#51 Comments on Riegel's Understanding of “The English Tradition”

Source 

E. C. Riegel's words were written better than 60 years ago when it would have been customary for any American to regard what we inherited in terms of institutional structures from England more than anywhere else (even though much of our modern educational system derives from Prussia), even though from our perspective of deeper research we can now trace the forms all the way back to ancient Babylon. Nonetheless in one paragraph, Riegel succinctly nails the whole situation as it exists now in 2013: 

Throughout the ages the devices of cunning men have turned money to their nefarious purposes. Money, beginning with private enterprise as a means of escaping the limitation of barter soon developed the cheat to exploit the honest trader who in an effort to protect himself turned to government for protection, only to find that now he had two thieves, the private money changer and the political plunderer working hand in glove against him. By this combination the money changer gained the prestige of political sanction through legislative license and the state secured a deceptive device for laying taxes upon the citizenry. It was and remains a vicious alliance.

But it is not our greatest enemy. The greatest enemy of mankind is ignorance of the inherent money power in all of us. When the realization of this comes to man he will, like Sampson, push down the walls of his prison.

We'll break all this apart for emphasis:

Throughout the ages the devices of cunning men have turned money to their nefarious purposes.

Riegel acknowledges, as do we, that evil men (and women) exist and have nefarious purposes. Nefarious by common usage is an adjective (typically of an action or activity) wicked or criminal, synonymous with wicked, evil, sinful, iniquitous, egregious, heinous, atrocious, vile, foul, abominable, odious, depraved, monstrous, fiendish, diabolical, unspeakable, despicable, poisonous, etc. Since commerce with such as these is injurious to oneself, why does one persist in dealing with them? Instead, shouldn't people of this sort be brought to everyone's attention, exposed for what they are and then perhaps shouldn't these exposures result in some huge class action lawsuits? If you have been paying attention and have acquainted yourselves with Mark Passio's review of his Homework from his seminar on Natural Law, then you understand the situation. Most people are contented sheep to their own slaughter, mindless of the cunning men with their nefarious purposes, who have always been there, plaguing the human race, treating us like cattle to be herded and slaughtered at their will. 

Money, beginning with private enterprise as a means of escaping the limitation of barter soon developed the cheat to exploit the honest trader 

Some will no doubt account the words “honest trader” an oxymoron, there is no such person, they are all dishonest. If that's the case then perhaps we are all dishonest or perhaps made dishonest by a system designed to control and deplete us. In any case we have never had anything resembling an honest measure of value with which to say, how is the worth of my labour or this artifact of electro-mechanical engineering to be valued? Further, who but one in a thousand knows how the honest trader must operate in order to make a living? How many people know that wealth is anything producing income? Anything! How many people know what they are truly worth? We presume that there remain the world over enough people to carry on honest trade, that such considerations are met in the day to day activities of common business. 

[the honest trader] who in an effort to protect himself

Protect himself from what, from whom? From being ripped off and losing his livelihood, that's what. From whom? The money lender / money changer, who else?

[the honest trader] who in an effort to protect himself turned to government for protection,

Yes, the biggest protection racket in the world, no mafia has anything on any government. But unknown to the honest trader, the government is already in debt to the same people he is, so there aint gonna be no protection from them.

only to find that now he had two thieves, the private money changer and the political plunderer working hand in glove against him.

They would be true too as their interests must coincide as they both live off the proceeds of the third obstacle to freedom, the corporation. All corporations (including central banks) are creations of the state -at whatever level- and represent favours to special interests who are free to operate, as it were, behind the scenes and beyond public view or censure. Such bodies are also given “limited liability” by the states for any injurious activities they may cause. Turning such things around and nullifying “limited liability” would automatically place state officials as well as corporate bosses on the hook for any damages done by their creatures, the “legal fictions” or “legal persons.”

By this combination the money changer gained the prestige of political sanction through legislative license and the state secured a deceptive device for laying taxes upon the citizenry. It was and remains a vicious alliance.

This is the state of things as they exist today for the vast majority of humanity; a slave to some state or some bank, neither of which have any intention of ever letting go of you. This amounts to people believing that they actually have a right to own other people. Let that thought sink in.

In the days when the word “money” meant only gold and silver and copper coins, the English government undertook merely to define the pound and its fractions and to stipulate the weight and fineness of the metal to be contained in each coin and to stamp the seal of the state thereon as a certification of fidelity. This did not imply issuing money. The metal had to be brought to the mint by the private owner and for a charge (seigniorage) it was stamped and returned to him.

This was exactly how the original American mint under the organic Constitution was set up. All the money (gold and silver only) was private and the government could create none of it. The biggest problem the Constitution brought into practise and policy was that the government could borrow money, something Thomas Jefferson and others opposed and to which ultimately we must all agree. For any government to borrow money implies a debtor position for that government with the creditors calling the shots. The only ones we want our governments to be in debt to are We the People, not some bank. That's the situation we're in now. Riegel acquaints us with a little history:

The Bank of England sprang from a deal that a group of private bankers and merchants made with the crown and to lend to the government at an agreed interest rate and the rehabilitation of defaulted loans previously made by some of the bankers. By this charter, the bankers secured the right to depart from metal money and to have paper money made legal tender. Paper money was called “bills of credit” and this terminology carried over into our monetary vernacular.

The particulars are really astounding.

1. To begin with all money back then was gold, silver or copper, which meant -as it always does- that those in control of commanding quantities of these metals own the market for them and can thus determine not just their price in common trade, but their availability to the market they make; they can choose for their own reasons to supply or deny to any quarter they please. On the side they also had speculators who made money on the rises and falls in precious metals prices. These people are the literal economic parasites as they make money on nothing. This also goes on today.

2. My emphasis. The English government had previously borrowed from some bankers before the establishment of the Bank of England and had decided that they could no longer pay their bills -they could no longer tax anyone for these metals as they were probably not in the country in sufficient quantities after years of civil war- so they defaulted on their loans.

3. The English government supposedly needed money to operate -no doubt fixing the roads was at the top of their list of things to spend borrowed money on- so a deal was struck which gave a certain gang of respectable looking thugs control of English money through holding the government hostage to debt slavery -making them once again take up their formerly defaulted loans too- and then allowing these thugs to issue paper that would be cheaper to use as money than all metals and would allow them to puff and pull the economy to gain control of more and more of people's real assets, what did not formerly belong to them. Thus the Bank of England was born and with it central banking, state money issue as debt, and our present system which dates back to ancient Babylon, but of which very few understand its operations, or even see its prominence, hence as some Asian friends reminded me, we call it Mystery Babylon; that which was, was not and returned again, before going to its destruction. Our message and mission remain, “come out of her, my people.”

Following the English tradition the American colonies and later the states proceeded to establish a money system on the premise that money is a creation of private enterprise but that it is the proper function of government to define the unit just as it defines weights and measures.

There were three kinds of money in the colonies. First there was specie; gold and silver coins of various kinds, sizes, etc. that through barter traded into the economy. Second there were issues of the colonial governments which were literally fiat paper money spent into the economy. The colonies made this paper good for payment of taxes and to the extent that it was taxed back and reissued, inflation might have been delayed. Some of these issues were purportedly backed by silver or gold though they were not usually convertible into specie and Third there were “bills of credit” issued by merchants. These were often the most reliable as they could be converted into things held by these merchants on bearer demand. What we would find hard to understand is that price was a mater of barter just as whole barter always is. For example, the price you paid for a saddle might be different were it paid for in silver, in colonial paper or in merchants' bills. That's the way things were done back then.

The clause “to coin money and regulate the value thereof” which is generally quoted as the government money power is, in fact, not the enabling clause at all. The issue power resides in the clause “to borrow money on the credit of the United States.” It is not generally recognized that the power to borrow is the power to issue when the borrowing is from banks.

This is entirely due to banks all operating as fractional reserve lending institutions. In our proposal the VEN features lending institutions (people or businesses) that must operate under 100% reserve conditions, where all money must be created / issued beforehand and all loans must self liquidate into whatever good or service was originally purchased and financed. Anything else is dishonest.

