#8 To Them, We're All Slaves … or Worse.

Required reading:

The Babylonian Woe by David Astle
The Money Creators by Gertrude Coogan

Both are available on-line.

“In the 1700's (18^th century and before), the elites viewed all indentured servants as “slaves” - humans that they viewed as commodities. More than half of all white immigrants to England's North America colony during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were indentured servants. The elites granted freedom to both black and white indentured servants after serving a specified length of time, typically seven years. The indentured servants lived, worked and socialized together, apparently indifferent to skin color distinctions. The colonial elites, a definite minority, grew concerned about a potential rebellion from the majority non-voting lower economic classes. Consequently they enacted legal measures to divide the poor whites and blacks and gradually the slaves' mutual acceptance of each other subsided. Society was largely composed of servants, landless tenants or small yoeman who owned inconsequential pieces of land that the elite simply did not want. The elites established a “divide and conquer” tactic that still exists in most of the industrial and third world cultures.” 

Deanna Spingola

The Ruling Elite: a history of imperialism, genocide and emancipation. Page 197

A slave is by usual definition, someone or even something, which depends on a master for direction, a livelihood or utilitarian usefulness. Human slaves are also by definition owned and therefore can be bought or sold. If a person or thing is no longer useful, its owners can choose to discard it; to enjoy the “freedom” of the proverbial societal dung heap, be that the heap of cast off humanity or the scrap heap of discarded articles or machines. Trouble is, even the elites have some guilty consciousness that what they are doing is wrong and therefore they will seek to cover up or eliminate the effects of their discarding of humanity that they can no longer find any use for, usually by resorting to genocide.

The word indentured does imply that one has had a bit through the teeth installed as if a human being were nothing more than a draft animal to be led around without protest. Looking into it a little farther, one asks just how one became “indentured” to another in the first place, and it turns out that in many cases people were forced into servanthood; slavery, through becoming ensnared in debt, either personally or through the actions of another family member.

Another class of people thought that their servanthood would be temporary; involving learning a trade that would enable them to become their own master someday, escape slavery, and in turn hire other indentured servants to help carry on and expand their trade or business. Somehow, if slavery were just a temporary thing, perhaps it was endurable or worth putting up with without protest.

We would be failing to be consistent were we not to include here mentioning some religious teachings regarding slavery as sanctioned by divine authority; the claim was that in the scheme of things, one's deity was pretty much the same as one's earthly masters. People then as now are often willing to forgo temporary hardships for eventual independence, or some glory in the hereafter, even when such promises are pretty uncertain.

We note in particular the trend some have followed in recent years to try and re-educate themselves so they can get a better job, only to discover that once educated (and in debt), that there are no jobs available for them because the potential employers have outsourced and offshored those jobs to people who require far less to live on than they do. Many of these people are discovering that their academic transcripts, which prove their qualifications for a job, are not available to them unless or until they have paid off their student loans. For these people, caught in a financial Catch-22, it is as if they never attended school and received their degree or whatever other professional certification; all their time and effort and the money they now owe, went for nothing.

In the short run or the long run, it makes no difference, the elites who always had the money, usually acquired through unscrupulous or otherwise despicable trading practices involving precious metals, weapons, slaves and drugs, have had things running their way from time immemorial. These are the people who run things, decide which heroes shall be set up for the common people to look up to, decide which attitudes shall be promoted and which discouraged, decide who gets what and from whom whatever of value is taken (usually stolen by FORCE, requiring the complicity of others who are likely themselves slaves) for the continued preservation and further enrichment of themselves.

It does not matter what colour your skin is, where you come from or even how well educated you think you are. As long as there can be a distinction between slave and free, and there still is, there can be no fundamental change. Hence it is best to begin to recognize where the true divide lies; between the elites and the rest of us, regardless of our race or ethnic background, for to the elite, anyone but themselves is barely human, and being barely human, can be easily discarded.

Obviously the aware mind reels at such things, that indeed there even can be distinctions made between people who are “special” simply because they are rich and those who are not. Yet it has always been so and we contend that without a vital change in awareness among the vast majority of people, there is no reason why these distinctions will not continue and as they do so, bring about destruction and despair to more and more people everywhere as the elite attempts it's grandest scheme of all; the erection of a triplicity of world government, world economy and world religion which they intend on controlling to suit themselves.

We can begin by making a few statements that seem beyond refutation:

1. There is no fundamental difference between anyone due to their race, gender or ethnicity, or for that matter any other concocted distinction when compared with the elites. To them, we are all slaves, which means we can be bought and sold like tortillas and in some cases (where we are considered no longer useful to them), whisked away so as not to be seen by the elites (to soothe their guilty consciousness) into concentration camps, where the discarded will not be seen.

