds in exchange for the promise (not a promissory note that is negotiable, but merely a promise between two parites and no one else — that money deposited will be paid back with an extra interest earning at a certain date and perhaps that it can be withdrawn early if a certain penalty is paid. Under such a system — savings would tend to equal investment and the banking system would no longer be the source of business cycles — booms and busts — that it is now. As for where new purchasing power would come from under this system — the answer is the provision by government of a social credit dividend to each household – so that all new money would be fairly distributed to each household so everyone has the chance to be “first spender” of the new money — which is important when new money is being added to general circulation.
Under such a system the economic problem with interest would be solved. If one’s own religious code proscribes interest — as Mormon’s don’t drink coffee and Moslems and Adventists don’t eat pig — than fine — each according to his conscience before God — in this society. Or if a people choose to eliminate usury by law — let it be known that it is for religious, not for economic reasons that interest is banished all together. I understand that there are ways to get pools of money to entrepreneurs without charging interest — for example with a percentage of profits earned on the venture, but nothing in case of loss (so the banker will also be forced to think entrepreneurially — as he does not do now.
Absolutely. That is fraud. And it can work both ways (increased purchasing power, decreased purchasing power), though granted the lender has the advantage of knowing the industry.
Your argument makes sense if money is one commodity among all other commodities. But if money is a convention to mediate the exchange of favors, IOUs for favors owed – then to allow a banking authority to monopolize it (either by tying it to a monopolized metal or by monopolizing the issue of special paper money or electronic data entry of number magnitude creating deposits of certain numerical amount) is inefficient and unreasonable. No one should charge for the simple recording of a tally of favors owed, of favor units owed. Rather than a commodity I believe society benefits when money is viewed as an exchange mediation token — rather worthless in and of itself — that should be supplied to facilitate the most mutually beneficial exchanges that are possible. Deflation is harmful and keeping exchange mediation tokens too scarce so one can exact rent from the private arranging of an artificial scarcity is wrong. That said, I favor banks lending money, as long as there is someones unspent money backing the loan — interest to the savings depositor and greater interest payed by the borrower from the bank — as long as fractional reserve banking is not going on. But lenders should not be the suppliers of new money. They should only lend what they have saved, not what they pull out of thin air. The “thin air trick” should be a public utility delivered at cost.
If the exchange of money is nothing more than a tally, isn’t there a simpler way to do it? Like actually using a pen and ledger?
I agree with you that monopolization is harmful. Can we accept that premise and have you address what I said again? Why is money a convention? Who gets to decide whether it is or not and then enforce that decision without monopoly powers? Why is convention any different than the arbitrariness I mentioned earlier?
Is all deflation harmful? You seem to be talking about deflation originating from removing money from the economy, but what about deflation associated with increased productive capacity within the economy?
Why is the scarcity you mention artificial? Why are other levels of scarcity or abundance, whether they deflate, inflate, or cause stability not artificial?
Money is not a tally of favors owed. It is rightly viewed as a transfer of property. A vendable commodity is exchanged for other goods. An IOU is not property if there is nothing to back it, it is simply a promise that can/will be broken. If I have accumulated, through the sweat of my brow, a vendable commodity then I should have an incentive to loan it. Otherwise I will use it for my own preferences or I shall hoard it, with the resulting trend toward deflationary pressure of the wrong kind rather than the increased production variety. If I have not accumulated it there can be no lending. We agree that the lenders should not be suppliers (as in creators) of money. That would create the conflict of interest that FRBs have today.
“We agree that the lenders should not be suppliers (as in creators) of money. That would create the conflict of interest that FRBs have today”
The problem is not that the lender is creating the money, the problem is that he is raping us with interest over this freshly printed paper.
we could and should have interest free mortgages.
Read my latest, the problem is not debt, it’s interest.
New comment on your post “The Satanic Core of Libertarianism ” > Author : Andy Wessel (IP: 64.57.193.181 , 64-57-193-181.baybroadband.net) > E-mail : speleoflutist@plainviewfarms.com > URL : > Whois : http://whois.arin.net/rest/ip/64.57.193.181
quote from you:
“The problem is not that the lender is creating the money, the problem is that he is raping us with interest over this freshly printed paper.”
Let me ask you a simple question:
If you would receive an INTEREST-FREE loan, would you not want to buy a 1million mansion instead? Or even a 2 or 3 million mansion ??
Even if you, your kids and your grandchildren would need to pay it off over 60 years.
SO WHAT ????
EVERYONE COULD AFFORD ALMOST EVERYTHING IN SUCH AN UTOPIAN WORLD.
And why even need to pay the loans back to the banks??
(as they just create all the money by pressing a button)
EVERYHING SHOULD BE FREE.
This is what you want.
But then EVERYONE wants it.
And when EVERYONE can have it, it is WORTHLESS.
Don’t you get it ??
The world needs a money/power system which by wise EXCLUSION and DISCRIMINATION is SUSTAINABLE.
For this scope, it is absolutely necessary to PREVENT the 99% from ever escaping the “rat race”. Don’t you get it?
Of course not Chris: we only lend out as much as a stable money supply allows.
Chill dude!
Anthony Migchels is a fine fellow in the Netherlands. We see the same problem with the present systems of money, credit and banking and all of the trouble that would be caused by a gold standard. We do not agree on everything, however, despite our friendship and areas of agreement.
Anthony favors the total abolition of interest, that is, of usury. He invents and favors alternative currencies and I have suggested those too in an emergency when the government does not permit a populist thin-air national currency to exist. What I favor, as I know a few of you know by now, is government authorized legal tender “thin-air” money that is made to originate exclusively in the hands of each individual of each household, not only interest-free, but free-and-clear — pure spending money that does not have to be paid back. Enough money is given to provide adequate aggregate demand and to ensure that the economy is one directed by the sovereign consumer – not sovereign banker, sovereign corporation or sovereign Congress originating money through public spending. The whole issue of economic sovereignty hinges on who gets disposal and ownership of new money that is created. BUT UNLIKE ANTHONY, I do not have government lend anyone any money. Not ever! Banking, in my system, can only exist when a person gets people to lend him money in a time-savings arrangement — giving that person permission to lend the money to a promising entrepreneur. The person — who in this way becomes a banker — makes his money by charging the entrepreneur a higher rate than he pays tot he people who have loaned him the time deposits. Bankers who take peoples savings can only make money by lending that money out at a higher rate to someone with good prospects. I also say that loans to entrepreneurs should not be secured with 100 percent collateral or equity value. I say the banker should take half of the risk. After all it is he who decided to give this particular entrepreneur money rather than give it to some other entrepreneur. He is responsible for half of the fate of the money invested. What I am saying is that bankers can only recoup half of what they lend out in the event of a default, in the event of the failure of the entrepreneur to profit from his undertaking. In this way lenders will be careful of who they lend — and they will have a very big stake — a big interest — in seeing the entrepreneur succeed. (As things are now, the banker does not care if the borrower goes under since he has 100 percent coverage for a failure — with present rules of collateral and of bankruptcy. That is why bankers don’t care very much about the fate of the country, the town or the community in which they operate. So I allow interest — but I do not allow fractional reserve banking or private money creation or even deposit insurance. Everyone must be involved in looking out for possible bad consequences and taking steps to avoid them. THe trouble with our system is, in part, that the financial sector is protected against any consequences of the action of that sector upon other sectors. I say the heck with that noise!
Now back to Anthony. He has send me the following — which I think highlights the differences between our two ways of thinking very well.
—- quote
Anthony Migchels commented on The Satanic Core of Libertarianism .
in response to Chris:
quote from you: “The problem is not that the lender is creating the money, the problem is that he is raping us with interest over this freshly printed paper.” Let me ask you a simple question: If you would receive an INTEREST-FREE loan, would you not want to buy a 1million mansion instead? Or even […]
Of course not Chris: we only lend out as much as a stable money supply allows.
Chill dude!
– end quote
Now I have no idea who Chris is or the context of the above exchange — but I do see the difference between Anthony’s system and mine. I think Chris asked the right question — although probably from the wrongheaded Austrian perspective — about interest-free loans. I do not believe Anthony’s answer was sufficient. I do not like Anthony’s answer — “we only lend out as much as a stable money supply allows” — Who is “we”? What is meant by “stable.” Who is doing the “lending out.” Who is keeping track of how much lending is the right amount?” I see Anthony answer in this way and I see a gigantic and monstrous government managing credit — and it horrifies me as much as the ideas of Ellen Brown, Steve Keen and Michael Hudson who would have government spend new money into existence on infrastructure etc. — my god what power we relinquish.
In my favorite system — populist social credit — consumers have the money and the freedom to spend all they have or save. The limit on what can be lent out is simply the amount that people choose to put into time savings account to give bankers money to lend. The banker has to watch who he gives money to because if he fails too often at picking the right investment and in fostering the local economic environment – he will become insolvent and will not be able to pay depositers what he owes them — and that bank will go out of business. You see bank failure is a good thing — just like there has to be both profit and loss in the economy — as some entrepreneurs will always make better choices than others, so some bankers make better choices.
I think I am alone in wanting this system (with these details — there are lots of social crediter — and I think Fair Money for Ireland is the best effort at realizing “the whole enchilada” as we say out in the American west — but I also think it is better than any other system anyone has put forward.
Hi Dick,
I hadn’t noticed this comment.
But I will be coming back to this as the management of the volume and the question who gets what credit is fundamental indeed.
Thanks!
Anthony
This is just seemingly attractive. Typical austrian deductionism ignoring the facts that this ”logic’ creates: a wealth transfer of anywhere between 5 and 10 trillion per year to richest ten percent of the population.
The fact is: the rich lend, the poor borrow. That’s why the rich hired von Hayek, Mises, North, Rockwell etc. to create this thought in your mind: money is just a tool and if people ‘voluntarily’ (do they have a real alternative?) submit to it, it should be ‘ok’.