This is the power [issuing power] exercised by private borrowers as well as governments. The borrower secures the right to issue checks against a credit and thus increases the money supply. The instrumentality of the borrow-issue process is the private banking system, but the private banking system is subject to laws and regulation of government.

The usual bank borrower, whether it be for a car loan or mortgage, is creating / issuing money that he will pay back and then some (the interest) with money that was already created elsewhere, thereby cancelling the money created. Except for the interest, this is normal credit clearing. The government never does this because it hasn't anything with which to sell back to us for what it issued (bought) from the economy. Taxes are barely sufficient to cover the interest on the debt which grows constantly. Government spending is thus the source of all possible price inflation and this flaw in the system means that every and all “public” currencies have the general tendency to inflate to Weimar meltdown eventually. We are ever closer to that scenario despite the general deflationary tendencies apparent in an economy where more and more people have less and less money.

Thus it is seen that the money mechanism, under the concept borrowed from England, is a contrivance that is both political and private but is strictly neither. It is a hybrid, and its name is finance. Compounded from both political and private interests, it compromises both private enterprise and public service. It confounds students of money and causes them to take sides for either the banking end or the government end when in fact a plague should be put upon both their houses. 

Finance, we will recall, is being able to buy something you can't afford, because you haven't the money to buy it on the date of purchase. Governments should rely on public taxation for ALL their money and not borrow any but from the public, not through any bank. Obviously were this done, more people would know what the government (in all its wisdom) fathomed spending your money on, since it would really be yours, and would stop it. The right to make a corporation, which had been a power of the king, was not formally given Congress or the President in the Constitution and therefore, despite what various courts have said over the years to the contrary, the power to incorporate is not granted and all effects to the contrary are thus unconstitutional and unlawful! Hence, since we agree ... 

Control over money should be denied to both government and banks.

If you agree with this statement, please join us. Riegel reminds us that ...

Finance is the evil genius that brings discredit upon both the state and private enterprise and raises the threat of fascism and communism.

Perhaps less luridly we would suggest that finance has a place in an economy to provide for situations where one wishes to exercise a “time preference,” but that it should be involved neither with funding government or compromising the core monetary function of transaction clearing. The fact is that all banks regard your money on deposit as their money and have deposit insurance in case some of your money gets lost in their business. Our proposal is that any money in your account is always yours and not subject to the claims of anyone's loans. There is hence no need of any insurance since all the money on account in any of our exchanges will be yours. Let all that sink in too.

It is financism that is at fault for all the evils blamed upon capitalism and the democratic form of government.

Riegel here coins a term, financism, which roughly implies that the way out of not being able to afford what you want is to go into debt for it, so much that you allow your very money to be borrowed into existence with the demand to pay back that which was never created; the interest. No matter how much money is ever created by this means, the debt rises until it's no longer payable. We note again that the English government got itself into debt prior to the Bank of England, defaulted on these loans and then when the bank was proposed, all these defaulted debts were once again accepted as legitimate and payable and this time a regime of unbacked paper money was created to puff and pull the economy according to the banker's whims as they always stand supreme in such a system.

Financism has created a debt-money system where under the producer of wealth is required to gain the assent of parasites and pay interest tribute for the power to negotiate production and distribution and where under the government is perverted 

Almost everyone nowadays regards their government as perverted and a few regard the officeholders as perverts too. It was all done during the closed sessions of the founders as they made up the US Constitution, whose very reason for existence is to allow the government to borrow money, to interfere in commerce, etc. all the things necessary which would allow the “English tradition” of financism to come right over and plant itself here on American soil. And so it did. It is up to all fair minded people to recognize that the US Constitution was not perfect, that it was in fact devised to make the government a prisoner of various nefarious purposes intended from the beginning by certain cunning men.

Finance which is the creature of the unholy wedlock between banker and state cannot be solved by either partner dominating or consuming the other. The only solution lies in the people denying the power of both over industry, and their assertion of their own money power. The debt-money system where under the private enterpriser is obliged to pay tribute to and be subject to control by a non-producer, whether that be government or private banker, must be boycotted.

Note what Riegel said, he is not saying anything other than what we have been saying. The debt money system is any and all “public” money and by implication anything claiming a valuation therein. Private enterprise is obliged to pay taxes and licensing, submit to rules, regulations, etc. while the corporation goes exempt from all of these. Boycott the corporations wherever possible and please stop working for them, expecting them to come to your rescue when you need them, etc. Producers can be anyone, they can be someone who knits sweaters as well as someone who makes things, grows things, etc. a babysitter can be a producer. Our sense of things is that governments and banks ultimately produce nothing. Boycotting is saying no to them and wherever possible turning to someone or something else for whatever you need. Our intention is to offer an alternative system that shall survive theirs which is built on frauds.

Only our private “inertia-tive” delays our emancipation.

Riegel must have been in a mood to coin words; inertiative as the reverse of initiative. We acknowledge that what lies at the base of people's inertia are the kinds of ideas and attitudes Mark Passio discovered. Perhaps it's worth restating that whenever anyone decides to attend to The Great Work, that one does so in service to truth first (truth as the ultimate authority) rather than in direct service to their fellow men (and women) who very often can not even see the worth of what you are doing.

But it [the vicious alliance between the private money changer and the political plunderer] is not our greatest enemy. The greatest enemy of mankind is ignorance of the inherent money power in all of us. When the realization of this comes to man he will, like Sampson, push down the walls of his prison.

The question is, knowing that we are as Sampson, which means knowing that we have strength though we are in chains, can we push down the walls of our prison without killing ourselves?

David Burton
dpbmss@mail.com

#0 Mark Passio Reviews Homework Results – 8/31/13

Homework Results from the first Natural Law Seminar

Source  

The source page has links to all the pictures / diagrams, etc. associated with this podcast so you can follow along while you listen.

The reason this link is here is to inform readers of this blog of the true state of the minds of those around them, showcasing the real situation we face in the world. Mark says he does “The Great Work” [Das große Werk] out of service to truth NOT out of service to his fellow man. We have said on this blog that truth is the only authority,  therefore it should be more important, but is it, in the minds of people walking around all around you? Mark's homework responses were revealing, they show the incredible depth of our current problems. The implications are to be observed, contemplated and considered; comparing these results with the world around us. According to the dynamics represented by these results, it is impossible for freedom to manifest. If thinking does not change widely, it is unlikely to see any change in the outside world. However, as Mark said, there are only two mistakes on the road to truth; 1) not starting and 2) not finishing.

#E Breaking the English Tradition - E. C. Riegel

In addressing the “money problem,” I can do no better than the following essay. In it, E. C. Riegel is at his most eloquent, providing in a few short pages a concise review of the pertinent history, a lucid and persuasive argument as to the Constitutional scope of government’s monetary role and power, a scathing indictment of legal perversion and usurpation, and an inspiring revelation as to the natural locus of the money power and how it can be applied to liberate us all.

The essay is reproduced below in its entirety, as it was written, except that I have added some bold emphasis, a few bits of punctuation, and occasional editorial comments. Here then, in a nutshell, is the problem, its context, and its solution. – Thomas H. Greco, Jr., May 9, 2004.

Breaking The English Tradition 

 by E. C. Riegel

Throughout the ages the devices of cunning men have turned money to their nefarious purposes. Money, beginning with private enterprise as a means of escaping the limitation of barter soon developed the cheat to exploit the honest trader who in an effort to protect himself turned to government for protection, only to find that now he had two thieves, the private money changer and the political plunderer working hand in glove against him. By this combination the money changer gained the prestige of political sanction through legislative license and the state secured a deceptive device for laying taxes upon the citizenry. It was and remains a vicious alliance.

But it is not our greatest enemy. The greatest enemy of mankind is ignorance of the inherent money power in all of us. When the realization of this comes to man he will, like Sampson, push down the walls of his prison. It is a comfort to know that in spite of the universal union of finance and politics against industry, this combination is not entrenched behind constitutional or legislative impediments to the exercise of man’s natural power. Nothing but our own ignorance stands in our way. We are not forbidden to exert our money power; we merely neglect to do so.