Many, perhaps most, continue to believe that these camps were only set up in Nazi Germany or that these only held persons of Jewish extraction, when in fact the real story is that these isolation camps and their genocidal purposes have existed in the United States (and Canada) as Indian reservations for the indigenous peoples, whose cultures and racial contributions to our humanity have largely become lost to us, as well as later the camps to hold Americans of Japanese descent. We are also aware that during the long terror that was the Soviet Union, many millions were held in gulags that were just as bad if not worse than Hitler's camps. China and other regimes had their equivalents.

2. The indigenous people of this world have long known what the rest of us have never recognized; that our ruling elites do not have anyone's best interests in mind but their own.

This being said, anyone who does their bidding, particularly when using FORCE, acting as either a military or police support to their power, is being fooled into believing things that are simply not true, especially trusting that they will be taken care of for their services, when in fact just the opposite is usually the case; a military or police person is still a slave to the elites and is owed nothing once discarded.

The elites do intend to discard you too, as evidence amply proves; they think you are stupid for believing them, they are glad that you have been fooled into shedding your life's blood for them so they don't have to shed theirs, they believe that dangling money and promises they never intend on keeping will be enough to secure your trust and loyalty and hope you never wake up to recognize that the poor souls you are harassing or butchering are your brothers and sisters, not those who you believe you are working for, who clearly will never regard you as one of them.

Millions around the globe are awakening to their real situation in life; that they are slaves of one sort or another to a rapacious, carnal (materialistic) and careless elite. Meanwhile there are the basic necessities of life as they have always been and then there are what E. C. Riegel describes as the drive for advancement, what makes life worth living, that one can work honestly and hope for better from one's efforts through expressions of real free trade with others.

The awakening is taking many avenues; some are waking up to recognize the futility of bigness, that neither an excessively large government or corporation can ever do anything efficiently or responsibly with regard to all of humanity or the environment. Smaller is better, but this requires the elimination of monopolies, the reinstatement of competition of technologies as well as cultures and outlooks and above all the discrediting of elite concepts such as world government, world economy (managed by them) or world religion (again managed by them to keep “the masses” believing that if they just endure a lifetime of abject slavery without outcry they will die to inherit an elitist existence in some afterlife). To those whose eyes are truly open, these are monstrous follies.

3. The elites have usually tried to cover themselves with respectability they neither deserve nor really believe in themselves; honouring the respectability of the elites is for slaves, not themselves.

Some have no doubt seen, “A Note of Appreciation from the Rich” which should serve as a basis for this point (repeated here with comment):

“Let's be honest: you'll never win the lottery.”

Gambling and the lottery are really the “opiates of the masses” used to offer hope where there really is none. What makes you think that even were you to win a lot of money that your life would really be any different? How could it be, since you would just be doing more of whatever it is you are still doing? In order to really “make something of yourself,” you must learn to produce as well as consume and compete with everyone else involved in your product speciality. Mere instant riches does nothing to change who you really are.

“On the other hand, the chances are pretty good that you'll slave away at some miserable job the rest of your life. That's because you were in all likelihood born into the wrong social class. Let's face it — you're a member of the working class. Sorry!”

They are never sorry. The hubris of the elites is that they were born to rule, which were it not for their money, would be obviously false. Our message has been and is that class distinctions are for them, not for you. Therefore why honour them?

“As a result, you don't have the education, upbringing, connections, manners, appearance, and good taste to ever become one of us.”

We likewise maintain that to join them, emulate them, believe as they do, etc. is mistaken; their education, upbringing, connections, manners, appearance, and good taste mean nothing to us and are seen for what they are, the trappings of narcissism held up as worth emulating when they are not. Furthermore we know that in practice (and in private) few of these people ever exhibit anything so “respectable.”

For instance, when it comes to education, most elitists would have rather cheated (and did), then actually buckle down and learn something well enough that, heaven forbid, they would be able to earn a living doing it. Upbringing, raised by servants to be some kind of critical spoiled impossible child that never has to grow up because, well let's face it, they have enough money to pay others to serve them. “Connections” are people just like them who you do not even want to know. Manners? That again is what's expected of slaves toward them, not any of their responsibility. Appearance? Though some “celebrities” (celebrated for nothing of any consequence) may seem beautiful, it is only skin deep. Good taste? These people usually have the worst taste of anyone. Who are they kidding? The doting slaves of course.

“In fact, you'd probably need a book the size of the yellow pages to list all the unfair advantages we have over you. That's why we're so relieved to know that you still continue to believe all those silly fairy tales about "justice" and "equal opportunity" in America.”
 
… or anywhere else. As E. C. Riegel stated, political equality is meaningless without the economic freedom to create one's own money and trade goods or services with others, and of course that is what they shall never relinquish.