It’s tyranny.
It is just so simple, isn’t it? Rich people don’t borrow “capital” and poor people never lend their savings? Is this also a “fact”?
And no one is arguing that money is “just” a tool. That’s the problem. That’s the whole reason anyone is discussing this at all: It has become something other than a tool.
What is it inherent in “money” that makes it not available for “rent”? Say it is only a “tally for favors owed”, fine. What is wrong with “renting” even this out?
And whether something works and whether it is tyrannical are two separate issues. A monopoly not only does not work, it also eliminates free choice (though separate issues, the reasons for these two things are basically the same). I am arguing AGAINST monopoly on both grounds, even if the alternatives to the monetary system I prefer are inefficient or just plain stupid. So don’t bring up the “do they really have a choice?” canard. I am not defending the current system.
EAT THE RICH!
Did you seriously just turn off the ratings? Like within the last five minutes?
I dont’ think so my friend! This is clearly one of the most brilliant articles on this site, and the ratings show it, so why would I turn them off??
I cast no aspersions. I am telling you they were here, then they were gone. I am glad to see that they are back. It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve seen a wordpress site have bizarre glitches. And I don’t know about brilliant. But it does have a great title.
It must have been one of those glitches: a few weeks ago I noticed something similar, but after reloadingb they were back!
awesome satire, dude!
Could you please share from which facebook page you got this link? Thanks much!
http://www.facebook.com/MisesvsKeynes?ref=stream
no problem!
Well, claiming it is ‘illogical’ to resist euthanasia when accepting abortion is exactly the satanic culture of deat that memehunter was describing in the article as ‘the right to let one’s child die’.
this parades as ‘freedom’ and ‘choice’ and that’s the real satire.
Thanks for the link!
I’m not sure what the above comment is supposed to prove. Some people who understand economics are Christians who oppose euthanasia and abortion. Some people who understand economics are not Christians and don’t oppose euthanasia and abortion. On the linked group, you will find both.
I’ll tell you what it proves; Brian, who is a nice guy with whom I have absolutely no real quarrel, is a bit of newbie when it comes to political economy. He thinks it’s ‘satire’ when somebody correctly analyzes the purely materialist and I before all else kind of philosophy that underpins libertarianism. These two items, however, are absolutely satanic in nature.
As is, and here’s the irony, the culture of death associated with abortion and euthanasia that brian is supporting on his blog. With the best of intent, I know, because I did so only ten years ago also. But purely satanic nonetheless.
Dear God, you guys really, really need to learn about Hermeneutics….. context, context, context.
Also, there is a massive difference between Usury and Interest. Again, hermeneutics, and the context of the culture at the time.
So, if it is immoral to pursue one’s own self interest through mutual benefit with a counterparty (both are voluntary and enter into any transaction of its own accord), then what IS moral? And are you talking about within the realm of the third dimension, in which the Law still applies with its natural consequences and such, or are we talking about existence under Grace via the Resurrection, a la the spiritual consequences.
Because if it’s the first, you need hermeneutics to understand what the bible was saying at the time. You also need to understand the Law (which you clearly do not). If it is the second, then your entire article is dominionist drivel and should be tossed into an ash tray, because it literally spits on Grace.
“Also, there is a massive difference between Usury and Interest.”
No, there is no difference. Usury means interest and interest means usury. The Money Power’s stooges like Bentham and Smith and some Jesuits managed to make usury mean excessive interest. But Usury always meant just interest.
The idea that Grace would allow extortion through monopoly capitalism and usury is exactly what made fools like Gary North famous.
Usury that the Hebrews were to eschew was fine to practice on the foreigner, if I recall correctly. The Austrians, at least, wish to end the usury of debt currency, which is a form of usury that cannot be paid off without ruining the entire system. Without a price of money there is no lending. That would be fine then, those with the money would just hoard it?
he Austrians, at least, wish to end the usury of debt currency,
This is not the case: their gold will circulate as credit by banks.
“Without a price of money there is no lending.”
this is a common misunderstanding. But the simple fact is: all the banks create all the credit from scratch. They could do this interest free, if they were not one monopoly owned by the ultra rich.
of course, fractional reserve banking is an ultra inefficient way of going about it. But Mutual Credit would provide credit at close to zero cost, as it does not require savings or deposits:
http://realcurrencies.wordpress.com/2012/01/03/mutual-credit-the-astonishingly-simple-truth-about-money-creation/
“This is not the case: their gold will circulate as credit by banks.”
Then you have not read the Austrian position on money and have no idea what you’re talking about. The Austrian position is to allow the market to determine what money is. They do not advocate gold or any other commodity in particular, they simply recognize that gold has been, through history, the primary monetary commodity, along with silver. Precious metals satisfy best, the qualities of sound money, divisibility, fungibility, durability, scarcity(value), and portability.
You are correct that the banks create credit from nothing. This is what I call a particulary egregious form of usury. The primary reason that they charge interest is to obfuscate this fact. If they did not, then the people would realize that they are engaged in legal counterfeiting. It is the fractional reserve system that is at fault. It is more than inefficient, it is fraud and what does the Bible say about bearing false witness? If it’s ok for the banks to do this then why not everyone? What happens to money when everyone counterfeits?
I have no idea what you are referring to as “Mutual Credit”, money is a medium of indirect exchange which allows trade to occur at all. Barter is a stone age concept. Money is the bedrock of civilization, without which we collapse into chaos (note I did not use the word anarchy). It must not be something that can be created at will, or those who produce real wealth (food, fiber, machine tools, etc.) will be impoverished and enslaved by those who have command of the monetary printing press. The society is induced to eat its seed corn. This is the end game of that process that we are now experiencing.
Those who produce real goods must be able to save in a stable medium of value or there is no ability to accumulate capital for future needs.
Austrians have always wanted Gold as Money. Rothbard proposed a full reserve gold standard. Before he died he started to mellow somewhat to a free market for currencies, but that is really a very recent development in Austrianism. the Austrians expect gold to win in that ‘free market’, which will not be very free to begin with, because the Money Power will dominate it from day one. that’s one of teh problems of Austrianism: it ignores and downplays that ‘free markets’ are always ruled by the Plutocracy.
Banks don’t slap interest on their money to hide money creation. They slap interest on it, because it makes them TRILLIONS per year.
Austrianism would have us believe that the problem would be solved if we can pay that interest in gold coin. That is their basic lie. The reality is that all the money could be created at cost price, interest free. That would end the massive wealth transfer through interest. See http://realcurrencies.wordpress.com/2012/02/29/gary-norths-bluff-the-lie-hes-been-sitting-on-for-50-years/ for that.
Also you can read here how discussion with the Daily Bell worked out. It is exactly about these basic points: interest and the free market for currencies. http://realcurrencies.wordpress.com/2011/12/29/discussing-interest-and-gold-with-the-daily-bell/
this discussion raged for months, it also included memehunter (who wrote the Satanic Core) article.
“Banks don’t slap interest on their money to hide money creation. They slap interest on it, because it makes them TRILLIONS per year.”
It surely does, but so does their printing press and they really don’t want the general public thinking about that too hard. If you lend money that cost you nothing to create and receive it back from a borrower who had to work their tail off to make it, then you’ve enslaved that person and their production. The interest isn’t even necessary, except as a ruse. The same can be said of taxation.
“Austrianism would have us believe that the problem would be solved if we can pay that interest in gold coin. That is their basic lie. The reality is that all the money could be created at cost price, interest free. That would end the massive wealth transfer through interest.”
It makes no difference what form the money is in. It’s how it comes to exist that matters. Interest is rent on the use of money. If you didn’t pay something to rent a chainsaw from the local rent all mart, but just used it and gave it back then where is the incentive for the rent all mart to even exist? How do they bear the cost of saw maintenance? Store overhead? Insurance? Salaries? The same goes for credit markets. If you give anyone the power to create money at cost (essentially nothing for computer bits), interest will be the least of your worries. If you think usury is evil, wait until you see the evils of hyperinflation.
I know I haven’t convinced you of anything, We true believers are beyond such conversions. I have enjoyed our discussion. God Bless.
I respectfully disagree with the author at the root of the premise for these arguments. The assumption that self interest and the liberty to achieve it CAN be done for “evil” is switched to BEING evil in itself. I would like to sweep or cut away the entire religious aspect of economic discussion with the sword of logic and state that religion has absolutely nothing to do with it. The argument above, written with sophistry and many intelligent twists of logic is a typical Gordian Knot of logic you find associated with discussions of religion and society. Find a writer, placed as far back in time as to be easily taken out of context, sprinkle in a few praises from Libertarian or Austrian economists and voila, you have a puzzling concoction that cannot be resisted by the faithful. Just because it can be interpreted as “evil” by those who wish to, does not mean it is evil for the rest of us. There are police and courts of justice for evil doers, however it would be nice if they worked to convict criminals like SOME – NOT ALL – bankers instead of insider-trading baseball players. The alternative to liberty is a religious or Nanny state that controls all of us.
“I would like to sweep or cut away the entire religious aspect of economic discussion with the sword of logic”
Please keep in mind that overrating the mind (‘logic’) as proposed by ‘the age of ‘enlightenment’ (or illuminism) is in itself a satanic concept.
The idea that economics can be considered ‘logically’ without a moral/spiritual framework is exactly what got us into this mess.
‘Reason’ is expediency, if not lead by a moral imperative.
“Please keep in mind that overrating the mind (‘logic’) as proposed by ‘the age of ‘enlightenment’ (or illuminism) is in itself a satanic concept.”
While the use of logic ultimately threatens religion, when they come into conflict, it is hardly satanic. It is common for any religion to classify anything that threatens the assumptions of the religion itself, as evil. In this case “satanic” and used as leverage to socially isolate individuals or groups that challenge it. After all, if you want to stay within the “club”, so to speak, you do not speak anything that challenges the religion. There are too many examples of early scientists who were killed, imprisoned and tortured in the name of religion, and Christianity in particular.