English Tradition

Our monetary practises have stemmed from the English tradition where under the money power is recognized by the state as a private power, controlled by financiers. In the days when the word “money” meant only gold and silver and copper coins, the English government undertook merely to define the pound and its fractions and to stipulate the weight and fineness of the metal to be contained in each coin and to stamp the seal of the state thereon as a certification of fidelity.

This did not imply issuing money. The metal had to be brought to the mint by the private owner and for a charge (seigniorage) it was stamped and returned to him.

Banks were neither authorized nor prohibited. Not until the formation of the Bank of England in 1696 [sic.; actually 1694] was there any recognition by the state of private banking. The Bank of England sprang from a deal that a group of private bankers and merchants made with the crown and to lend to the government at an agreed interest rate and the rehabilitation of defaulted loans previously made by some of the bankers. By this charter, the bankers secured the right to depart from metal money and to have paper money made legal tender. Paper money was called “bills of credit” and this terminology carried over into our monetary vernacular.

American Adoption

Following the English tradition the American colonies and later the states proceeded to establish a money system on the premise that money is a creation of private enterprise but that it is the proper function of government to define the unit just as it defines weights and measures. That money issuance by government was not contemplated is shown in Article 1, Section 8, Paragraph 2 of the Constitution:

Congress shall have power to borrow money on the credit of the United States.

If it had been conceived that the government was to be the source of money it would have, of course, been unnecessary to insert a provision for borrowing. The same article and section provides in paragraph 5:

Congress shall have power to coin money, regulate the value thereof and of foreign coin, and fix the standard of weights and measures.

Obviously, bearing in mind the English precedent, and associating the money provision with the fixing of the standard of weights and measures, the clause meant merely the definition of the unit and the coinage for the public of any metal brought to the mint. This is clearly shown by the first coinage law passed to implement this provision. This coinage law will be quoted later.

Further confirmation of this interpretation of intent is had in Article 9 of the Articles of Confederation adopted July 9, 1778 and which the Constitution later re-phrased:

The United States in Congress assembled shall have the sole and exclusive right and power of regulating the alloy and value of coins struck by their authority, or by that of the respective states – fixing the standard of weights and measures throughout the United States.

This provision has the same meaning as the Constitutional clause previously quoted except that the framers of the Constitution thought best to deny to the states the power to strike coins, by inserting Article 1, Section 10:

No state shall coin money, emit bills of credit, make anything but gold and silver coin a tender in payment of debts.

The purpose of both clauses was to abolish coins of the several states and to unify the nation in one monetary language. The provision to regulate the value of foreign coin was repeatedly implemented by statutes which stated the power of a number of foreign units such as the pound and franc and under such regulation a number of foreign units were made legal tender as late as 1857. These included the coins of France, England, Spain, Portugal, Brazil, and others.

As final proof that government issue of money was not contemplated we turn to the first coinage law passed by Congress April 2, 1792, four years after the adoption of the Constitution. These are its salient clauses:

Sec. 9 There shall be from time to time struck Dollars or units – each to be of the value of a Spanish milled dollar as the same is now current, and to contain three hundred and seventy-one grains and four sixteenth parts of a grain of pure, or four hundred and sixteen grains of standard silver.

Sec. 11 And be it further enacted, That it shall be lawful for any person to bring to the said mint gold and silver bullion in order to their being coined; and that the bullion so brought should be there assayed and coined as speedily as may be after the receipt thereof, and that free of expense to the persons by whom the same shall have been brought.

Sec. 16 And be it further enacted, That all the gold and silver coins which shall have struck at, and issued from said mint, shall be lawful tender in all payments whatsoever, those of full weight according to the respective values herein before declared, and those of less than full weight at values proportional to their respective weights.

Sec. 20 And be it further enacted, That the money of account of the United States shall be expressed in dollars or units, dimes, or tenths, cents or hundredths and milles or thousandths, a dime being a tenth part of a dollar, a cent the hundredth part of a dollar, a mille the thousandth part of a dollar, and all accounts in public offices and all proceedings in the courts of the United States shall be kept and had in conformity to this regulation.

From the reading of the above clauses it is clear that Congress understood that “coin money and regulate the value thereof” had not the slightest relation to the issue power and that the coins were to be the property and issue of those who brought the metal to the mint. The use of the word “issued” in Sec. 16 obviously meant fabricated as it relates to the gold and silver of private owners.

Yet Congress has issued billions of dollars. How come? The clause “to coin money and regulate the value thereof” which is generally quotes as the government money power is, in fact, not the enabling clause at all. The issue power resides in the clause “to borrow money on the credit of the United States.” It is not generally recognized that the power to borrow is the power to issue when the borrowing is from banks. This is the power exercised by private borrowers as well as governments. The borrower secures the right to issue checks against a credit and thus increases the money supply. The instrumentality of the borrow-issue process is the private banking system but the private banking system is subject to laws and regulation of government.

Finance

Thus it is seen that the money mechanism, under the concept borrowed from England, is a contrivance that is both political and private but is strictly neither. It is a hybrid, and its name is finance. Compounded from both political and private interests, it compromises both private enterprise and public service. It confounds students of money and causes them to take sides for either the banking end or the government end when in fact a plague should be put upon both their houses. Control over money should be denied to both government and banks. Finance is the evil genius that brings discredit upon both the state and private enterprise and raises the threat of fascism and communism. It is financism that is at fault for all the evils blamed upon capitalism and the democratic form of government.

Financism has created a debt-money system where under the producer of wealth is required to gain the assent of parasites and pay interest tribute for the power to negotiate production and distribution and where under the government is perverted.

The whole world is struggling with the evil of finance over business and government. The trend is toward greater power for government and less for the banker, but this, rather than a solution, is leading directly to communism for as the power of the state augments, the subjection of the people increases. England has just voted to socialize the Bank of England and thus absorb into the state the poison of financism. This trend exists all over the world and is a trend toward communism because the issuance of money by the state is unwarranted since the state is a non-producer and it compels the state sooner or later to acquire the means of production so that it may back its issue with goods and services.

[When this essay was written, probably in the late 1940's or early fifties, fascism had ostensibly been defeated in the Second World War, and communism seemed the greater threat. We now see that communism is but another form of fascism, and that fascist elements are on the rise within what were presumed to be the bastions of democracy. Fascism is a merging of government and corporate business, so that what should be countervailing forces, now become but two aspects of centralized control. Fascism uses every available tool for domination, and the control of money is the most powerful of them all. – t.h.g.]

The New Concept

Finance which is the creature of the unholy wedlock between banker and state cannot be solved by either partner dominating or consuming the other. The only solution lies in the people denying the power of both over industry, and their assertion of their own money power. The debt-money system where under the private enterpriser is obliged to pay tribute to and be subject to control by a non-producer, whether that be government or private banker, must be boycotted. In its place a mutual credit basis for money creation must be established where under traders pledge each other, not to pay tribute to an outside institution but to pay each other only for value received. The credit pledge must be a mutual one to accept mutually created money for goods and services and not to incur debt to a money lender who is no part of the private enterprise system.

This is the American concept of money issuance within the private enterprise system itself and freed from financial parasites and political control. The prevalence of this concept will end the traditional English finance system that we inherited and will drive us to communism [despotic government, war, general impoverishment and ecological disaster–t.h.g.] if we continue to pursue it.

Fortunately, as stated at the outset, there is no constitutional or statutory barrier to the inauguration of a private enterprise, non-debt, non-interest, mutual money system. Only our private “inertia-tive” delays our emancipation.

[True as that might be, we should have every expectation that the vested interests in the status quo will not fail to cast obstacles in our way. There will be those who, failing to recognize the self destructive nature of their present course, will try to foil the very changes upon which their salvation depends. But liberty has never been given; it is for the good and the bold to grasp it. – t.h.g.]

#13.12 Peace Revolution Podcasts 74 thru 81

After listening to this podcast, #74, it became clear that this represented an intellectual blockbuster of the first magnitude.  Therefore I've chosen to highlight it with first place in this entry rather than including it in the previous entry in this series.  Links to the Peace Revolution Podcasts will be continued on this blog as they share high frequency resonance with precisely what this blog's mission consists.   As new podcasts appear they will be added here (and in future posts). 