“Of course, in a hierarchical social system like ours, there's never been much room at the top to begin with. Besides, it's already occupied by us — and we like it up here so much that we intend to keep it that way.”

Why have a hierarchical anything? What are the limitations implied by “diminishing returns to scale” and “diminishing responsibility to size”? Does anyone bother asking? The fact is that only those who live and work doing something, really know about it (and most of the elite do not know), that only those who live in a locality know what they know about that locality (the elites again do not know or care), that it makes far more sense to base larger structures on smaller units, locally created and governed, than by relying on some distant overarching authority (which doesn't deserve either the respect or trust accorded to it by those regarded as and used as slaves by the elites).

“But at least there's usually someone lower in the social hierarchy you can feel superior to and kick in the teeth once in a while. Even a lowly dishwasher can easily find some poor slob further down in the pecking order to sneer and spit at. So be thankful for migrant workers, prostitutes, and homeless street people.”

Watch out! This is exactly what the elites want you to be doing; getting what little self respect you still may have from the knowledge that certainly someone else is not doing as well as you. Remember that in all cases, you will never be able to join them, and in fact you probably wouldn't like the company very much if you did. Being rich (or over powerful) does not make you wise, good, loving or smart.

“Always remember that if everyone like you were economically secure and socially privileged like us, there would be no one left to fill all those boring, dangerous, low-paid jobs in our economy.”

And what would be the result should labour be valued for exactly what it is worth? Let me state that differently; what would be the chances of many things not being done if those who should be responsible decided they wouldn't guarantee the safety of their employees or pay for their healthcare? Where liabilities are waived, as with corporations, the lives of the slaves are worse off not better.

“And no one to fight our wars for us, or blindly follow orders in our totalitarian corporate institutions. And certainly no one to meekly go to their grave without having lived a full and creative life. So please, keep up the good work!”

It is our firm reiterated resolve to show the connection between soldiering and those who finance it so that fewer will willingly decide to serve them and in fact may decide to walk away from them. There were slave uprisings in the past which were savagely put down. How was this possible? The elites got those who were just above the slaves (slaves themselves nonetheless) to brutally put down these rebellions. We admonish all those who protect the elites that they are defending their own enemies against themselves; their real brothers and sisters!

“You also probably don't have the same greedy, compulsive drive to possess wealth, power, and prestige that we have.”

… and I often ask myself what in particular any of them have contributed to the rest of us and usually, especially with the globalist billionaires, I draw a big fat zero! There is something terribly wrong with the notion that someone can sit all day in an office tweaking numbers on properties that are merely pieces of paper and make money that comes from producing absolutely nothing of value.

“And even though you may sincerely want to change the way you live, you're also afraid of the very change you desire, thus keeping you and others like you in a nervous state of limbo. So you go through life mechanically playing your assigned social role, terrified what others would think should you ever dare to 'break out of the mold.' “

Increasingly they only want continued conformity to what they are selling; a narcissistic lifestyle filled with trivial gadgets and superficial knowledge; nothing that will rock the boat of the average person's consciousness.

“Naturally, we try to play you off against each other whenever it suits our purposes: high-waged workers against low-waged, unionized against non-unionized, Black against White, male against female, American workers against Japanese against Mexican against.... We continually push your wages down by invoking 'foreign competition,' 'the law of supply and demand,' 'national security,' or 'the bloated federal deficit.' We throw you on the unemployed scrap heap if you step out of line or jeopardize our profits.”

We have indicated elsewhere that because of the reliance on usury, which demands repayment of what was never created, that many of these people are literally not entitled to their economic benefits since they are stolen from everyone else. This turns things on their head; these people are the “useless eaters”, not us. It is for us to become aware of what they do to divide us so that we can make a unified stand against them.

“And to give you an occasional break from the monotony of our daily economic blackmail, we allow you to participate in our stage-managed electoral shell games, better known to you ordinary folks as "elections." Happily, you haven't a clue as to what's really happening — instead, you blame 'Aliens,' 'Tree-hugging Environmentalists,' 'Niggers,' 'Jews,' 'Welfare Queens,' and countless others for your troubled situation.”
 
It is a growing awareness, certainly what happened to Ron Paul's campaign is an indication, that all the elections in this country are rigged and have been for a very long time. Again, we advocate starting locally, because we only know what we know locally rather than in the next town, county, state or country. When a local network of trade gets started and grows, it can then begin trading with other localities.

We need to start thinking the way our adversaries have by recognizing someone we meet from a distant place as a potential trading partner rather than as an enemy we are told to treat as an inferior or an undesirable from a foreign country. Xenophobia is a tactic the elite has often used to get people to go to war against each other so that the elites can make more money while other people die.

“We're also very pleased that many of you still embrace the 'work ethic,' even though most jobs in our economy degrade the environment, undermine your physical and emotional health, and basically suck your one and only life right out of you. We obviously don't know much about work, but we're sure glad you do!”