Religion has been forced, over and over again, to change doctrine and turn a blind eye to scriptures that no longer fit “reality”. Each time it does, its grip on society diminishes and the argument for obedience becomes more abstract. The dependency of individuals on the “state” and “religion” is also diminished when the public becomes more educated about issues.
The cry for the state to replace religion as the “great father” and savior of the poor and unfortunate rings like lead bell. It is the ultimate false god and the best mechanism for anything resembling evil. A quick look at the brief history of Socialism will show it to be the most murderous movement in history, even more than religion itself.
I would rather position the use of logic and reason as the absence of evil. Further the use of logic and reason in a social context leads to Libertarianism with empowered individuals and minimal power to impose the collective will on the public in order to commit massive evil acts. Whether or not an individual makes an evil decision does not imply that allowing individual acts will produce an evil society. However the opposite seems to be true. The more social control a government or religion has, the more likely evil will be done.
Nobody here cares about ‘religion’, which is a satanic construct in itself as you with other words correctly state.
I care about direct contact with the Spirit. sacrificial love, ego death. These things are not to be found in churches.
Logic does not and cannot threaten the spirit, as the spirit is higher than thinking, it created thinking. Logic can only threaten dogma.
Here’s Henry Makow’s brilliant take on reason as expediency: http://www.savethemales.ca/001260.html
The essence of political struggle is actually spiritual, a cosmic battle between God (Good) and Satan (Evil) for the soul of man.
This struggle is not between nations, religions or between ideologies of Left or Right. This occult elite creates and controls both sides of every conflict in order to obscure and at the same time advance its long-term agenda.
Sophisticated and dedicated people roll their eyes when told about this conspiracy. They are hypnotized by their “education” and the mass media.
The term “Illuminati” means “enlightened ones” and refers to Lucifer, the “light bringer.” Its essential philosophy is to substitute “reason” i.e. expedience for “right reason” i.e. universal morality.
“Do as thou wilt” was the Illuminati motto. The Illuminati will define reality, not God or nature. Illuminism or “humanism” is a secular religion and a transition to Satanism (i.e. “tolerance”).
AM: satanism is not the opposite of exoteric christianity, which is actually part and parcel of the matrix. Satanism is worship of self. Self interest. Egoism. denial of altruism.
that is exactly what Rand and Mises and Mandeville, as analyzed in the article were saying was wonderful. that’s why it is satanic to the core.
This may be the dumbest thing I’ve ever read. Best part is when you posit that Marx was for free trade. Wooow.
I can’t tell if you’re trolling, or just stupid. lol
Yes……well…….I can understand it goes against your none too educated beliefs, but have you actually read the speech at the link?
I quote: “The Repeal of the Corn Laws in England is the greatest triumph of free trade in the 19th century. In every country where manufacturers talk of free trade, they have in mind chiefly free trade in corn and raw materials in general. To impose protective duties on foreign corn is infamous, it is to speculate on the famine of peoples.
Cheap food, high wages, this is the sole aim for which English free-traders have spent millions, and their enthusiasm has already spread to their brethren on the Continent. Generally speaking, those who wish for free trade desire it in order to alleviate the condition of the working class.”
Please note: Generally speaking those who wish for free trade desire it in order to alleviate the condition of the working class.
Of course, ‘free’ trade is a ploy of the ultra rich, just as Marx was, so it’s not really as surprising as you may think.
Anthony, there is a big difference between free trade as an Austrian defines it and ‘free trade’ betweeen Marxist-Communist economies as Karl Marx envisioned.
Where the means of production is socialised (Marxism) there is no ‘free trade’ because there is no viable way to perform economic calculation. What this means is that the real value of any product/service cannot be established, and thus Marx’s beloved central planners cannot effectively plan what to produce/not produce thus the economy (and thus society) must ultimately descend into chaos. Mises demonstrated this in his seminal essay ‘Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth’ http://mises.org/econcalc.asp and the Socialists have brushed it under the carpet ever since as they have no answer to it.
The ‘free trade’ Marx advocated is the ‘freedom’ of a man who has a larger cell than his friends. A little knowledge can be a dangerous thing, and your comments here display only a little knowledge of economists and their theories.
You miss the point: ‘free trade’ is just a wonderful word construct hiding reality: market dominance by the few. Even Marx could score points with this hollow construct.
You didn’t really think I believe Marxism supports ‘free trade’ as most people falling for the ruse would understand it, did you?
What about America getting rich behind protective tariffs in 19 century?
It was to allow breathing space to develop industry.
Austrians deduce but don’t inspect real history. Bad
Methodology. Bad Science.
This is because Austrians know that history is not a sound basis for science. It is little better than historical fiction. Historians take a limited pool of facts, often colored by their biases, and try to reconstruct a cause and effect model based on those prejudicial assumptions. History can teach us nothing about whether tariffs are good or bad. It can only teach us what happened in a particular historical case. History is bad science because there can be no control variables, history has no stable relationships. Austrians rely on a priori deduction because it is the only logical tool available that can apprehend conception and understanding of economic relationships. And Austrians do “inspect” history, which often bears out their contentions, they simply don’t rely too heavily on it. No doubt “certain” Americans got very rich from protective tariffs, but the country as a whole is impoversihed by such measures. Consumers pay higher prices for protected goods and capital is diverted from other potential uses to the protected use, thereby depriving the consumer of other goods in favor of overpriced goods that were already available on the import market. Autarky is the common cry of nationalists.
Exactly.
Andy Wessel wrote, “Austrians know that history is not a sound basis for science. It is little better than historical fiction. Historians take a limited pool of facts, often colored by their biases, and try to reconstruct a cause and effect model based on those prejudicial assumptions.”
The results of combined laboratory experiments is history. Science is study of history, especially the history of the doings and results of doings of scientists. So too is politics. Years ago I read Science and History by Ludwig von Mises. He was wrong about the a priori and economics as a deductive science from the axioms of human action, praxeology, known from the categories of choice — categories as Kant might use the term. Like Ludwig’s brother RIchard, I am a positivist, but also a behavoirist and an historian. The goals of science include prediction, control and interpretation. The world with its ecologies, its weather, its economies, the great complex of becoming with more interrelating variables than we can know or keep track of or comprehend the interactions of — but we can do some — is not something we can expect to nail down. So all history of these events is interpretation — educated guessing, informed speculation. Now I am opposed to econometrics as yielding anything but extrapolations — a glorified regression line — and I do not set much store in them — but behind each of them is a model — but also the hubris of quantification — a big error is thinking that you can know a market demand curve. Our means are insufficient for the task. But all Wessel or any of us know is our own history. We each discover the advantages of the scientific method in history. We look at recent history to identify that there is a problem that needs solving, Wessel imagines that he knows something ahistorical called Austrian economics and Austrian School epistemology — but it isn’t so. What Ludwig von Mises views as a prior categories of human action are really historical discoveries — that is learning by the individual during his lifetime. Even the category of application of means to ends is learned — it is not a priori. Austrians have not found the Holy Grail of economics knowledge that makes their work unassailable — because they exist in the perfect world of deduction from a priori axiom — and the rest of us dealers in worthless slop because we are empirical, and positivist and behaviorist. one can ramble on with this forever — the point is that the Austrian foundations are false — their feet are not of gold, but of clay.
“the point is that the Austrian foundations are false — their feet are not of gold, but of clay.”
That must be why the present day followers of Austrianism predicted and explained the present collapse while being ridiculed by clueless buffoons of the media. The same clueless buffoons who turned around and claimed that noone could have seen it coming.
It must be why my savings decisions, informed by Austrianism, have outstripped anything the so called “professional financial advisors” have ever tried to foist on me. I’ve been told you shall know a tree by its fruit. I guess I just imagined it all.
Yeah, what do Austrians know….just a pack of ignoramuses.
Fiat Money Means Fiat Freedom: Greenback Dollars
http://www.garynorth.com/public/10233print.cfm
“If you read the Bible, you find that gold and silver functioned as money. But the counterfeiters cheated. The prophet Isaiah called the rulers to account because of their debased currency. ‘Thy silver hath become dross, thy wine mixed with water’ (Isa. 1:22). Evans-Pritchard mentions none of this.
Nor do most folks here.
Sigh…
Ah, positivism, the atheist’s favourite. This is a good read, but it’s fatally flawed by the inherent failings of positivism, which is to say that it makes for such a narrow recognition of ‘real knowledge’ as to render itself self-refuting. The fact is there are a good many things that cannot be empirically proven, but which we are all rational enough to accept. Logical truth itself is the pertinent one here. If logical truth, which is categorically a priori, is not reliable then by default empirical applications of human reason are meaningless. And now we see the inherent problem with arguments like this:
‘Wessel imagines that he knows something ahistorical called Austrian economics and Austrian School epistemology — but it isn’t so. What Ludwig von Mises views as a prior categories of human action are really historical discoveries — that is learning by the individual during his lifetime.’
I would venture that like many here, you have not really understood Mises. What he was saying is that the logical structure of the human mind precedes experience. If it did not, it would not be possible for an individual to make any ‘historical discoveries’ or indeed to learn anything at all, so while the discoveries made from one individual to another vary, according to how well developed an individuals thinking may be, the underlying framework of interpretation that is the human mind is endowed with a particular structure that recognises and seeks logical explanations of events, even if the experiences of different individuals lead them to differing conclusions. If Mises was wrong, we literally could not be having this argument.
‘Even the category of application of means to ends is learned — it is not a priori.’ And how is it learned? You cannot learn anything without an inherent framework of understanding. The logical structure of the human mind precedes all experience. And it is a priori.
When you get right down to it all empirical knowledge relies on the underlying assumption that a priori human logic is valid. You can’t throw out a priori without undermining empiricism. Your criticisms of Mises are not valid. Either you have not understood him, or you are countering his argument with a self-refuting one.