2013-7-26: #74 Intellectual Self-Defense and How to Validate Knowledge 

7 hours and 12 minutes, a key episode beginning with an ad for State of Mind.which I guess will go off the internet with its “public” release on October 1^st. It is worth seeing.

This lecture is so good that it deserves to he spread far and wide and heard many times so all its excellent information sinks in. How about a long overdue frontal attack on the New Age movement? Jan Irvin's almost 7 hour lecture (based on this presentation by Mark Passio in fact everything is largely Passio) delves into this fundamental area and far more. It's time to pull the curtains back and take a look at who has always been adjusting the knobs and moving the levers, etc. of so called New Age mysticism. Irvin also comes down on scientism and religions, atheism that rejects natural law, many other ingrained thinking patterns, and of course who benefits from this socially bifurcated situation for purposes of their continued political and economic control and dominance (authoritarianism, which is the faking of real authority, which is truth based in natural law).

Mark describes impossible thoughts as the result of mental imbalance, the “parent” and “child” in the mind, etc. He describes natural law as impersonal forces like gravity. He slaps Stephen Hawking down (thank-you) ... and any foolish enough to have followed him, as followers of scientism, which leads nowhere. Meanwhile, “The New Age movement is more dangerous than Satanism,” says Passio (he had personal experience of Satanism).

Passio (Irvin too) belongs among those who would form a new cadre to construct and teach worldwide consciousness raising moving forward; service to truth (the ultimate authority). Perhaps if he'd been alive in the 1770's in Boston or Philadelphia, he'd have been among those who were the Pat Henrys or Tom Jeffersons of those times. This time, I think we'd best listen and get prepared to take our natural rights to action back. If anyone out there really agrees, as do I with what Mark Passio is saying, they'd best start making copies of this podcast and spread his words everywhere, because it is time they get around!

Passio says rights are based in truth (the ultimate authority) and must be in harmony with natural law, when “rights” do not or are not in such natural accord, they are wrong and deserve challenge, immediate cessation and justice where necessary! He runs down many deceptions of the New Age movement, they are all relevant and well argued. Identity gives us solipsism as the religion of the New Age movement. Solipsism -the new old buzzword that more people need to know, understand and use- is associated with narcissism and renders those infected into victims! Passio calls this "spiritual infancy." Think what that says about those “savage babies” we've identified at the top of the elitist heap. Guess what folks, there are those out there who sell solipsism and all its forms, but they themselves never accept solipsim, because they know that it is a scam. They sell solipsism / narcissism to create and manipulate victims among “the masses!”

Passio defines truth as that which has happened, or and including everything that has taken place up to the present second and it does not exist in the future. He contrasts this with perception which wavers. He describes perception having a frequency to align ourselves with reality.

Those who do not know their rights do not say no. That's a key concept throughout this lecture; the power to say no needs to be regained.

Passio strikes at meditation and yoga as a means to draw people's minds away from perception and discovering the truth and later operating from what Jan describes as the “Great Work” which he claims is raising consciousness. He does however express the real benefits of both meditation and yoga later.  Likewise Irvin tears down their “don't react” teaching as again another message; don't take any action to change it, accept it. He calls this irresponsible use of the feminine and considers it disgraceful.

Passio discusses how The Law of Attraction is warped in the New Age movement, overwhelmingly involved with self service. Action is required to make change in the world. There's so much more and it is all very interesting and he saves the best for last, building from all his previous material. This lecture contains essential information which should knock a few ingrained mental blocks loose; yes a real blockbuster.. In particular reference to the purpose of this blog, our proposal is clearly in alignment with freedom as Irvin and as we all should begin seeing it.

Truth, love and freedom, the Great Work, is bound up with imagination. Imagine something being better than it has ever been. A world without money may in fact represent working against reality as that would plunge us back into whole barter, but imagine money as E. C. Riegel saw it working, and further imagine a system that would rise from the people rather than falling from some state or oligarchy. Irvin calls our present situation “free range slavery” and that's a great metaphor. Also pay very close attention to his disclosure of the true meaning of anarchy; the absence of masters: freedom). Anarchy does not mean without rules. The proposed VEN will clearly operate within rules. Irvin's analysis is in high frequency coincidence with our proposal. We would probably encourage all potential A members to listen to this lecture, it's that important and that good.

Homework

Mark Passio - "New" Age Bullshit and the suppression of the sacred masculine - extended with slide 
Rupert Sheldrake - The Science Delusion 

2013-8-23: #75 The Individual vs. The Collective: Just Say No 

6 hours and 4 minutes in length, this episode opens with references to Edward Snowden, Bradley Manning (now, supposedly claiming to be a trans-sexual?, if that can even be believed, or is indeed an intentional means to get back at him by destroying his reputation to enhance their own, or perhaps even worse) and of pop singer Lauryn Hill. Mark Passio on Natural Law follows. This covers the basic building blocks of a rational philosophy. Following this, some history everyone needs to know concerning the Anglo-American establishment.

This episode includes: Solutions with Mark Passio (How to Escape the Psychology of Control), History… Interview with Jon Rappoport (How to Analyze the News), History… Interview with G. Edward Griffin (The Individual vs. the Collective) and History… The Last Will and Testament of Cecil Rhodes and the Anglo-American Establishment (featuring Kevin Cole and Brett Veinotte -of School Sucks Podcasts).

Mark Passion's fundamental understanding of what lies at the base of current problems individually and as a society are parental abandonment issues from which he establishes how the state as parent gets into people's minds. Richard Grove's interview technique of Passio is excellent and he adds plenty to the discussion. The law of freedom states that freedom is proportional to the level of morality. These are interrelated issues and cannot be separated. We're not talking about Rand's alternate morality either and certainly not her “straw dog” or bourgeois morality, we're talking about morality that must comply with natural law; life, liberty and property, individual sovereignty as the objective. To us therefore the “Nuremberg Defence” {we were only following orders) and “limited liability” as understood in connection with transnational “public” and state licensed corporations, are identical propositions, both attempting to justify that which is harmful; violence, etc. (We're considering from now on making all references to the word FORCE to the word VIOLENCE instead, because the distinction between the two words is significant). If government is ultimately a euphemism for violence and slavery (living under a constant state of duress), then what does that make the concept of a world government?

Jon Rappoport and the rest are about essential history confirming, of course, the role of the unseen elite. Crucial to Rappoport's understanding is that no mainstream media will ever discuss basic principles. Those behind the media couldn't endure this scrutiny for very long.

Griffin, Cole and Veinotte as well as Richard Grove all add their perspectives to knowing essential history in the sense of knowing some things the insiders know. This is very deep stuff, in the intelligence sense of deep.

Homework:

Gary Allen – None Dare Call It Conspiracy
Sir Anthony Kenny - History of the Rhodes Trust
Carroll Quigley – Tragedy and Hop

2013-9-28: #76 Life Management Skills for Success and Serenity

At 8 hours, 54 minutes, this episode is a bit longer than usual. It's concerned with breaking old habits and acquiring new ones in order to get things done in a better and more efficient manner. As usual, there is more intelligence in this podcast than in most on the internet. Enjoy.

Homework: 

David Allen - Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity
Charles Duhigg - The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business

2013-10-31: #77 The Rise of the Surveillance State / Freedom isn't Free

At slightly over 7 hours, this episode features presentations by a constellation of researchers; Richard Grove, James Corbett, Jon Rappoport, Jan Irvin, Philip Shenon, etc. You'll get a wide range of information concerned with recent history. In particular the role of Ed Snowden is surmised by Rappoport as yet another “intel operation” by competing interests in the intelligence community, rather than as a public hero into which he seems to have been presented by the mainstream media, for propaganda purposes. This is correct as observed as an attempt by the mainstream to co-opt (take over) alternative news viewpoints. Attention: Snowden, the latest in a long line of these, is no hero; we should long have known that we were being universally spied on.

