Chapter
10, New Vistas
Ideas
have wings. There is no transportation problem in the export of an
idea, and one may give an idea without losing it. Both the giver and
the receiver are benefited if the idea is sound. Let us give the
peoples of the world an idea, a liberating idea, a constructive idea
that involves no sacrifice on our part and no obligation or
embarrassment on the part of others.
The
social interest is served by the abolition of boundaries. Just as it
is imprudent for the family to strive for self sufficiency and deny
itself the advantage of specialization and exchange, so it is adverse
to the social interest to be walled about by political boundaries.
Yet this adverse condition grows with the ever-increasing number of
nations, each of which strives for self-sufficiency, balking the
economic law of inter-dependence.
The
comparative success of the American federation of states is due
largely to its denial of nationalism to the individual states. None
of the states of this union has the power to set up trade barriers,
make war or operate a separate monetary system. But for this curbing
of nationalism, America would be another Europe. If the forty-eight
states were independent nations, each would undertake to be
self-sufficient, thus countering the advantages of specialization
and, through the war-making power, burdening itself with costly
military establishments. The example of the United States
demonstrates that the less nationalism over a given area, the better
for the citizens thereof.
While
the United States has continuously extended the area of
non-nationalism from the original thirteen states to the present
forty-eight, the rest of the world has been giving birth to separate
national states, setting up more barriers to free intercourse. Each
war brings new splinter states. The "secret" of the success
of the American federation has apparently been kept from our
statesmen. They hail the birth of each new nation as a manifestation
of self-determinism and democracy. Nonetheless they object to such
separation in the realm of the United States, as was amply
demonstrated by the Civil War.
Independence,
in politics, means the right of politicians to bracket a portion of
society under their exclusive governorship. These "independent"
peoples are walled about against intercourse with the rest of
society, and denied self determination within their own realm. All of
us are prisoners of some state to which, we are told, we must give
fealty under a private brand of patriotism.
Nationalism
means separatism, while all human urges, conscious and unconscious,
are toward union. Federation of states is impossible because of the
jealousy of the politicians who govern the several states. Nor would
it serve the social end of self determinism if it were possible,
since the ideal of self determinism must be pursued in nonpolitical
ways. The authentic approach to realizing man's dream of world union
is through the vehicle of a nonpolitical monetary system.
We
are approaching the universal collapse of the political monetary
system. With such collapse will come revolutions, unless an
alternative monetary system shall first come into existence. A true
monetary system could avert the chaos and forestall revolution,
thereby preserving the existing national states even while gradually
rendering them harmless. For the political monetary system is the
principal instrument of state separatism. Once it is gone, all other
interferences with production and exchange will recede. Denied power
over the economy through their respective monetary systems, the
states will be obliged to abandon their paternalistic pose and stand
before the people in their true light, as dependents without
productive powers, and utterly devoid of any powers of largess. The
trend of human affairs will then be as irresistibly toward
individualism and self determination as the present trend is toward
socialism and domination by the state. The tide will have set
strongly toward union and away from economic separation.
Social,
political and economic schemes in great variety have been dreamed by
dreamers who fitted men into the mosaic of their vision. Seldom ever
has it been proposed, through an empirical system that each man dream
his own dream and let the pattern of society work itself out.
Happiness
is the objective of every life, but the word happiness cannot be
defined except concretely, and then only by the one who is to
experience it. Even if it were possible to give to any man or system
dictatorial powers, and they were exerted ever so benevolently, they
still could not bring happiness, because no mind outside the
individual can conceive happiness for him. The concept and the
indulgence are inseparable.
It
is a concept of most profound implications to envision each
individual as the architect of his own happiness and the builder of
it. This is the ideal that the valun system projects. The life which
it contemplates is individualism triumphant. Of course, the valun
system or its equivalent would operate in a world of tangibles, and
it is not suggested that happiness is made up only of material
things. But so far as material things or their creation can bring
happiness, a true monetary system is the tool of attainment.
Since
no social order has heretofore been predicated upon the principle of
a nonpolitical monetary system, it follows that its promulgation will
require a revolution in thought and action and that it will be many
years before its full implications can be comprehended. We can be
sure, however, that if man holds to the old concept that the power
over the issuance of money lies in some external entity, he will curb
his progress. When he asserts that the creation of money is within
his own powers, he will surmount the last major barrier to self
advancement and a limitless horizon will open before him.
End
of the Flight From Inflation book. Next are the Selected Essays 1936
to 1950
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