Andy wrote: “When you get right down to it all empirical knowledge relies on the underlying assumption that a priori human logic is valid.”
Dick comment: Does learning require prior assumptions? Does learning require logic? Does any organism at any state of its biological development need to make assumptions, know logic is valid, have an a prior logical structure of mind? I don’t think so.
The baby learns to swim and rub its face in the womb. When it is born they baby has eyes but discriminates nothing. Mother’s breast and blouce and face and mother’s voice are paired and mother’s milk and touch when combined have an effect on the occurance of the sucking reflex, making this built in response a conditioned reflex that comes under the control of those events.
They child moves its arms and legs after its birth — and certain movements bring an arm across the field of vision — many times, consistently — no learning may take place — but when the hand touches the mouth — with all of those nerve endings — the event may such as to differentially reinforce muscle contractions that bring the hand to the mouth. And thus something is learned. The baby touches its mouth and prolongs the contact where before there was no movement of the arm that was differentiated from the other movements.
Movments of lips and tongue with breathing that vibrates vocal chords in such a way that the sound “Mama” is emitted, is met with touch, mothers smile, the voice and smile that mother has made very effective reinforcers paring them with touch, hand holding humming and singing etc. Mother and father are always differentially reinforcing responses.
Later after learning much in this way, after seeing aunts and uncles — and learning the general configuation of people who move and talk and touch versus things what do not talk etc. Also the family dog. The child can be shown books – with pictures of things with the same properties he sees when looking around his environment. The mother can point to a picture of “dog” or “bird” and say these words. She can at a later time say “point to the bird” and “point to the dog” or “say dog” with smiles, approval, affection, touch, “yes” and “good” as rewards. But when shown pictures of cows and horses, differential reinforcement takes place — in the presence of a picture of a cow the word “cow” is reinforced, but in the presence of the picture of a horse with no cow visible, saying ” cow” is not reinforced, but the word horse may be modeled and imitated. Partents can differentially reinforce “echoic” responding — responding that “says what I say” . ANd all of this is done without logic — yet it is empirical knowledge. Even counting is learned — before the “category of number” — an abstraction that comes after counting things, not before. Like we learn color by differential reinforcment — reinforced for saying red in the presence of red objects, and not being reinforced for saying red in the presence of only blue or other colors. And only after we learn colors do we learn to say “color” which when heard occasions that naming the colors of things will be reinforced.
Now when do we learn axioms and deductive systems? After all of the above. As we learn number — it is not the “mathematical structure of our minds” that teaches us one plus two is three — rather it is the external environment that maintains those contingencies. First we learn the rule one plus another like it makes two. Some things are alike — chicken eggs, apples, cows — repetitions occuring in the environment — and thus countable — and differentially reinforced by the environment and by mediating people — “do you want one cookie or two” — we learn that counting three cows and counting four balls and counting fingers — has something in common — placing your finger on objects one after another without touching the same number twice — and this is called counting.
And soon counting and subtracting are both learned and one is reinforced by other people when you speak of the two as arithmetic.
In the same way logic is learned. The sylogisym is learned.
In the same way geometry is learned — but here we have axioms. Euclid taught axioms for his geometry — make the rules, the tools you must use (the tools Euclid used were really the source of his axioms — what he could do with them — the fact that two points connect only one way with a ruler, the way parallel lines never meet as, in practice, if you hold a ruler on the flat table and make a line on either side you get “parallell lines” and Euclids axiom that “parallell lines never meet” — the axioms came late in Euclids life — after a lot of messing around with straight edges and strings making marks in the dirt to amaze his friends — his reinforcing community — his school of thought.
And so it was with von Mises — his axioms of human action, the logic of choice, the deductions about exchange from assumptions about means and ends and exchange given property etc. — axioms and a deductive system — but of course the greatest in this regard was that non-Austrian discoverer of marginal analysis Leon Walras – his general equilibrium system is the most complete economics elaborated from assumptions of economics combined with assumptions of mathematics to make a logical or deductive system useful for its predicitive power.
But the fact is that axioms are learned — and some sets of axioms are better for some problems than others. The Bohr atom in chemsitry is a model. It is a great advance when we learn that sets of assumptions can vary, that there can be different models which may be fit to the complex situations we confront the environment — where we all know some things that others know and some things that others do not know.
But von Mises did not want to argue economics with people with competing models. His model in which economic depressions being caused by inflation that leads to mal-investment he did not want to defend with empirical testing with the models of those who view underconsumption, the loss of purchasing power due to interest payments that grow bigger in inflation and swallow up purchasing power — he did not want conflict there — so he put up his defense that since he deduced his conclusions from the pure axioms that are built into the human mind a priori and are universally valid and impossible to challenge – my theory, he argued, cannot be assailed as wrong — I don’t got to show you that my model gives better predictions and remedies than your stinkin model.” — because my model is based on the way the human mind is — the pure a priori logic of means to ends. So there. I win.” More or less that is the argument.
It is a bogus one. Your statements: “When you get right down to it all empirical knowledge relies on the underlying assumption that a priori human logic is valid.” and “If logical truth, which is categorically a priori, is not reliable then by default empirical applications of human reason are meaningless. ” is itself verbal behavior that has been differentially reinforced by a community under control of the same literatures. We learn our doctrine. Our philosophy comes to us from the community and so does our economics.
The economy that has learned to be empirical, positivist and behavioristic — rather than messing with such pre-scientific terms as a priori and “logical structure of the human mind” — this reminds me of Avim Noam Chomsky who invented an entire linguistics where the “mind” is loaded with dictionaries (lexicons) and “grammars” and other little black boxes that process syntax and other things — all explanatory fictions — because human language is shaped by the community — the community that has taught chimps to interact with others using the sign language developed for the deaf. But of course grammars and vocabulary — don’t exist in the mind — they exist in the behavior modification processes we call teaching.
For someone to say — your economic model of depressions being caused by interest drain removing too much purchasing power is no good because it is based on your consideration of history and history teaches nothing, but my guy, von Mises bases his economics on the logical structure of the mind and the a prior categories of choice so it can’t be wrong and thus tra la la la la.”
Me no talkee, a priori talk.
Let us come out from hiding behind these phony fortresses of metaphysics made to order — and discuss this as men, even as economists — if not as Austrian and whatever Migchels and I are.
It’s a great read olddickeastman, but come now. Logic not enough huh? How about mathematical truths? How about aesthetic judgments? Care to empirically evidence the beauty of a thunderstorm? Perhaps you can help me out with morality? I’d love some empirical data evidencing how Mengeles experiments on live prisoners were worse than a dentist doing a filling. Maybe you’d prefer to talk about science – chock full of unprovable a priori assumptions – Isn’t the speed of light between two points constant? Care to prove it empirically? Me no talkee Eskimo, but Eskimos are real my friend!
Yes, let’s talk economics, that’s why I’m here, but my Austrian view for better or worse, is that economics is more about philosophy than anything else. You raised the red herring of logical positivism, so I called it out. Sorry, but I’m not buying the ‘no logical structure of the human mind’ story. You can write anything on a blank slate, anything at all, yet in all known cultures certain things are always the same, from the inherent search for God to a universal dislike of smugness. All those examples about babies and children don’t prove what you say they prove. A child learns knowledge. So what? Knowledge means nothing without understanding. A child makes sense of new information through experimentation, empiricism of course, but the very act of doing so is evidence of an existing framework of understanding. Logic comes later? Do me a favour – not with my kids it doesn’t! Child one has been visibly applying it for two years and more now and she’s not three yet, and child 2, less than a year, does the same. Empiricism is only one side of the coin, whether that coin is gold, fiat or non-interest bearing, and it is a nonsense to me to say the coin has only one side.
I do agree with your sentiments in your other post, vis-a-vis ‘CAN WE NOT BE ECONOMISTS TOGETHER?!’ I have a lot to learn about a great many things, including economics, but I too have yet to meet an evil Austrian in the employ of Satan, and I see here that you and Anthony are the good guys too. We all want to end the Money Power’s stranglehold on ourselves and the world.
Anyway…I want the truth whatever it is- so I’ll stick around here and read some more. I’m certainly enthused by the concept of interest free money. I just need to be convinced its workable. And I find some of the attacks I’ve seen (from others) on prominent Austrians in poor taste, and demonstrably false. I look forward to reading more from you olddickeastman 🙂
Oh, on a (somewhat) unrelated note, how do you square positivism with faith in God who is (surely!) metaphysical? Goodnight from the UK.
Britian is where Bertrand Russell and linguistic anlaysis reigns. No chance of even explaining behaviorism — the purely American philosophy.
“This is because Austrians know that history is not a sound basis for science. It is little better than historical fiction. Historians take a limited pool of facts, often colored by their biases, and try to reconstruct a cause and effect model based on those prejudicial assumptions. History can teach us nothing about whether tariffs are good or bad. ” Unbelievable. I keep forgetting that what we’re dealing with among these types is religion not reality.
[give me a sec while my mind boggles]….this whole discussion of money and usury is based on religious beliefs that were properly dispensed with in the middle ages…and you’re castigating me as being a religious adherent? That’s rich! I like you, you funny.
Precisely. Libertarianism is armchair philosophizing with little or no actual historical analysis.
‘Bad methodology. Bad science’ Yawn. First, economics is not a science. Enquiry by the scientific method yields consistently reproducible results except in theoretical fields of mathematics and physics such as arithmetic, algebra or M (string) theory which, presumably, you also dismiss as ‘Bad methodology. Bad science’. The actions of unique individuals, acting in differing circumstances, in response to thousands of external stimuli do not, and can not, yield consistently reproducible results in this manner. The belief that it can is self-evidently illogical, and is the real ‘Bad methodology. Bad science.’ How do you not understand this simple truth? How can any economic theory based on such a transparently false premise have any credibility?