For the record, presented here are the words of Walter Cronkite (he was in league with the globalists), Gen. Albert Stubblebine (revealing intent to impose a caste system on Western nations; more of the noble lie, etc.), Philip Zelikow (former manager of the 9/11 Commission teaches free standard propaganda history lessons beginning in January, 2014) and others.

We need to know more about psychopathy. We consider this material the core of this episode; if you listen to nothing else, start at around 6:30 and listen to Stefan Verstappen tell it as it is. We all need to hear and understand this material as it describes in precise terms, our natural enemies. There are clear reasons why this material is presented alongside the previous material regarding the Surveillance State; the former must by necessity be run and ruled by psychopaths. Of course psychopathy rises at all levels of society. A psychopathic society is one where a predator mentality is preferred and rewarded.

Then we learn more about the Psychology of Authority. The episode concludes with the audio from this video.  More than half the population on average would follow orders beyond rational or conscious actions if someone parading as sufficient authority told them to do so.

Homework:

Kevin Robert Ryan - Another Nineteen: Investigating Legitimate 9/11 Suspects
Trevor Aaronson - The Terror Factory: Inside the FBI’s Manufactured War on Terror
Philip Shenon - The Commission: The Uncensored History of the 9/11 Investigation

2013-12-8: #78 Rise of the Whistleblowers / How Freedom becomes Free Again 

8 hours and 16 minutes long, this episode offers us the latest news, for the record, concerning official and unofficial snooping and how society is being turned into a surveillance state, etc. The original material from public forums like the National Press Club, Boiling Frogs Post, etc. is highly informative.

Thomas Drake offers a real definition of American exceptionalism that we can understand; that all our public laws supposedly rest on the concept of natural rights that are above the law. But this episode is a warning to all Americans (and really to all mankind) regarding just what their governments are doing as the principal buyers in economies around the world, “the dark side” as Thomas Drake describes it, just as E. C. Riegel pointed out so long ago; governments have nothing to offer us in return for what they spend but war and now surveillance. All statist approaches to remedy anything involve government spending. Even Bill Still's remedy relies on government spending. And yet Riegel's insight still holds; governments spend on that which the government needs, not what the people require. Why should we expect anything different?

Our message continues to be “come out of her, my people.” If you work for any of these organizations and have an ounce of intelligence, you are aiding the monster in your own eventual destruction. This blog has outlined the elites as those who are ultimately the only possible beneficiaries of the present system. Some lately have told me they now understand the notion of the “free range slavery” they feel they are living under. It's better or worse of course in various places. And where does this episode eventually resolve? They end discussing self reliance! Self-reliance, my friends, at the individual, family, group and community levels (yes, it does take a village, but not at all how HRC thinks of it), is the correct approach. E. C. Riegel was on to the solution: this blog attempts to offer a workable structure for its implementation. The fit for the proposal of this blog and what they discuss is considerable.

We advise our readers to pay close attention to what Chris Duane and Richard Grove discuss in relation to the ideas presented on this blog. Clearly we do not want civilization to break down. We do not want to be plunged into the 4^th century, when life was brutish, nasty and short. The ideas on this blog represent a serious proposal that could be applied anywhere to accomplish exactly the mutual self-reliance that more and more people really want.

2013-12-24: #79 No Masters & No Slaves / YOU Are the Illuminati  

At over ten hours, this episode gives one plenty to chew on. This episode highlights Mark Passio's Natural Law seminar, so you can count on an intellectual tour de force. First of all, in his opening monologue, Richard Grove says it as well as anyone I know of ever has. This blog stands firmly with him. Do you like the idea that the general public are complicit with the crimes of whomever are the Illuminati? How about that the Whore of Babylon of John's Revelation is none other than the general public in the advanced nations of the world, eating and drinking up all the poisons of the world's military industrial complexes, wars, engineered famines, genocides, etc. that the beast dishes out? That one's my own, cobbled together from an insight received years ago from someone in Japan. 

We say that the powers that be are psychopaths, so why join them? Why work for them? Instead, “come out of her, my people,” lest you participate in their crimes? Feel guilty yet? You think, “just let me get my hands on enough dollars and then I'll quit.” Baloney! As long as you are on your knees with your head in the sand and ass in the air, you are a free range slave, like it or not. If you really want something better, you have to come away from the present world system, as Riegel said, we must ultimately intend to renounce it, and change yourself before you can ever hope to change the world around you.

We continue to present links to these podcasts here because they can and will help us all make those needed changes. In that way and joining together, we can hope to make a better world for ourselves, our families, nations, etc.

Notice that Mark Passio says that money as the god of this world. Doesn't the proposal outlined on this blog address this issue? But what about a body of knowledge hidden from sight, held by the few? Sound familiar?  Lessor arcana: monadal individual units of human consciousness. Major arcana: universal laws, natural law fits in here. He gets pretty deep. Power differential is for example, operative for a small group of people, if they have sufficient knowledge that they keep to themselves. Passio decides to share this deliberately hidden knowledge base openly. One should probably take one's own notes as one listens to these lectures. This is the current state of the art, as far as concerns the best contemporary education available these days.

2014-1-27: #80 JFK 50 Years Later / QUI BONO?

Amazing! This episode is more than 19 hours long! It goes consequently quite deep, so take your time. This is going to be about a lot more than JFK, so be prepared for some significant messages. This is an episode concerning our enemies, not that we'll ever be able to deal them justice, ever.  That is not an option.  Rather, it's our conviction that they will be exposed and then, “nature will take its course.” It's our position to encourage a spirit of “come out of her, my people,” and to offer a vehicle to use, rather than any possible conflict with any powers that be. It's worth reflecting on JFK's words and to compare them with the words and actions of our present leaders. Once again, Richard Grove has put together a tremendous collage surrounding the assassination and many impressions on this key moment in history are made.

Richard Groves's lengthy monologue, beginning 43 minutes in, tells us a lot about him as well as matters of increasing importance to all of us, specifically as individuals. He tells us about the origin of “rednecks” which is not what one usually supposes. He tells us of “the terrarium life” and gives us a concrete and useful definition for greed; an insatiable appetite for more than one can possibly use; they can never get enough of what they don't need. The antidotes he's talking about are very much how I would like each potential A member in a local IE to think of themselves; free, independent, self-reliant, etc. Pay close attention to Grove's description of “traps.” The proposal of this blog is only applicable among a society of trusted equals. That's why it is private and local first and foremost. We will have more to say about this in a future post. The VEN is intended to be the absence of traps, the sanctuary, conservatory or oasis from them. We have certainly not tried reason, we have accepted countless solipsisms instead.

You'll certainly find out more connections among the usual suspects. Exposure of who the “bad guys” are is always good for “good guys.” We'll again ask why people aren't resigning in droves from known enemy organizations? Don't they know what their involvement means for them? Most honestly do not. Who have they sold out to? Has it been worth it? Those who know too much of course, as noted in recent weeks, end up throwing themselves off tops of the enemies' towers, etc. “Come out of her, my people, lest ye share in her crimes.” Make no mistake, things can go wrong for a long time before “nature takes its course,” but you can't put off natural law forever. Where do you want to be when it all falls down? Better start building your lifeboat NOW. Everyone does need someone else in order to make it too. Don't be foolish enough to think you can make it alone. Survival lifeboats require the voluntary cooperation of people first. Computer programs or technology are merely tools to accomplish something else, not ends in themselves.

After hearing this episode, I'm sure you're ideas about who's who in American politics may be changed forever.\

2014-2-25: #81 Self-Confidence vs. Social Engineering 

At just under six hours, this episode opens with a frank discussion about diamonds. Then the story moves on through the development of intelligence aparat, manipulations of culture, justification of high pay for sports stars, note the desire to turn everything into an “industry,” etc. Find out why it is that people can't think for themselves, outside the box. What box is it they mean? TV mostly, what some colleagues think of as “the image of the best.” This episode, which explores the subject of social engineering, as all of them, are to tell people the truth, which we remind everyone is the ultimate authority. We'll hear a lot more frank talk about where the sources of the problems lie. Those of us who have been awake a long time know all these well travelled avenues quite well.