Again, how much work would be done were that labour to be adequately valued? It would be different that's for sure. There is no reason why any of this, as described, needs to be continued.

“Of course, life could be different. Society could be intelligently organized to meet the real needs of the general population.”

From the bottom up, NOT the top down.

“You and others like you could collectively fight to free yourselves from our domination. But you don't know that. In fact, you can't even imagine that another way of life is possible.”

It is time to begin this process; imagine all sorts of things that could be different and begin stepping out in those new directions.

“And that's probably the greatest, most significant achievement of our system — robbing you of your imagination, your creativity, your ability to think and act for yourself.”

Are you paying attention?

“So we'd truly like to thank you from the bottom of our heartless hearts. Your loyal sacrifice makes possible our corrupt luxury; your work makes our system work. Thanks so much for 'knowing your place' — without even knowing it!”

What we can do and what we shall do will have very little if anything to do with such people and frankly much of their wicked warmongering society can jolly well go the way of the dinosaur (an animal the elite seems to like). We do not advocate violence against people who are hopelessly misguided concerning their own importance. The best policy will be a walking away from them; do not help them, do not support their claims or ideas, do not trade with them as it is your right not to. Start making your own life. The VEN, as it gets going, intends to help you, but it will require your help too.

David Burton

FINIS

#7 It Is Important

“It is important that people understand accurate history as opposed to the official version that many of us have learned in government operated schools and via the corporate owned, artificial, desensitizing mass media. The media and the school system mould our perceptions while whitewashing some of the worst scoundrels in history. Numerous individuals have deliberately deceived us into repetitive wars and have helped facilitate several worldwide economic disasters. Warfare never brings peace, only needless death, suffering and lasting resentment. Yet politicians choose war instead of open negotiations, but it is the youth of many nations, indoctrinated to hate the “enemy”, who die in those wars. The US government, often without public support or knowledge, has intervened in countries worldwide using false claims while ignoring its own critical domestic problems. During the course of those interventions, millions have perished. If people consider their moral values, resist the propaganda and follow the proverbial money, they will discover that the same people who advocate warfare frequently profit in its aftermath. The military destroys, then well connected contractors rebuild, usually at taxpayer expense. Politicians and the financial interests do not represent the nation's interests but rather their own, as demonstrated by our history and current events.”

Deanna Spingola

The Ruling Elite, a study in imperialism, genocide and emancipation, back cover.

This book represents an alternative and factual history of the formation and development of the United States which few Americans know about because the people behind the scenes who developed our state schools preferred to give us a whitewashed lie as our official history. Meeting the challenge, Deanna Spingola does not really try and persuade you of anything: her style is didactic, fact after fact after fact until incontrovertible evidence emerges implicating many people and institutions held to this day in esteem which they hardly deserve. I wondered at several places what would have happened had this book appeared many years ago, would it have made the slightest difference?  Will it matter today?  Only time will tell.

What is the natural response when it is uncovered beyond any possible doubt that the entire edifice of our educational, political and economic system is a scam run by special interests? What future is there in any of it but death and destruction to those “not on the team” or “in the way of progress”? If you are not brought to a few good realizations after reading this book, then there really is something seriously wrong with you.

Those outside America need to read this book too because it describes in lurid details some of the most despicable acts of brutality committed by this supposedly "Constitutional"  government, under essentially the same masters the nation has endured since before it declared its independence. Once you have incontestable facts (and Spingola has offered nothing new, only assembled what many of us have already known from various credible sources), the patterns become more obvious; what is going on in the Middle East today is what went on in the American west a hundred and fifty years ago, or went on in Russia following the revolution there, or in France following the revolution there or in China ... Nothing is new.  I want to make a sincere apology for not understanding clearly that many indigenous people, slaves (and freed black people) and Southerners (whether they owned slaves or not) suffered the equivalent of the Red Terror in my own country during the 19th century.  It shows how well the public indoctrination has worked.     

Not only is Spingola's book a must read, especially for Americans, it should be paired with another book, which is a must read, especially if you are a Russian, as much the same was done there by similar minded people after the revolution of 1917. That book is The Red Terror in Russia by Sergei Melgunov.  Melgunov is similarly didactic, just stating the facts, leaving you to comprehend the magnitude of what happened in Russia.  Why would those who accomplished this terror, and actually PAID for it, not use this tactic again?  Spingola is stating for the record that such occurred right here in America and we are vastly unaware of it to this day.  It's time to wake up.    
 