Second, tariffs do not create wealth, they destroy it. Read any Hazlitt? No, probably not… http://www.fee.org/library/books/economics-in-one-lesson/#0.1_L12
‘You miss the point: ‘free trade’ is just a wonderful word construct hiding reality: market dominance by the few.’
Except free trade leads to the exact opposite of dominance by a few. It is extremely difficult for any business to become very successful in an open market and even more difficult for it to remain so. This is the reason why all regulation is lobbied for and written by large corporations. It is the only way for them to maintain their monopolies. If free markets actually benefitted big business, why don’t we have them? Your argument is just not borne out by reality.
‘You didn’t really think I believe Marxism supports ‘free trade’ as most people falling for the ruse would understand it, did you?’
I honestly can’t tell what your economic position is. If you don’t like free markets, and you don’t like socialism, what kind of economy should we have exactly?
An interest-free economy!
That’s what we should aim for and that’s what both Marxism and Libertarianism try to avoid!!
Anthony, I see there has been some activity going on here so I though I should do my part and read all the new comments. I think I read this one before, though. But something about it catches my eye that did not catch it before. How the heck is this quote in support of free trade? All I see is someone (Marx I presume) stating what someone else (the Anti-Corn law crowd) thinks free trade does. But you take his attempt at objectivity here to be support.
All knowledge of inflation and deflation, of social credit and the praxeology, of spelling and grammar, of mal-investment and interest drain, of diminishing returns and comparative advantage all these are as filthy rags.
When I was an Austrian and new Austrians I knew that every one I knew was dedicated to the fight against evil, was against the forces that brought on double digit inflation in the 1970s, wanted the mechanism of the market that provides good for all in a most natural way that best fits mankind and the basic economic problem. I believed Austrians — whom I first learned about when I found a copy of Human Action at the university where I was a graduate student in psychology writing a masters thesis — to be won over completely — switched to economics and that thesis got me to the doctoral program in economics at Texas A & M where I found Austrians — I have my correspondence with Frederick Hayek — who wrote a psychology book which I had read and asked him about when I heard him give the Ludwig von Mises lecture at Hillsdale College. I also remember when I was in at the Presbyterian Church when my wife and I left for Washington State some good friends gave us a tape series by Gary North on how to manage home finances — which was very helpful to a young couple just starting out. All the time I knew that Austrian economics was better that Keynesian economics — and no I find myself calling all of these good people followers of Satan! The wrongness of what I have been doing has hit me. THere was a time when Catholic and Calvinist burned each other at the stake — burn the heretic — that is the way to deal with witches and heretics who sell their souls to the devil — I am become one of these “true believers” – I have such a great little story “proving” how evil Austrians are! but I happen to know it is false — “yes, but” — how I justify myself — how my theory of Austrian conspiracy — working for Rothschild etc how that theory becomes suddenly my doctrine and I am so sure that you all work for the devil.
Gentlemen, let us all “mal-investment men and under-consumption men (and wopersons, if any ) agree that we are both seeking what is best for society, that we each want to save civilization and culture — with prosperity and freedom and an “evenly rotating economy” free of inflation and intervention that harms. GENTLEMEN CAN WE NOT AGREE TO BE ECONOMISTS TOGETHER? – can we not acknowledge that whatever school we belong to — the best ideas of our field came from men who wrote before our field was formed — and that men of different schools have contributed great insights into the sciences of the catalaxy, markets, choice, logic, philosophy, political economic, sociology, theory of history — that Human Action and the works of Soddy or Douglas or Kitson and Rothbard, and Bombawerk (no attempt to spell correctly — I am here in my naked weakness and failings confessing my sins without pride but with shame for the rotten snot I have been towards men every bit as well intentioned as I. I never met an Austrian that I did not believe to be good and working for the good of mankind. Yes, it is possible that to keep a high income job — or to make money in the gold business — some may depart from objectivity, some may be selective in the economics one chooses to remember — I am not paid for what I write — but if anyone who would profit from my ideas had a lot of money to create a Social Credit Institute and started paying the chair with six figure incomes — might I not just step over the line of objectivity to argue for the interests of that generous donor — and if so, what right have I to caste stones? But most of all I am guilty of hardness of heart, and the ascribing of collective guilt to all for the wrongs done by some — if they really be wrongs — how do I know that someone I have in mind that I think is particularly mercenary — how do I know that I really do read him right? Is it mine to judge another.
Gentlemen, let us be brothers and let us be – together — only economists. My sins of pride, and loyalty to the label — is yielding to Satan’s plan of divide and conquer. It is more important that I love you and see the good in you than I call you out. One man sees inflation another deflation as the impending catastrophe over our heads — but as long as we act like Israel towards Palestine … but there I go again — please forgive me.
If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I have the gift of marginal utility analysis, and know all mysteries and all knowledge ; and if I have all faith, so as to remove depressions, but do not have love, I am nothing. 3 And if I give all my possessions to feed the poor, and if I surrender my body to be burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing. 4 Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous ; love does not brag and is not arrogant, 5 does not act unbecomingly ; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, 6 does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth ; 7 bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. 8 Love never fails ; but if there are gifts of a priori, they will be done away ; if there be social credit, it will cease ; if there is knowledge, it will be done away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part ; 10 but when the perfect comes, the partial will be done away. 11 When I was a child, I used to speak like a child, think like a child, reason like a child ; when I became a man, I did away with childish things. 12 For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face ; now I know in part, but then I will know fully just as I also have been fully known. 13 But now faith, hope, love, abide these three ; but the greatest of these is love.
Here, here, Mr. Eastman! No doubt we have all succumbed to pride in what we think to be our knowledge. God Bless you sir.
Thanks for the post. After reading the blog, most comments, the scriptural references and doing some pondering, my main thoughts go directly to the government as the worst offender of usury. But, individual libertarianism I do not find inconsistent with Christianity. One’s agency, properly or improperly from a biblical/religious/spiritual standpoint, can be exercised within a libertarian mindset. God’s greatest gift to man, even beyond life itself, is man’s agency: The free will to choose one’s own path whether it be good, evil or some of both. The atonement of Jesus Christ has a purpose after all.
Here in Nevada we have no usury laws loans (excepting therefrom pawn shops, payday checks places etc.), we have gambling, whore houses, limited legalized marijuana, churches, temples, sinners, saints, and everything in between. We have Babylon & Zion, if you will, in Nevada. Nevada, to a great degree, is a pretty good example of Libertarianism in exercise, from a spiritual perspective. You wanna gamble all night, drink liquor & chase whores? You’re free to do so. You wanna help the poor, needy, serve at the soup kitchen, donate your excess means to others? You’re free to do so.
These examples are private sector examples of one agency granted to him/her by God. Choose wisely.
Government? Well, well, well…. When government gets involved in your points of view, Anthony, I believe it is the biggest offender of what you believe is wrong. Morally, ethically, legally, etc. More specifically, excess governmental involvement. We need some form of civility in society but, beyond the basic tenets of libertarianism, government if just a form of mafia used by evil, wicked, contriving men & woman—– which is exactly what we see right now in America. I won’t go into every sin that government is involved in, but just look at some of the involuntary (where God’s free agency to man is usurped by government) interest, penalties, taxes, etc., are levied by government upon its subjects:
IRS: Charges interest, penalties & fees on the rich, poor & everything in between;
Student Loans: Now exempt from bankruptcy court protecting and coincidentally, has be seized by the Obama administration of the U.S. Government is the ONLY legal lender to students now;
Property Taxes: Interest & penalties are levied on delinquent payments, rich/poor alike. Government takes the real property for non-payment regardless of one’s ability to pay if payment is not received in due time;;
Obamacare: Taxes, penalties, restricted care, etc., are all part of the government’s biggest sin against mankind in this law. Total usurpation of man’s agency to buy, or not to buy, health insurance. Pure evil;
Government funding of abortions. Killing those who cannot defend themselves with taxes seized by those who morally oppose government-sanctioned infanticide? Purest evil there is and self explanatory;
Government, Corporations, Police & Military: With enough moral justification just about anyone in America or worldwide can be killed by our police and/or military through the ‘legitimate’ authority of government behind the killing. Without indictment to those who serve with honor in our police & military forces, the evil men/women in government are behind the controls and actively work for the profit of evil people who run corporations that profit from these killings. See Eisenhower’s farewell address with some proper historically significant commentary:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gg-jvHynP9Y
A private sector libertarian, such as myself, has never and could never, effectuate the sin, bondage, murder, theft & devastation upon mankind as government has since the beginning of time. On the contrary, a person’s adherence to the tenets libertarianism allows mankind to be free to chose one’s course throughout life without adversely affecting another. In as much as man is free to choose, as a libertarian, he is living a life consistent with the New Testament and teachings of Jesus Christ. Jesus is the advocate for the Father and invites all, without compulsory stipulation, “Come, follow me.” He also said, “Forgive them Father, for they know not what they do.”
I respectfully disagree with your viewpoint that libertarianism is rooted in evil. I submit that a lack of libertarianism is the evil you describe, consistent with the degree away from which the libertarian ideals veer, whether it be an individual or a government.
Thanks, Anthony!!
And thank you too!
I’d be interested to know which facebook page linked to the article generating so many hits!
Could you tell me? I always get lost on facebook and never can find anything……..
Nice work Morty Sellerman who has just demolished this article, which along with only a tenuous understanding of Austrianism misses the fundamental point of libertarianism, and its parallels with the life of Christ.
The greatest gift God gives us is freedom. He wants us all to be saved, yet he doesn’t compel us to be. If this is God’s model for the most fundamental and important aspect of life, why does the author here presume to know better?
Morality cannot be legislated, people will not ‘do good things’ because laws ‘compel’ them to do so. And even if this somehow did work, there would be no moral value to an action that is brought about through coercion.