About 40 minutes in, Richard Grove's monologue gives an “executive overview” of the entire subject of social engineering and the requirement for any thinking person to wake up, grow up and assume responsibility for their own thinking. Social engineering is artificial, it is not natural, therefore it stands against natural law and shall ultimately fail. The power and statist solution is not correct. Since it is not correct, it shall fail, pure and simple.

Those fascinated by planning should have a good listen to Alan Watt's summary of the present situation from about 1 hour 30 minutes in. Listen in particular to his remarks concerning technology. We regard most of it as another “tower of Babel” attempt on behalf of the would be rulers and leaders to set up their “New World Order,” etc. When we thought about money as basically circulating strips of paper (seeing in our wallets money that we knew was ours) or marks in ledgers, we were looked upon as advocating a return to Mayberry. As we've seen, the technologies are all placed at the service of the powers that be, making a return to more basic technologies a revolutionary act. Not mentioned by Watt, the Amish (Mennonites, etc.) “stick in the craw” of the powers that be, but they don't seem to have the same disdain for gypsies. Observe how the two groups are stylized and romanticized and you can see right through the propaganda and understand the message behind it; the former groups are self reliant and self sufficient, and stick to themselves; the latter groups prey on the general populations and live thereby. In any case, the powers that be live by creating discord and disharmony and taking advantage of it to sustain their power.

You'll hear from Antony C. Sutton (2 hours 30 minutes in), the British researcher, whose work is all crucial to an understanding of modern times. He says that information in a socialist society (which we do live in) is suppressed. The Establishment version through the mainstream of society is clearly losing credibility. It should have nothing left to believe about except that they control all the present monetary systems. The Revisionist version is based on facts that they deem can be released. The New information versions when published are at first never believed. They are based on genuinely hidden real information. Listen to what Sutton knew about the Russian revolution. This is not debatable information; it has many other sources to back it up now. The implications and consequences are of course immense. We really can't help you if you doubt any of this. Hear his comment about gold and fiat money as if that solution would save the day. Well, one can't be right about everything. We note that what he says however is correct entirely due to the fact that governments control the issue and spending of most of its fiat money. Then he talks about the natural trend toward smaller units of association. Globalism is inherently impossible, no matter how many rich psychopaths earnestly want it. It hasn't worked and will not work EVER as it runs counter to nature. PLANNING is on such scales the source of all that goes wrong in the world, not its salvation. When anything gets too big to operate efficiently and responsibly, it becomes dangerous and ultimately falls of its own dead weight. When it fails, those associated with it fall to the ground with very often nothing much left.

Then John Taylor Gatto (3 hours 10 minutes in), well before his stroke, talks about the FORCED exposure to pathologies in public education. Hear what planning did to Roumania and elsewhere. He further gets into what teachers do not know about the subjects that they supposedly profess to represent. Students can't really read either, by design. But intellectual development wasn't the purpose of public education. Gatto dates this back to 1905 though experiments extend back 100 years earlier. It's all about social control. Gatto of course credits Hegel. Further, hear Gatto describe all kinds of intentional attempts to subvert natural abilities to learn and to the mass “stupidification” (his word) of the common people he traces back to England in the 16^th century. Education? Gatto really nails it. The enemies are the experts. Not only do these people have terrific gal, they should be treated more roughly; their authority is false, there is no truth in them. Standardizers and certralizers that work for the states and the elites are all enemies of freedom. Never forget this. Gatto's remarks all by themselves are so good that they should be copied and sent around to anyone with any brains left. Consider the hard words of Gatto concerning the system, make the people in charge personally responsible for their actions. The ideas are at present largely unassailable, though we and numerous other bloggers will continually pound away at them until they and their tyrannies are rendered the dustheap of history. Gatto advocates violence toward thieves and bullies on schoolyards. Consider the applications of this to adult life and it leads in the usual directions: pro freedom, anti statist, anti corporatist, anti banker. That's where it all leads folks. That's why we've turned our attention to money and to a suitable replacement system for the present one which is a fraud and a curse.

Finally, Manly Hall (4 hours and 20 minutes in) takes up may questions under the heading “I Beg to Differ with the Darwinian Theory.” But that's not what this lecture is about. He does not deny evolution either. This lecture is about basic assumptions. He discusses the ultimate unreliability of incomplete facts, etc. Hall credits the doctrine of evolution (that's what it is) with solving difficult problems; it was promoted for political reasons to support a state aparat and protect the pretencions of a ruling class and nothing more.

Hall makes some points concerning “idealism” which, for want of a better word, we would consider misused. He likewise uses the word “religion” to cover more than the matter of going to church or believing in some bourgeois morality of sacrifice. “Knowledge without integrity is deadly,” he remarks. He asks for science to become moral. We doubt this is even possible and that Hall's prescriptions are idealisms in the sense that he wants people and organizations to conform to notions of integrity and morality that lie outside science.

Further Hall says nothing concerning the connection between organized money and scientific research. Until people begin to wake up and understand that their money is not theirs, their governments are not theirs, their education has nothing to do with reality, their accepted ideas were all placed there by organized money with agendas for mass mind control behind the scenes, nothing fundamental will change. Science is just one more of their tools as were the religions in previous ages. The scientists themselves are nothing more than a new priesthood for a new religion. Intellectual selfishness (and ego) are mentioned in passing. This lies at the heart of all real problems. Hall is as usual quite interesting and profound. 

INTERMISSION

#50.2 Money Series on Riegel by Dennis Riness – Part 2

Source (no longer available) - November 14, 2012   UPDATE SEE BELOW

The Question of the Quantity of Monetary Units

Riegel entitles Chapter VII of Private Enterprise Money “Each Issuer’s Limit” referring to how many monetary units each person participating in the Valun Exchange shall be allowed to issue. His answer is basically “three month’s income.” This design parameter creates a circularity, or positive feedback loop, and will result in a spiralling, inflationary bias in the system. As production proceeds, profits are made and, by this logic, the money supply should be allowed to grow. An ever greater money supply results in ever greater prices and as long as everyone is just allowed to issue three month’s income as the money supply expands, the system performs correctly, right? Wrong.

[This “inflationary bias” is either temporary or negligible even if the allowances are for far more money to be “allowed to issue” than three month's normal income per A member. Remember, much that present economics teaches is based on the present structures and has no applicability to any future structures as they develop. People save money when they assume that the monetary system will maintain its integrity and fidelity and therefore their saved money does not contribute to prices in the open market, so the inflation argument is moot at best. So what if there is a market for their extra money in the finance businesses that shall invariably arise within a new monetary system? Most people will hold onto their own money rather than automatically allowing it to be risked as is presently the case in every bank. Austrian economics cannot be separated at all from the present banking model and therefore is suspect throughout its analysis. Why waste your time? We will never stand for just another money in just another aspect of the same banking system. Never!]

Riegel calls for a system wherein each individual can create money to the extent he can produce a marketable commodity or service. This is a mistake on Riegel’s part and is rooted in his failure to distinguish between creating money— which is all he ever addresses— and making money by a productive pursuit. Making money (as opposed to creating money) and paying interest are deeply connected; and making money— making a profit— is not explained by Riegel and hence he cannot explain the paying of interest.

[Ah ha! I have you, Dennis! Interest is a matter of a loan of money and does not occur in a Riegel system as it exists in the present system. Usury is the demand to be returned of that which was never created. If the ultimate value in a trade is not represented finally in a good or service, then the transaction probably involves usury, the taking back of interest in that which was never created, clearly theft. The Austrians never criticize interest, they extol it, because they are usurers! Until you wake up to their bunk, you'll never understand freedom.]

Riegel cannot see where the “extra” money is to come from to pay the interest. Since he cannot explain this, it follows that he cannot explain where the profit comes from when a business is profitable i.e. making money.

[They are not related at all! The sales price, the amount of money a seller uses as a basis for all the expenses that went into bringing whatever to market -a cost accounting exercise- determines the probable profit margin ahead of time and creates no new money that is not backed by the value in whatever was sold plus inventory however that is depreciated. Interest plays no role in it at all and is a deception of all those involved in the present fraudulent banking system which the Austrians are themselves part of! I know of this from personal experience as for years I defended the position of the banks and thought that perhaps only some fix would solve their problems. Nope. The source of the problems is the basis of interest itself.]