We would also want to put in its proper place ALL attempts by those who are PAID to lie, cheat, steal and especially those paid to “debunk” what facts others have collected to JEER people into silence and submission. Their jeers are their first assault, after that they send in their goons and thugs, some who may be high on mind altering drugs as they were in Russia (and yes even alcohol is a mind altering drug that was used by thugs during killing sprees). Jeers should never be tolerated and always assailed for exactly what they are, attempts to push and shove the person, ideas or point of view off the public stage and out of view. Those doing the jeering should be told frankly that we are onto them, that they had best consider whose side they are taking and why, because it does and will matter to them personally.

Let us frontally attack the words “conspiracy theory,” one of their trademark jeers. Serious researchers like Deanna Spingola are not interested in theories. We are interested in uncovering factual conspiracies, which in most instances are not so very hard to comprehend. After all, down through time there have always been secret meetings, secret clubs, secret societies, in all of which occur deals which were made in secret to divide and conquer, usually people who stood in the way of those who, by what ever rationale, determined that they deserved monopolistic control over something, to allow them to skim off the produce and labour of others to their benefit. There is no "theory" about it; anything done in secret was not done for the benefit of the common man, woman or child.  Secrecy in fact is always suspect and is never any good for anything. People know this in their personal lives, why should it be any different when considering the affairs of large business concerns or nation states?

Before deciding how to construct something that will benefit ALL the people; a worldwide network of local private Independent exchanges, we must confront our histories and the denizens of this ruling elite who are still there doing what they have always been doing. Without a renewed perspective, it becomes impossible to see clearly what must be done as we move forward.

David Burton

FINIS

#6 NOT OUR PROBLEMS! where Value Units differ from currencies.

These presentations provide required reading by Thomas H. Greco Jr.:

The Evolution & Transformation of Money

Creating Complementary Currencies to Improve & Empower Communities

The Butterfly Economy: How communities are building a new world from the bottom up

This satirical ad appeared recently and inspired reflection on the differences between Value Units and currencies, and here I am using Thomas Greco's definition of currencies as typically representing a third party debt or I.o.u. that a seller accepts as payment from a buyer. That third party is usually the party of issue, the originator of that money, the Federal Reserve in the case of US dollars, other central banks for other national or regional currencies.

But before we get into it, we're not letting any presently issued national or bank issued currency off the hook. Under the strict logic of E. C. Riegel's “in your face” observations, we view all of them the same, as ultimately illegitimate issues of money. Not only do we question the legitimacy of government or bank issued currency as money, but we also view with equal opprobrium all such presently circulating financial instruments. So if you are currently using any of them, you are part of the romantic fiction (that's saying the same thing twice) that we presently live in.

Apathy

The reason people are apathetic is not that they are given nothing to do, although many have nothing to do, but because of the present economic system. No, the main reasons people are apathetic is because they have been told monstrous fairy tales about who and what they are and how they should live and otherwise conduct themselves that fits someone else's controlling criteria. People have come to believe in these myths without even bothering to question them else they would easily see what they are.

The feeling of not having any viable individual authority over anything eventually drives one naturally to apathy. After all, if it really doesn't matter, because someone better and brighter than I is in charge, making all the decisions and knows what to do, then so what?

The ideas surrounding the Value Unit and a full function Value Exchange Network (VEN) on the other hand, should spur most people to imagine ways to empower themselves within a separate circuit of trading interests and growing as more people gravitate to a system that will be honest, reliable and without the frauds and flaws underlying the present failing system. Moreover, we expect that our supplementary system will outlast all the other competing systems, as it will not be subject to inflation; trading within the spheres created by VU exchanges will tend to find optimum price levels because little else but intrinsic differences in value between everyday commodities will be operating; when a price falls it will represent ether a fall off in demand or a relative abundance and conversely as prices rise. Normal economic functions apply without any intervention required and in fact all such interventions intentionally favour someone's interests who are usually not even part of the exchange.

Laziness

Sometimes confused with lack of ambition, this too is the result of the realization for many that they live in a rigged system, or at least their particular personal situation seems arrayed against them. The present system offers them nothing more than a form of slavery, so “why bother” becomes a widespread way of life.

The personal empowerment that comes from monetary emancipation provides many opportunities unheard of in the present system. The proposed VEN will determine who can and cannot create money and thereby square the field against any foolish enough to pass themselves off as “persons” when in fact they are merely invisible “bodies” or “fictions.” Many romantic notions will have to die the sure death they deserve; bald faced lies, such as that governments can be trusted to do much of anything of any good without local support and assistance form the people who will be most affected. Make no mistake, a Value Unit will be valuable from the first time it is accepted in a sale. It's acceptance will grow based on the honesty with which business can be transacted at every level. More and more people will no longer rely on the present system and as they wean themselves off of it, and we all must, it is hoped we will be able to accomplish more and have more productive lives.

Selfishness

Often identified as a “me first” attitude that can literally project other people as objects to be used as one does inanimate objects, this is essentially a form of narcissism that is deliberately fed by the popular commercial corporate culture, as are the psycho pathologies that are their natural counterparts.