When we look at examples from the life of Christ, (barring the moneychangers in the temple which is hugely significant in itself) we never find him using coercive means to change peoples behaviour. Take the example of the woman who is about to be stoned for adultery. Christ doesn’t force people to stop what they are doing – he speaks to their consciounces by writing their sins in the sand. He makes them think, and ponder what they are doing. This is the libertarian way. It is only when the possibility of a bad choice exists that a good choice can have moral value. God knows this, Christ knows this and libertarians know this.
I’m afraid that when the whole premise of Christian salvation is predicated on a libertarian model far stronger Christian arguments than those presented by the author here become untenable.
As for the laughable references attempting to somehow link Ron Paul (and others) to satanism….come on. This man has been in the public eye for 30 years, and you can bet the media has looked and looked for dirt on him. The fact that the best they can do is the ‘racist newsletter’ written by someone else says a lot about the exemplary character of the man. He is mortal like all of us, and thus he makes mistakes, but throughout his life he has demonstrated a remarkable level of integrity and a lifelong commitment to Chritian charity through the provision of pro bono medical services.
The linked debating Ron Paul’s ‘connections’ to freemasonry and an ‘unoffical member’ of the John Birch society is beyond the pale. Paul is not in fact an ‘unoffical member’ of the John Birch Society. He is a man who has for 30+ years publically promoted the message that freedom is good. Regardless of who asks him to speak Ron Paul will speak, and he will deliver the same speech, and this is exactly what he has done at John Birch Society events. If the John Birch Society promotes some things that are good, then perhaps through seeing the example of a man like Ron Paul, who has provided great charity to people of all colours, its members will come to see the error in some of their views. One thing is for certain – they will not see it through having their views or their society outlawed.
Condemning Ron Paul for speaking to the John Birch Society is the exactly the same mindset of the pharisees who condemned Christ for ‘eating with sinners’.
I haven’t got time to straighten out the poorly researched sketches of Mises and Hayek. Suffice to say that the equation of the Mises quote to the Crowley quote is extremely disingenuous indeed. Crowley is advocating a standard of morality. In ‘Human Action’ Mises analyses and delineates the realities of how the decisions and actions of individuals impact a society as a whole. Mises then goes on to advoate for free market principles as the proven, and only, method of creating a free, just and prosperous society, none of which are things that Crowley advocated for in the slightest. How two positions which are ultimately diametrically opposed can be so flippantly equated – through the use of one sentence from an 800+ page intellectual treatise – only serves to underline that the author has not read Human Action, and does not even understand the quotes from it that he HAS read, much less the context in which the original work frames them.
I implore readers of this blog who think the original author’s article has any credibility to research these things for themselves. Libertarianism is the only political and social ideology that is compatible with Christianity with regard to any issue. It is based on the principles that force is always wrong unless it is used in self defence, and that the value of any individual’s life has inherent value, and always trumps any notion of a collectivist greater good. These two things are the very pillars of Christianity, and all political and social ideologies which are not libertarianism ultimately rely on violating these principles somewhere along the line. Thus is it all other social and political ideologies that rely on ‘good coming from evil’ while libertarianism is the only one which refuses to violate these fundamental, God-given rights. I am intrigued to know how the original author would go about denying such self evident biblically demonstrated truths.
If readers here want to know why Austrian economics is the only supportable economic model for a Christian, go and do some reading at http://mises.org or look up some of the works of Thomas E Woods junior, a committed Christian and brilliant man who writes in extremely easy to understand terms in books like ‘The Church and the market – A Catholic defense of the free economy’
You might also try reading Ron Paul’s brilliant work ‘The Revolution – A Manifesto’ which is an extremely lucid, entertaining yet quietly intellectual primer in libertarian principles and the sorry state that America has got into since it through them out of the window.
It seems to me that there are many automatic assumptions in this reply. Why, for instance, does the claim that libertarianism is intrinsically immoral mean that we expect morality from government? It just doesn’t make sense.
I don’t like Government. I don’t expect too much good from it, I see only a limited role for it, although certainly don’t go as far as the anarcho capitalists, which are just being silly in the face of massive powercentralization in the private sector. Which is actually why people like Rothbard were paid to invent anarcho capitalism.
Is it really true that freedom is Jesus’ greatest gift? To my mind it’s love. We have very limited freedom here, the idea of ‘control over once fate’ etc is really very childish in the face of the powers that rule over us, and I don’t mean government or the Money Power by that.
Where comes the idea from that we want to legislate morality? Nowhere in the article is anything like that said.
Regarding Ron Paul, he’s almost certainly a freemason. He’s been to known to flash all sorts of masonic hand signs. Masonry is a luciferian brotherhood. The entire body politic of the US, since its very inception, was masonic. So yes, Ron Paul has very clear and transparent ties to the satanic underworld.
The idea that force is wrong is not a pillar of christianity. Where did you get that? Christ, like you mentioned, attacked the money changers. He did NOT defend himself, so that’ another strange thing to claim: that violence for self defense is in line with christianity.
Thomas Woods is a ‘committed christian’ like Gary North is. These are just words. They defend a ‘free market’ (read: capitalism unrestrained by anti cartel//anti monopoly laws, ie: monopoly capitalism) that is based on usurious and thus exploitative money supply. This is absolutely anti christian.
The key thing is to read through hollow slogans like ‘liberty’ (which is a typical masonic watchword), ‘choice’, ‘commited christian (defending the ‘right’ of parents to sell their children in teh marketplace if that is their ‘choice’) etc.
what is actually being promoted? How do these wonderful slogans work out in practice? that is the question and the answer in the case of Austrianism is quite clear: it is economic feudalism of the very worst kind. It will have men like you and me lick the boots of the ultra rich.
Freedom is the greatest manifestation of that love here on earth. Its all over scripture.
If Jesus is truly God, then casting out the moneychangers was self-defense against trespassing.
I rate compassion higher.
Freedom comes from God, not man. God is compassionate, but the “compassion” you are arguing for does not come from him, it comes from man. Ergo, Freedom, including the freedom to be compassionate, and the freedom to make mistakes to give cause to others to be compassionate, and the freedom to do neither of these things is the greater.
My head is spinning………..no wonder you like Austrianism with its ‘logical deductionism’
‘It seems to me that there are many automatic assumptions in this reply. Why, for instance, does the claim that libertarianism is intrinsically immoral mean that we expect morality from government? It just doesn’t make sense.’
Because the alternative to a purely libertarian society is a governed society – you can call this an assumption, but it’s really an observation. All government is founded on the use of violence to enforce collectivist notions of how society should function. If you don’t understand this, try witholding your taxes and see what happens. You are therefore advocating for good coming from evil. A libertarian rejects this nonsensical notion.
‘I don’t like Government. I don’t expect too much good from it, I see only a limited role for it, although certainly don’t go as far as the anarcho capitalists, which are just being silly in the face of massive powercentralization in the private sector. Which is actually why people like Rothbard were paid to invent anarcho capitalism.’
I’m glad you agree that less violence is better than more violence, but wouldn’t no violence at all be better? Jesus certainly thought so. I don’t disagree that the current corporate nature of the world would make an anarcho-capitalistic society no better than what we currently have, because the current power structure has arisen over many decades and cannot be reversed overnight, but I recognise that the massive power centralisation you mention has come about through government, not in spite of it. It is not a state of affairs that naturally arises in an open market as an open market naturally disperses power. Will there always be those who seek to abuse and exploit power? Of course. So let’s keep the power dispersed instead of concentrating it in the hands of a few.
‘Is it really true that freedom is Jesus’ greatest gift? To my mind it’s love.’
You are being disingenuous. You know full well that the ultimate expression of Christ’s love is freedom. It is important enough to God’s design that God thinks it is worth the price of evil in the world.
‘We have very limited freedom here, the idea of ‘control over once fate’ etc is really very childish in the face of the powers that rule over us, and I don’t mean government or the Money Power by that.’
What do you mean then? Are you positing that we live in a deterministic universe?
‘Where comes the idea from that we want to legislate morality? Nowhere in the article is anything like that said.’
Forgive me, I’m used to talking to raging statists.
‘Regarding Ron Paul, he’s almost certainly a freemason. He’s been to known to flash all sorts of masonic hand signs. Masonry is a luciferian brotherhood. The entire body politic of the US, since its very inception, was masonic. So yes, Ron Paul has very clear and transparent ties to the satanic underworld.’
The trouble with this is that it makes for a very simplisitic neat and tidy story by assuming that anyone at all connected with freemasonry is automatically satan’s devoted minion. But this flies in the face of the whole nature of the setup of freemasonry. If everyone wants to worship satan, why have all the degrees, and diversion of good works, and general secrecy? If it was palatable to most people it would be out in the open, not hiding away in remote corridors of power that are shrouded in secrecy. Is freemasonry satanic? In my view that’s more likely than not. Has it always been? Maybe, maybe not. But were Jefferson, Franklin and Washington really worshipping satan when they were establishing the Bill of Rights? I’m afraid I just don’t buy this level of conspiracy because it requires too many people at too many levels to have ill intent, and keep it secret. Most people in my experience have good intent, although they may be misguided in their views of how to bring good about.
The nature of freemasonry with its degrees and secrecy is that only the people at the top know its overall agenda. What ordinary people see is a club that does some charity work, and this is particularly true of older generations who did not have the power of the internet and the free exchange of knowledge it facilitates. So when you say a 77 year old like Ron Paul is a freemason, well, perhaps he is. Perhaps he saw a local lodge doing good works in his local community and wanted to contribute. It doesn’t automatically make him lucifer’s right hand man with an agenda for doing the devil’s work on earth.
A rational person would look instead at the example of Ron Paul’s life and see how he has lived it. And having done so, a rational person can only conclude that Ron Paul has lived a good, Christian life for a very long time, resisting all of the temptations and corruptions that have come his way to stand up for what he believes in, which is to say, that war and slavery are evil and should not be tolerated. I’m afraid these just aren’t terribly satanic lifestyle choices.