There are many others today who also fall into this trap and argue that all interest is inherently destructive to an economy and should be outlawed. But then how does one explain “making money” or “making a profit”? If a business is making money, it is bringing in more money than it is spending to make that money. So where, one must ask, does this “extra money’ come from? Riegel does not even think to ask the question.

[Riegel has answered this question but he did not explain it very well. Basically what Dennis is asking is where does the extra money come from that allows the businessman/farmer/retailer whatever to make a living? It comes from the money allowed to be created by a credit clearing community and springs into existence when that businessman sells something. Not all money created is destroyed by clearing the credit (money spent) by selling something (money received) right away, so that's where all your extra money comes from. It is issued by the poor (impecunious was the word Riegel used) and becomes the basis for the profits of the wealthy. Riegel's money creation conception is almost infinitely elastic, except that whatever is purchased was not decided by some government edict and therefore called into existence, therefore distorting markets for labour and resources.]

In Chapter VIII of Private Enterprise Money, “How the Unit is to be Determined,” one might assume Riegel gets to the main question of how many monetary units should be in the system. The problem is, he never discusses this limit but spends the entire chapter wrangling with the question of what shall be the correct exchange ratio of the Valun and the US Dollar when the Valun system is launched on day one. It is one of the major failings of Riegel to never figure out that the important parameter that needs to be established in any monetary system is the total number of monetary units in the system.

[NO, Dennis! This is actually an irrelevant consideration. Just ask yourself who but a banker is concerned with the total amount of money in a system that they may take advantage of making more money on money? You're falling into the trap of considering money a commodity when it isn't. The amount of money in the system will actually float close to zero, as that's what credit clearing accomplishes, therefore it is of absolutely no significance whatsoever how much money is in such a system at any given moment. What is of consideration then is how much money may be attracted to earning returns in the financial sector that will develop as part of a fully functioning VEN and that too will depend ultimately on the amount of credit allowed each A member.]

This issue will be discussed in the article on Alexander del Mar’scontribution to money theory.

[We haven't seen it and at this date can perhaps safely infer that Dennis truly lost heart as he either didn't get or failed to understand the simplicity and implications of Riegel's basic ideas. We hope he eventually does.]

Riegel, over the span of three books and a journal article listed above, is very wobbly on this most important design parameter and anyone trying to build a monetary system based on Riegel’s notions on this point will run into nothing but trouble. This system needs to be Bounded. There is no substitute. It makes no difference whether we divide the range between the freezing point of water and the boiling point of water into 100 degrees and call it Centigrade or into 180 degrees and call it Fahrenheit. The important parameter is that we decide on 100 degrees or 180 degrees, either one works as well as the other, and fix it for all time and “get on with it.” It is the same in the monetary world. I shall be arguing in the conclusion to this series that we need to set the number of monetary units in the system to a fixed number per participant in the system, and fix it there for all time— the exact number does not matter, that it is fixed matters: more to follow.

[Again Dennis, this does not matter at all unless you're a usurer interested in money as a commodity, which under a Riegel system, it isn't. Sorry you don't yet get it.]

Riegel proposes a tactic that will work well if he has the correct amount of money issued in his system. He calls for parity on day one. This means the new monetary unit, the Valun, will exchange for exactly one US Dollar on day one. 

[yes, that was Riegel's original intention on at least 3 different occasions when the 3 dollars were very different in purchasing power. We've chosen a different Figure 1 for our proposal.]

After day one, he allows the marketplace exchange rate to “drift,” that is to find its own level: the exchange value between his new monetary unit and the established monetary unit his system is competing with will be determined by voluntary market action. This drift in “foreign exchange” is precisely what is needed. It is the marketplace sorting out the relative purchasing power of the two competing monetary units. Riegel is absolutely correct on this point: set a parameter on day one and then let the marketplace sort it out.

[This is exactly what we did when we began our experiment on November 2, 2011, an easy day to remember. On that date we fixed a Value Unit at one one-thousandth of 1 troy oz. of gold bullion, 1 oz AU = 1,000 Value Units. By comparison, at 10 September, 2013, a troy oz. of gold bullion would purchase only 785.12 Value Units.]

This policy of parity-on-day-one will minimize the difficulty of the calibration phase of those learning the new monetary unit if the total units going into circulation are close to the total units presently in circulation in the old monetary units on a per person basis.

[IRRELEVANT! And you are not getting it!]

If the new monetary units are not close to the old monetary units in total numbers per person, the marketplace will sort it out in time but with a great number of miscalculations by those participating in the changeover. Speaking metaphorically, if the new units turn out to be more like Fahrenheit when everyone has been used to working in Centigrade, mistakes in reckoning will happen, but only temporarily.

[Our proposal allows the market to determine what a Value Unit is worth in comparison to other currencies simply by changes in their prices for silver and gold, which shall both be convertible under normal terms of a foreign exchange, as that's exactly what it will be. But no Value Unit will be a fraction of some hypothetical total of all possible Value Units created, because Value Units are created and destroyed all the time so there can't be any hypothetical maximum number (an attempt to make them into commodities rather than appliances).]  

Distribution of the Money-Creating Power

Riegel correctly argues that “only he who can produce” is rightfully the one “who can create money.” In fact, he argues that to restrict the producers from the ability to create money is to hobble the system to the point of failure. Riegel argues that restricting the producers from money-creation, renders a system wherein the producers would not be able to buy the products of their own production. Although the argument smacks of Marxism in its phraseology, Riegel is on the right track. “Money cannot meet modern needs by descending to the people; it must rise from them.” 1-viii

[We also need to steer quite clear of the automatic association of “producer” with only those who make or grow new things, as the market naturally includes those who resell that which is used, etc. And Riegel's ideas only sound Marxist due to the obvious perception that everything depends upon human labour to obtain any value whatever, whereas in the prevailing political culture, it has been customary to regard the rewards of capital as entirely justified when they clearly have never been and are still not. We also have to recognize that at no time in history has any producer ever produced money. Money has been the province of the state and the banks and to assume it was ever otherwise for the last few hundred years anyway is ... not supported by historical facts.]

He is calling for the widest-possible distribution of the money-creating power and rejecting the present system wherein the state has sole money-creating power. This is a call for a true revolution if there ever was one. I call this concentration of the money-creating power in the hands of the few “mal-distribution.” Subsequent articles in this series will demonstrate that it is mal-distribution that is the real problem in a monetary system, not the lack of, or over-abundance of, monetary units. Riegel has the desirability of a widespread money-creating power very much correct.

[Thanks. Now you can dispense with the Austrians, all of them as they are known liars, and can concentrate on making the VEN a reality. Concerning mal-distribution; this is one factor arguing against a Weimar meltdown because when any currency is in fewer hands it circulates less. How else then would an economy fail? It would literally rot and stuff would go on sale with no money to buy it, people would only stand for so much until a political revolution would result. One cannot consign entire generations to oblivion without an inevitable backlash. Either by Weimar meltdown or deep depression, deflation and revolution, the elite's days are numbered. Our message has remained the same; “come out of her, my people.”]

Failing to Address the Gold-Is-Money Issue 

While Riegel’s criticism of commodity-money rests on his definition of money— which is utterly original and brilliant— he never addresses the Austrian School’s point of view that gold is a commodity for sure but is valued in a different way as a medium of exchange by the marketplace and hence gold has a valuation-as-money that is different from its valuation-as-commodity. 

[Yeah, they sort of grudgingly think the same of silver too, but heads up, Dennis. David Astle covered this and many related issues in his Babylonian Woe. Read it!]

Understanding the dynamics of gold-as-commodity versus gold-as-money will take a stronger analysis than what Riegel has served up. It will even take a stronger analysis than what the Austrian School has served up. 