We see the drive for personal advancement as natural and an inalienable right of being human, that the present system greatly discourages this natural human aspiration in ways the VEN does not. Future successes the VEN will promote will be those where their drive for personal advancement is best served by providing useful goods and services of all kinds to more and more people rather than becoming just another factotum in a monstrously overstaffed, inefficient and irresponsible governmental or corporate “system”, agency or bureaucracy.

As one accepts the fact of gravity, one accepts the rules that imply that ANY human enterprise above a certain size becomes both inefficient and irresponsible with respect to the people as individuals and natural groups; families, tribes, nations, etc. as well as the hazards such monstrous organizations pose to the natural environment. This implies that the best course forward is to accept and apply practical advantages to anything that is local, entrepreneurial and private and where trade is conducted worldwide between right sized economic elements determined by agreements among private individual human beings operating from one autonomous local area to another.

This is quite literally and exactly the opposite of the organizational schemes dreamed up and foisted upon the world by the present doomed system and by those bigger fools behind the scenes who often amuse themselves with thoughts of personal godhood and grandeur at the expense of “the masses” and the “useless eaters.”

Ignorance

It goes without saying that only those who bother to find out really know much about anything. The system is rife with ignorance masquerading as information, containing germs of concocted propaganda usually intended to get you to buy something or vote for something or somebody. Specifically the present system does not reward anyone for knowing anything of any real consequence.

In stark contrast, the VEN promotes ideas about how to tackle anything and everything that is genuinely worth doing and provides the means to screen out that which does not contribute. The VEN promotes the application of useful knowledge which may have been purposely neglected by the system as unlikely to produce the profits required to service investment capital, etc. None of this is a problem for us, since our trading model is not based on impossible fictions concealing financial rip-offs.

Loss of Identity

One's loss of identity begins with loss of control over one's free and accessible ability to trade; the control over the creation of one's own money, which we posit as an inalienable right of each individual human being, living within a community of equal human beings and NOT permitted any phony “body” or “government” impersonating a human being. The present system could care less about your loss of identity, in fact it wants to subvert it and submerge it within the identity of a corporation, state, or something that's actually an artificial creation that cannot be seen, yet is held up and defended by deadly FORCE. Let fools work for and otherwise follow fools.

The VEN requires nothing other than the good will and continued productivity of its members and it doesn't matter whether they live next door or are around the world. Identity of individuals and communities is promoted rather than submerged and potential trading partners are more quickly identified through a growing network of exchange that shall build up around the VEN.

Absence of Individuality

While there are certainly corporatist individuals made to seem like some kind of modern day heroes, the better to convince more people to keep trying to climb the slippery glass slopes of corporatocracy in hopes of actually possessing and enjoying something; consuming on a grand scale becoming synonymous with success, these people all become one in the same; they eventually lose and have no individuality. Indeed, individuality becomes a kind of curse one is cautioned to avoid. Most courses in corporate management in fact have been satirized as equal to having one's backbone tactically removed one vertebrae at a time. The proof that this is so is the monstrous fact that most corporate people are lost even caring for themselves properly once out of a corporate job. They have no basic skills and in most cases care not to acquire them.

Individuals make contributions to the rest of us out of all proportion to who they were in real life, the Mozarts and Teslas. One can't say the same for corporations or governments. The basic unit of society is the fully mature adult human being, regardless of status. We've tried things their way, slavery to them in one form or another, for a very long time, long enough, and war too. A New World Order? They have nothing to offer but an old world chaos which they will bring about and which shall destroy them. We say, no more, thank you! Yes, for a while it might be hard, we'll certainly have to help each other out and grow our generosity and kindness, but It would serve humanity far better to let individual human beings be who they are to be, rather than trusting any of that to some higher authority, which frankly speaking, has no basis or right to our trust.

Greed & Gluttony

The former is the result of personal insecurity (real or imagined) the latter the habit of dreamers (who are happiest when they get others to join them too). There are any number of avenues where these deadly sins are courted. We've also just mentioned sloth, the “why bother” mentality. There are others. Pride of thinking one's on the winning side, even with all the other things wrong with it; the sin of pride which goes before a fall. Envy of others, the wish to get even or surpass them in goods or grandeur. We admonish everyone to start getting over it and finding out who and what you are instead; becoming yourself, the valuable individual you are, not what anyone else thinks you should be.

A False Sense of Empowerment

People are often swept up by popular movements, populism, all sorts of fine bromides the system actually uses to turn one group against another to maintain political control of concocted tensions. Do not allow yourself to fall into one of their Hegelian dialectic soups and waste your valuable time and energies on causes or politics. E. C. Riegel was emphatic about this; it's a waste of time without the inalienable right to create money and trade. Do not fall for all the sappy hope-mongering by those without hope, as there's always some sinister agenda to empower them, not you.