The idea that Ron is not in fact a passionate believer in individual liberty, but following someone else’s agenda is frankly daft. He is clearly his own man, and someone who speaks from the heart.
Additionally, you assume that your particular understanding of what may (or may not) be a ‘hand-sign’ means the same thing to other people. This just isn’t the case. If you ask the average 15 year old what the ‘horns’ hand sign means, I imagine 90% of them would say ‘Rock!’ Perhaps in the clip shown of Ron (where he is in an informal situation with a young crowd) the crowd were doing the same thing and he responded? Perhaps he was being down the kids in slightly embarrassing grandad style? And perhaps he really was paying homage to a desire to bring a kingdom of lucifer on earth. Like I say – if it’s the latter, I’m going to need some ACTUAL evidence, because actions speak louder than unsubstantiated and far fetched conspiracy theories. So if you’re going to persist in this line of argumentation, when Ron Paul’s long public, and longer personal life, proves you wrong time and time again I won’t bother arguing further because your view would seem to be an article of faith, and immune from evidence.
Setting store in this kind of occult symbolism is, for me, not a healthy state of affairs. The reason satanism attempts to coopt these symbols and place them everywhere is power. God made the world, and everything in it, not lucifer. If lucifer could make his own words and symbols, don’t you think he would? The use of symbols is an attempt to make satan relevant, and project an illusion of power. ‘Oh, there’s a pyramid and eye on the dollar bill! Satan runs the world!’ No, he doesn’t. Despite all of the corruption of the power systems of the world, you still own your mind, and your free will, and satan is reduced to trying to infuence you through drawing pictures. Pretty pathetic when you look at it that way huh?
When I first explored these ideas I saw this stuff everywhere, and it very quickly depressed me. But that’s its job. I soon came to realise that it’s nothing more than pictures, and satanism has no monopoly on meanings. It only has power if you give it power. So get over it.
‘The idea that force is wrong is not a pillar of christianity. Where did you get that?’
Are you serious? ‘Blessed are the peacemakers’ ring any bells? How about the 20% of the ten commandments that expressly prohibit expressions of violence? Dear me Anthony, you’re not a neo-con are you?
‘Christ, like you mentioned, attacked the money changers. He did NOT defend himself, so that’ another strange thing to claim: that violence for self defense is in line with christianity.’
Well, you betray your lack of understanding of individual rights and the non aggression principle here. The Temple was ‘God’s house’ i.e. private property. Jesus threw them out. Why did Jesus feel such particular anger towards the money changers? I’m sure a blog called ‘realcurrencies’ already knows the answer to that!
Perhaps you’ve also heard of Augustine’s ‘just war’ theory. How exactly do you disagree with Augustine on this?
‘Thomas Woods is a ‘committed christian’ like Gary North is. These are just words. They defend a ‘free market’ (read: capitalism unrestrained by anti cartel//anti monopoly laws, ie: monopoly capitalism) that is based on usurious and thus exploitative money supply. This is absolutely anti christian.’
If I can’t use words, I’m not sure how our discussion can continue. This is a fairly easily demonstrable claim to anyone who has read Woods numerous works (which I’ll go out on a limb and guess you’ve not)? This is also a pretty rich reply from someone whose claims that Ron Paul is satan’s henchman largely seem to be based on a wave or two from an old, and pretty square, guy who, for all you know, has arthritis in his hands.
The problem with the second half of your argument here is that ‘monopoly capitalism’ only exists through the coercive power of government to initiate force on behalf of corporations. The success of capitalism as the only known mechanism for lifting people out of poverty is evident or not in every country in the world to the degree that a capitalistic economy has been/not been implemented. Anti-monopoly laws, transparently do not, and have not, ever worked. They are written by large corporations, for large corporations and until such time as governments are populated by angels and saints, instead of corruptible men and women, they will not offer a credible or effective route towards social justice. Continuing to advocate for a proven failure as you’re doing is not terribly useful. It’s time to try something different.
Your claim that capitalism is based on usurious and exploitative money supply is an inaccurate and rather strange criticism of Austrian economic theory. Austrians are vehemently opposed to usury and advocate an honest monetary system as a pre-requisite for a just monetary system. They believe in a commodity backed money supply, (hopefully 100%), but set by the market. There is no reason why a capitalistic system cannot operate in a non-usurious (is that even a word, haha?) manner. The fact that it can, and has been, corrupted is not a reflection of some inherent evil within it, but a reflection of the nature of man. The same principle can be applied to almost any technological or intellectual development as there is always the potential to use things for good or ill. Is the practice of medicine inherently evil because it can be used to perform abortions or euthanasia? Is farming inherently evil because some people can, and do, mistreat animals? Really, you’re just proving again that it is centralised power that is the real problem, because it exacerbates the effects of abuse of that power and makes everybody subject to it. Anarcho-capitalism in contrast disperses the power, limiting the negative uses of it, and empowering those affected by such abuses to step out from under it and go and find another provider whose business model is more favourable to the consumer.
It is only the centralised coercive power of government and it’s ability to ‘legally’ use force that facilitates the usurious aspect of current monetary exchanges through its protection and support for central banks. This is not the work of the market, where the idea of a central bank is an anathema that could never come into being. If you want to argue that money is immoral per se (and I don’t think you do) that’s another matter.
‘The key thing is to read through hollow slogans like ‘liberty’ (which is a typical masonic watchword), ‘choice’, ‘commited christian (defending the ‘right’ of parents to sell their children in the marketplace if that is their ‘choice’) etc.’
Less strawmanning please. Nothing that transgresses someone else’s right to their life, liberty or justly acquired property can be a ‘right’ and your example self-evidently falls into that category and would never be defended by a libertarian or Christian. Tom Woods isn’t claiming to be a ‘committed Christian’ as you seem to be suggesting. I’m merely observing that he IS.
‘what is actually being promoted? How do these wonderful slogans work out in practice? that is the question and the answer in the case of Austrianism is quite clear: it is economic feudalism of the very worst kind. It will have men like you and me lick the boots of the ultra rich.’
Newsflash Anthony – you’re currently licking the boots of the power elite. Feudalism is exactly the aim and it is already in practice. Government is the tool that has been used to accomplish this through a legal monopoly on the initialisation of violence against peaceful people. It is used to hand out just enough stolen goods to the poor to keep them quiet and to suppress the middle class through keeping them running to stand still. If you want to remove the power, you have to remove the power structure.
‘how do these slogans work out in practice’ Well, let’s have a look shall we? How is the average resident of, say, Singapore faring in terms of civil rights, having their basic physical needs for food, water and shelter met in comparison to the average resident of, say, Ethiopia? Is your daily life richer, safer and ‘freer’ than that of most people in, say, Russia? Honestly Anthony – if you’re going to argue against the inherent power of capitalism to raise people out of property and provide the basic platform for the development of more civilised, tolerant and just societies you’re going to have your work cut out because the evidence of every nation of the world, today, and throughout human history, is overwhelmingly against you.
I can’t go into all of this, it’s just too much, but I’ll score a few points nonetheless, if you don’t mind:
“Well, you betray your lack of understanding of individual rights and the non aggression principle here. The Temple was ‘God’s house’ i.e. private property. Jesus threw them out. Why did Jesus feel such particular anger towards the money changers? I’m sure a blog called ‘realcurrencies’ already knows the answer to that!
Perhaps you’ve also heard of Augustine’s ‘just war’ theory. How exactly do you disagree with Augustine on this?”
Like I said: the rejection of violence is NOT a tenet of christianity, although Jesus was very peaceloving. But he WOULD defend the defenseless and he WOULD attack the most brutal: the usurers.
“Is your daily life richer, safer and ‘freer’ than that of most people in, say, Russia? Honestly Anthony – if you’re going to argue against the inherent power of capitalism to raise people out of property and provide the basic platform for the development of more civilised, tolerant and just societies you’re going to have your work cut out because the evidence of every nation of the world, today, and throughout human history, is overwhelmingly against you.”
Absolutely not: the west is rich because it plunders the rest, make no mistake. Overvalued dollar and euro imports raw materials for nothing. We fought world wars amongst us, to satisfy the creditor. We murdered hundreds of millions simple people minding their own business throughout the ages. If you are in the center of the Caplitalist Empire, you probably have a decent life. But make no mistake on what this wealth was built.
“But he WOULD defend the defenseless and he WOULD attack the most brutal: the usurers.”
The moneychangers do not appear to have been usurers. They certainly operated as a cartel with kick backs to those who ran the temple. There is no evidence that they lent money.
The word “moneychanger” means money-banker or money-broker. They would make large profits at the expense of the pilgrims. Every Israelite, rich or poor, who had reached the age of twenty was obligated to pay a half shekel as an offering to Jehovah into the sacred treasury. This tribute was in every case to be paid in the exact Hebrew half shekel. At Passover everyone in the world who was an adult male and wished to worship at the Temple would bring his “offering” or purchase a sacrificial animal at the Temple. Since there was no acceptance of foreign money with any foreign image the money changers would sell “Temple coinage” at a very high rate of exchange and assess a fixed charge for their services.
The judges, who sat to inspect the offerings that were brought by the pilgrims, were quick to detect any blemish in them. This was expensive for the wealthy pilgrims, not to say how ruinous this was for the poor who could only offer their turtle-doves and pigeons. There was no defense for them or court of appeal, seeing that the priestly authorities took a large percentage on every transaction.
http://www.bible-history.com/gentile_court/TEMPLECOURTJesus_and_the_Temple.htm
The Temple took blank unmarked silver coins. No mark of the Emperor was allowed. Hence the exchange rate from Gold to Silver, or even marked silver to unmarked silver was outrageous. No wonder Jesus was pissed. He probably also knew their descendants would become the Pharisee enemy (among other pride defectives) that plagues mankind.
Let’s not forget that this region controlled the East/West mechanism to exchange silver and gold, and always took the cut on the differences. Simply transporting metals from Rome to India, and back, made one rich. Jewish entrepots were strung along caravan routes.
Silver debts were not jubileed. Silver contracts were generational, unlike Gold contracts. Hence the 30 pieces of silver, and the silver “tithes” to the Temple have deeper meaning. Did Judas have generational debts?
The East did not have much in the way of silver, it had to come from West (Rome).
Interesting REN, thanks very much for your insightful comments.
But Christ never INITIATED force. The casting out of the “usurers” was an act of self-defense. It was His Father’s temple. The moneychangers were not only trespassing, they were refusing to abide by the property owner’s rules. Most libertarians aren’t against violence, per se, just its initiation.
‘I can’t go into all of this, it’s just too much, but I’ll score a few points nonetheless, if you don’t mind:’
Translation – I’m in way over my head here.
Migchels nails it. For the past 500 yrs through plunder and the currency shell-game it has raped the world. I frequently find libertarians, particularly the gold-money folks base their arguments through conveniently narrow parameters, though it is clear that since the rise of capitalism, when the Portuguese and Dutch set sail to conquer the world that economies have been global. Good job Anthony. I’m very please to see someone in the camp of monetary reform cast the argument for what it is and call the free-marketeers out for what they are: nihilistic materialists, i.e., in service to Mamom, basicallySatan worshippers.
This is some of the most ignorant, dogma fueled sheep fodder I have ever read. And the paranoid scapegoating of Jews and Catholics is pretty rich, too. If you want to claim that libertarianism is anti-christian, have fun, because you are actually convincing more people that christianity is anti-libertarian with this tripe. Don’t suffocate as your tent shrinks.
well, you know, us ignorant sheep sometimes think that Jewish bankers and Jesuit priests have this little thing going centralizing power in the hands of ever fewer people. In the ‘faux economics’ page you can read on how they financed Mises, Hayek, Rothbard, North, the Daily Bell, Paul, Rockwell and then some ‘economists’ to create the idea of opposition.
But hey, that’s just us sheeple, you got Austrian Economics!
The thing is, even if they DID fund all of the above – and I’ve no view either way currently – it wouldn’t prove anything. The power elite is interested in one thing – power. And the route to power is knowledge. Anything that advances human understanding is valuable to the power elite, and there are some great intellects above. Personally I have never read the work of a greater intellect than Mises. Like all knowledge, ‘Human Action’ and ‘The Road to Serfdom’ are dangerous in the wrong hands. The real proof of the pudding is surely in the fact that, what we have today, is the opposite of what these guys vehemently argued for? To address this state of affairs their work needs to widely known and disseminated, by as many people as possible, not somehow blamed for pointing out repeatedly what was going to happen, before it happened.
Yes, they fund all ideoligies, but Libertarianism for a very specific reason: by gaining power through knowledge……….The marists, the Greens, the feminists, the pharmacidists, they could all say the same and probably do.
Let’s face it: it’s a bad sign if satan funds you.
Satan funds knowledge full stop Anthony, because unlike God he doesn’t possess perfect knowledge. What we do with knowledge is a question of intent, not of any inherent trait of the ‘knowledge’ itself. With the knowledge of how to save a fetus in the womb comes the knowledge of how to kill a fetus in the womb. This is a simple truth about the nature of knowledge, and denying it because it doesn’t fit your poorly referenced and specially pleaded agenda is just pathetic. You’re not fooling anyone with a brain.
Also – where is evidence of this funding of key Austrain thinkers you claim? Mises was never a rich man that I’m aware of. He spurned every academic opportunity that came his way, because he refused to sell out on his principles and history proved him correct. He was also hated and pursued by the Nazis who burned down his library shortly after he fled to the U.S.A. By your logic – they must have been doing God’s work were they?
Goodbye, I’m done with your fallacious drivel.
What form of government had God himself recommended for his chosen people, in the promised land ?
No government at all; an-archon……. (certainly no protection for home industry)
For 400 years the children of Jacob/Israel lived ever after, in peace in quiet, under this arrangement.
Then, they went insane and rejected God that He may not rule over them, [Sam 8:7] and requested from God a king….
It has been downhill ever since
“This will be the manner of the king that shall reign over you: He will take your sons, and appoint them for himself, for his chariots, and to be his horsemen; and some shall run before his chariots.
“And he will appoint him captains over thousands, and captains over fifties; and will set them to ear his ground, and to reap his harvest, and to make his instruments of war, and instruments of his chariots.
“And he will take your daughters to be confectionaries, and to be cooks, and to be bakers.
“And he will take your fields, and your vineyards, and your oliveyards, even the best of them, and give them to his servants.
“And he will take the tenth of your seed, and of your vineyards, and give to his officers, and to his servants.
“And he will take your menservants, and your maidservants, and your goodliest young men, and your asses, and put them to his work.
“He will take the tenth of your sheep: and ye shall be his servants.
“And ye shall cry out in that day because of your king which ye shall have chosen you; and Yahweh will not hear you in that day.
____________________________
“But, in general, the protective system of our day is conservative, while the free trade system is destructive. It breaks up old nationalities and pushes the antagonism of the proletariat and the bourgeoisie to the extreme point. In a word, the free trade system hastens the social revolution. It is in this revolutionary sense alone, gentlemen, that I vote in favor of free trade.”
______________
Now, in the name of consistency, shall we talk about the satanist origins of Ellen Brown, the new ager and goddess worshipper ?
When you see the destruction to mankind performed by government and religion, it is hard to argue against the case for no government. Man’s only duty is to keep God’s commandments, and those commandments have been essentially thrown out and replaced by man-made laws that don’t work. They are dead letters written on dead trees. Our modern leaders are a testament and an example of what not to do. It’s worse today because they have the technology to do even more damage than in the past. If you look at today’s political and religious leaders, their actions are self-evident to the depravity of the whole system.
If you can back up the satanist origins of Ellen Brown, you know I will post name!
What is the origin of New Age, hindu world view, goddess-worship ? and all those who subscribe to these philosophies ?
Well, Hinduism goes back to Krishna, and I have few problems with him.
But I assume you refer to Blavatsky?
What does it mean?:
“In the dark age of Kali Yuga, money rules; and it is through banks that the moneyed interests have gotten their power. Banking in an age of greed is fraught with usury, fraud, and gaming the system for private ends.”
“According to both the Mayan and Hindu calendars, 2012 marks the transition from an age of darkness, violence and greed to one of enlightenment, justice, and peace. It’s hard to see that change just yet in the events relayed in the major media, but a shift does seem to be happening behind the scenes;”
and what is this?:
http://www.webofdebt.com/articles/2012-05-23.gif
Except Israel did not live in peace and prosperity for 400 years prior to the monarchy. On the contrary, it was a downward spiral of: people forget God and His Laws, they get conquered by tyrants, they cry out to God, God raises a judge to liberate the people, peace returns to the land, and the people again forget God and His Laws.
Thanks for the article.
You seem to be confusing one libertarian-direction group with the actual movement.
For info on people using voluntary Libertarian tools on similar and other issues worldwide, please see the non-partisan Libertarian International Organization @ http://www.Libertarian-International.org ….
Also see http://www.TheLibertarian.Info which has fantastic info on alternate currencies…
hi Editor,
I fear it’s the other way around: the positive people that see Libertarianism as ‘voluntaryanism’ and who often work miracles confuse their own movement with Libertarianism.
Libertarianism is Austrian Economics is the wet dream of the Plutocracy. For instance, the Mountain Hours are utterly incompatible with Austrian Economics, although it is a free market unit. Most libertarian outlets ignore or ridicule usury free living and even Bitcoin is often derided by them.
But many people in the Libertarian movement, who joined because they were enticed by the ‘choice’ and ‘liberty’ buzzwords are good natured people simply unaware of these kind of thoughts on the monetary and once they are exposed to them, they quickly cool to Austrianism.
Be that as it may: the label is not important, the message is. People plugging interest-free, free market units, even if they call themselves Libertarians, are my buddies 🙂
Interesting thoughts put through in the article and the lengthy comments section. Until one realizes that we are all one and that abundance is already here, (abundance is just held back by the money powers, who own the governments) those who argue in favor of interest lending will seemingly be unable to fathom incredible world that is possible for all without usury and using social/mutual credit.
The world does not need to be as it is and big change can happen quickly. Visionaries see world that most do not see. Be thankful for them, for they are the ones that bring the positive new realities about.
That’s as simple as it gets.
Have you seen your psychiatrist yet? If not, you should do this ASAP.
Do you have anything concrete to say? For instance about how Rand’s and Mises’ core conviction is the same as that of Crowley?
http://www.whale.to/c/frankfurt_school1.html
Read this and you’ll begin to understand the issue.
If you still think Mr Michels needs a psychiatrist I suggest you find one yourself.
Psychiatry is 100% pseudo-scientific chemical warfare
In a nutshell.
You keep talking about the Illuminati. Um, how could they thrive in a Libertarian world? Answer, they could not. The Power is to the individual. Without any sort of mechanism in place to control people, to manipulate people and coerce them through means of fear, well, you get the point. Wait… I’m sure you do not. I think you need to go take the tin foil off your windows and go enjoy a stroll through the wilderness.
The Illuminati, who are bankers, would find Libermania their Usury and Deflation centered heaven.
They would also love all the land rents they’d be getting in any Libertarian/Austrian economy.
It is up to a strong society to reject usury. The ubiquitous, government enforced monopoly of fractional reserve banking at the Federal Reserve would not longer exist in a voluntary society. Illuminati bankers need government to tax the people to cover their ponzy scheme.
not
meant no
Holy shit this is stupid. This is the same as arguing that evolution is wrong because of what Hitler and Stalin did. It is intellectual laziness on a grand scale. And Ayn Rand was not a libertarian. Jesus H.
I would be very interested to know how this author or this website in general defines “usury”. I need to know that before being inclined to agree or not agree.
Interest on loans of money.