The Value Exchange Network (VEN) strives instead to establish real empowerment based on what people actually do for each other, what they make or grow locally, basic services provided locally, how best essentials are made available locally to those in need, etc. We believe that only individual human beings really matter, that all the other organizational fictions don't really do anything without the consent of individual human beings and often do things poorly (often intentionally) or ineptly (part of the problem with them structurally which they cannot fix). However it is, we must adapt a consciousness that what we decide to do and how well is our decision. Real empowerment always begins with each individual recognizing their unique value.

Manipulative Behaviour

Another deadly sin is deceit. People are actively encouraged to lie, steal and cheat by a system built on frauds. A system so conceived and constructed cannot help but reward those who are best at deceiving others. In truth, such people usually have nothing inside and would love to fill their emptiness, but after a while … even suicide seems preferable to some of them.

Nothing about an VEN is complicated or difficult to understand, nor is there anything hidden in a bunch of fine print. We encourage honesty by dealing honestly.

Superficial Values

When I was young, the commercial world was fond of fads. They still are. The system rewards anyone who moves goods for them, no matter what they are. A system based on hidden trusts, deceit and lies, theft of purchasing power, etc. cannot be expected to generate anything but questionable values that reflect the vulgarities of bigness and oligarchy rather than the individual lives of diverse people.

The VEN is best established locally then regionally, by state, country, etc.; a bottom up organization. There would be an international VEN whose members were chosen by those Independent Exchanges (IE's) operating at lower levels. We will begin with basic values established in each community through trade of basic goods and services.

Lack of Spirituality

The spiritual dimensions of life, whatever they may be, certainly have nothing in common with the present economic / monetary / financial system ... nothing. In fact, they are antithetical if the “spiritual” dimension is congruent with basic rational ethics. You cannot start something on the basis of lies, deceit and fraud and expect it ever to produce anything that's really good or of any ultimate value. It is neither logical nor reasonable to think otherwise and yet we live under a system which routinely defies both logic and reason.

The VEN hopes to become more actively involved in promoting interest in the fine arts and other businesses that project articles and artefacts reflecting the varied “spiritual” dimensions of life.

Environmental Destruction

The past few years have provided more than adequate testimony to the inability of governments or corporations to deal with natural disasters of their own causing. We no longer wish to listen to the flood of public announcements requesting us to conduct our lives so as to be “sustainable” within someone else's environmental agenda; corporate sponsored or government funded through more debt money. We aren't to blame! Matter of fact we refuse to accept any blame whatsoever for anything environmental! We know what's going on and we didn't buy it. In fact, since it may take a very long time to feel the effects of the Gulf of Mexico disaster or the Fukashima disaster, we should hope to preserve enough memory of such events, so as not to allow ourselves to accept any pronouncement from any public official regarding corporate or government efforts to clean up any of their messes. They don't and they wont.

Had things been organized to operate in smaller units, instead of built to satisfy the insatiable greed of those who are so big to fail, we may never have experienced these terrible global nightmares. Bigness and globalism caused the problems, not us. We say, let nature take its course.

Racial Tension

Another political trick of the established system is to get different races or nations (or people with different religious beliefs) in various places to hate each other for one thing or another so that hopefully they can start up some nice little war or “peace keeping” mission that needs supplies etc. to keep it going. Ever bothered to think of who gets contracts to supply all those military bases around the world? These are things governments buy because they are the issuer of the money, not you or I. The people who make money from a war, supply all that armed forces require to maintain the conflict or manage it and keep it going for as long as possible; the longer the war, the more profitable it is, not for you, but for them. In the past, they had 30 year wars, 100 year wars. The technology for killing and supplying groups of armed killers were certainly different, but the basic financial and other contracts that were in the background of all such conflicts have never really changed, neither have the traditional arrangements between governments and financiers and of course firms, families and certain privileged individuals have remained predictably the same over many centuries. Yes folks, we didn't get where we are today just yesterday.

It is high time for all people everywhere, no matter what race they are, to wake up to this crucial divide and conquer tactic and consciously work against it. The greatest weapon we have against it is for people of good will of all races and nations to agree to see the monster behind the curtains, and until a certain justice is possible, agree to work and trade amongst each other literally on the most basic levels of sharing and trading the necessities of life. This new outlook is possibly easier to foster among people who have known poverty longer. We shall see.

Self-Centeredness

There is a kind of looking after oneself and one's own affairs that is a natural part of self awareness and responsibility. We each exercise our natural responsibilities over a fairly small area and although some would be “rulers of the world” would think otherwise, the natural level of available control over any situation of any kind anywhere is limited. The limiting factor is sometimes called a black swan or an event of that name or kind. Natural limiting factors are good things, they should be respected.

But instead, it is our contention that the underlying factors of the present system promote a kind of self-centredness that is foolhardy, careless, full of hubris, almost never kind, in fact driven to a kind of manic zeal for greater power over nature and especially over other human beings, who are usually treated as mere objects to be manipulated, cast off or destroyed, as if by a child's whim which becomes the norm for those in positions of power and authority. “Maturity? Oh, that's for old people, and best that they die off too, and as quickly as possible, so we don't have to provide for them, because you know old George Carlin was right, we really don't give a damn about you.”

No VEN can or would work without people caring about what happens to each other member of the exchange. It's just that simple.

Murder & War

Murder has many motives, most of them in one way or another connected with the deadly sins. We haven't mentioned anger yet. Most people think it's perfectly all right to become or stay angry when it really isn't. The normal state is not to be angry at anything at all. Anger is reserved for what must be fought, to set injustices right, to reset the balances. But personal anger is a deadly sin that can eventually lead people to think it worthwhile to take another person's life. They begin by assuming they can take the lives of the unborn, the newly born, the aged or disabled. Yes, there's always some malice involved in the temperaments of those engaged in such practices.

War on the other hand, a theatre of mass murder, is promoted time and again by those who would supply such campaigns and their financiers who always make money while other people die. Warmongers and their helpers in the yellow jingoistic journalism of the day, all have blood on their hands, the endless rows of crosses on countless military cemeteries beg the answer to the question, for what or for whom exactly did so many die? Forget all the sappy nationalistic claptrap! The answer is obvious, staring you right in the face; they all died for the bankers and those who supplied the means and materiel of war. We frankly want nothing to do with such people!

Impoverishment for Others

Where a system is based on debt that can never be repaid, a debt that grows exponentially based on its faulty premise; that it has any right whatsoever to be paid interest with that which was never created in the first place, the basic mathematical impossibility irrefutably established by E. C. Riegel, it inevitably produces economic losers. Participation in such a system automatically leads to the impoverishment of somebody since such a system is incapable of ever satisfying the needs of everybody. It's a mathematical impossibility.

Because this is so, the most prudent action is to work against it and to move away from it as quickly as you can. Assume the financial system is the Titanic and you're on it. You need a place on one of those lifeboats but there aren't any. So start making them! Take whatever political action you deem necessary, especially at the local level, but be advised that E. C. Riegel believed, and we agree, that political action is a waste of both time and strength, that until the present banking and financial system falls, or is taken down in the process of political collapse brought on by insufferable public outrage, nothing beneficial can be hoped for.

In the meantime, we favour adopting Thomas Greco's Butterfly Economy as a basic concept worldwide in every local community. Let them think whatever they like, and as far as possible let us have a fair parting of ways, as E. C. Riegel saw as inevitable, since one could never maintain the romantic fiction of the present system once hyper-inflation sets in. We expect the present system will be destroyed by it. Meanwhile we hope to build an alternative stable vehicle for exchange that will maintain its value by disallowing all hindrances to its primary functions and legitimate issuance.

Continuous & excessive use could render a permanent state of indifference to the welfare of those around you.

Indeed it could, and indeed it does, and all present currencies are just the same in this regard, because relative to what money can buy, they are all kept artificially scarce and those who rightfully should have the only legitimate right to create money are denied it, while those who already have far too much of it are given the power, the monopoly in fact, to create more of it.

The present system purports to support and promote a “New World Order”, when in fact what they have in mind is an Old World Order based on outright fraud in the banking and financial sectors and everything presently having to do with money and markets. From there they basically manage to attempt to gobble up everything else and use governments to enforce their will against the rest of us. If you support them, why would you care one whit about another human being? Since everything is commercialized and everything has a price, which they manage to control, people are inevitably treated with about as much respect as tortillas and can be bought and sold as cheaply by the system. I remind everyone that the old system which is still in place always involved war, banking, gold and slaves … oh yes, and drugs too, and it still is.

We noticed in one video that Professor Greco had some difficulty when confronted by a worker in the Pacific Northwest who wanted the means to support himself outside the system. Only a few there be these days who can achieve that. It is best to tell people this so that they begin to understand the shackles of slavery under which they live. Look at your chains people; the pieces of coloured paper in your wallets which are nothing but some private bank's notes, they don't belong to you. No doubt many of you have outstanding bills, credit scores which are merely numbers allowing you to be a good risk to borrow even more of their money so you are never free of them. Everything their money buys is in turn affected by them.

A Value Unit is something that's yours as long as you use it: it only exists to complete split-barters between people engaged in trade of real goods and services. Will there come a time when more trades including rooms for rent are handled in Value Units? Only time will tell.

David Burton

FINIS