[Why? All you need is to know the real history of gold (and silver) as money to realize that the Austrians are liars when it comes to how gold and silver “gained acceptance by the marketplace” as this was not a free choice, ever! Gold and silver were imposed by FORCE on the market by traders and governments (which is why their heads are frequently on their coins). Therefore, all claims by the Austrians and their willing dupes to the effect that gold and silver have or should have any intrinsic value other than their uses in industry is deception, lies and ultimately bunk. There is no good reason whatsoever why a dozen eggs in some place should reflect the changing prices set by precious metals brokers in far off cities of a troy ounce of gold.] 

This seminal issue will be addressed in subsequent articles in this series on money. 

[Really, Dennis, don't waste your time.]

As a further preview, my criticism of the Austrian school and its devotion to the “gold-is-money” idea is that the ultimate issue will be that gold can never shed its property of being a commodity even though it is also being used as money and this problem is in addition to the inherent problem of mal-distribution that comes with any commodity-based system, especially gold. 

[Ah, but that's just one side of their preordained dialectic, the other being their paper securities markets. Either side is theirs, not yours or mine. Riegel's perspective was just enough outside the box to start constructing something else.] 

The Austrians hold “gold-is-money” as the premier virtue of a monetary system when the truth is that it is the Achilles’ heel of such a system. Too frequently in economic history the commodity side of gold has swamped the monetary side of gold and we have market action that is the equivalent of the tail wagging the dog— more to follow.

[Take a thorough look at this blog and our proposal and you'll no longer need to bother with chasing old fables.] 

Assessing Riegel

Interest 

Riegel does not understand interest and his system suffers for it. He never acknowledges that interest is a valid, necessary component of economic interaction among humans. 

[NO IT IS NOT unless you are describing someone paying a different price for the same thing, which is of a different order of things than money issued as a result of a loan at interest, which is usury.]

Interest arises naturally from the human Value Hierarchy: preferring present goods over future goods. The Austrian School calls this preference originary-interest and it is a natural phenomenon. Riegel does not seem to realize that interest is a natural phenomenon and will not go away. Interest is not the product of some devious minds creating an artificial mechanism to plunder others. 

[Yes it is, read Gertrude Coogan on this, she makes the points very well.] 

Interest is a phenomenon that arises naturally from human action which is based on the most fundamental proclivities we all have.

[This too is a fundamental lie. Interest asks the borrower to pay back that which was never created, therefore he is obliged to begrudge it from someone else. The ultimate beneficiary of all lending is the lender, who as their accordion like puff and pull credit policies always indicate, ends up owning that which was not his. Interest lies at the base of this great deceit and should be exposed for all to see, recognize and understand, including you, Dennis!]

Riegel fails to incorporate interest into the design of his monetary system and thus his system will simply not work since it ignores this most fundamental human dynamic. Interest provides an indispensible feedback signal to steer the market and enable savings and borrowings to be balanced, when it is left alone to find its own level.

[All that is baloney too, Dennis. What we advocate is that the finance function is forever divorced from the transaction clearing function as it presently exists in banks. Pools of liquidity (savings) will either build up or be traded into the system and will be attracted to finance as perceptions that people would be willing to pay more to have something now, the Austrians' time preference, emerge. These finance operations will have to operate under 100% reserve requirements and assess and handle their own risks. If they make too many bad loans they will go under without adversely affecting the rest of the system, thus correcting a flaw in the present system. There will also be auxiliary methods of buying and selling debt and both credit contracts and labour contracts are addressed and described. Other than that, the mark-ups the retailer gets for getting product from a wholesaler to market are inevitably resolved as residing in either the product or the labour required to bring that product to sale.]

The statists never leave it alone and have always used the setting of interest rates as a major tool of their “social engineering”— read plunder.

[The statists use any pretext possible to extend their power as they believe that somehow they are better than the rest of us and deserve to govern the rest of us even though their powers of prognostication and records of successful, efficient or even virtuous action are often far lower than average. Go figure.]

The State

Riegel never quite gets to the realization that the state is not just inept as he assumes throughout all his work, but that it is parasitic.  

[One likely assumes, since Riegel clearly hoped bankers would help him and even expected them to see things his way, that his blinders extended to the state too. The conversation concerning just what the state must be and how that is to be worked out has not yet been convened and it needs to be; if the state does not do certain things, what exactly must the state do? We need to start asking among ourselves once again.]

The state is parasitic to the core and one of its principal means of plunder is to extract the lifeblood of the citizenry through its control of the monetary system by means of controlling the interest rates and the quantity of money in the system.

[I wonder, does Dennis include within the state the private Federal Reserve system which actually sets the interest rates? All other central banks everywhere are just the same. We would identify them as the rotten core of the parasitic state aparat. The state issues, it therefore buys, it therefore buys what it wants, not what you or I want, it therefore is in a position to requisition, loot, take, absorb, drive out of business, etc. all in its path. It has FORCE to accomplish its will. Not only is the state as currently constructed parasitic, it breaks the first principle which does not excuse any of us from recourse to violence, and it encourages others to become parasites simply to reduce the normal political pressure from allowing limited liability corporations (their creations) from destroying the average person's ability to compete.]

Riegel’s view is much too benign to correctly analyze the situation. Monetary systems have been used as a means of exploitation for centuries. The successful monetary system of Freedom shall reverse this long, troubled history of the manipulation of the monetary system and instead deliver an agency that will guide the economy of the future by fixing the quantity of monetary units in the system on a per capita basis and letting the marketplace, through the auction process, determine interest rates.

[Pardon me but these are both obtuse and unnecessary! Interest rates for any finance operation will be determined by LOCAL issues by each financial operator. There will be no “agency” to guide (a Soviet) anyone or anything. These issues will develop entirely by market forces and there is I repeat absolutely no need to predetermine how much money will be created.]

The monetary system of the future will be an agency of symbiosis and will live out the immortal words of Andrew Galambos: “Total Capitalism demonstrates not only the Morality of Profit but also the Profitability of Morality.” Those who bring about this symbiotic, monetary system will be the true benefactors of mankind and incidentally, and justifiably, make themselves very wealthy.

[Capitalism is basically the demand that idle money earn a rate of return or yield. It is the other side of the same coin as collectivism, sorry. Capitalism has nothing in common with free enterprise and earning an honest living. I wish Dennis and countless others would begin to get a few things straight, such as what really constitutes wealth, which is simply anything capable of producing an income and nothing else. Neither gold nor silver can therefore represent wealth. All they represent is themselves in the market for precious metals. People with a lot of money are called rich but they may not necessarily be wealthy. Making money on money without providing a good or service is something we will want to expunge from all future monetary systems as far as possible. There are easy ways of doing it. One simply makes clear and enforcible rules and enforces them, state or no state. Our Value Exchange Network (VEN) shall above all things be private in every sense of the word.]

Riegel is naïve regarding the viciousness of the political state. He assumes throughout all his work that some far-sighted entrepreneurial types like himself will one day just establish an alternative monetary system and proceed to develop it in competition with the state’s monetary system and eventually replace the state’s monetary system through old-fashioned market competitiveness.

[There never ever was such a thing as “ old-fashioned market competitiveness.” We have never known a truly free market and there are perhaps some reasonable limits to the existence of a perfectly free market. We covered some of the facts concerning markets as they are well known around the world in our paper on markets. There shall probably be more.

The truth is that back before 1954, Riegel and the rest of the American public could pretty much be counted upon to accept the legitimacy of their national government, despite the clear facts elucidated over the years that indicate exactly the opposite is true, so of course Riegel was naïve. Most people still are, though these days we usually describe them as asleep rather than naïve.]

The truth is that long before the state allows one of its three main meal-tickets to be usurped i.e. inflating the money supply—the other two being direct taxes and mortgaging the future—, it will come down on that threat with whatever physical FORCE is necessary to destroy the competition. There will be no “due process” or any other formality. The principals of an alternative monetary system will be assassinated in short order and with no apology given. There is a strong case to be made that two United States presidents, Lincoln and Kennedy, were assassinated for starting to make a move toward the door that would lead to the demise of the established money-power interests. For a much more comprehensive description of the present monetary system, how it was set up and how it is manipulated for the insiders, see G. Edward Griffin’s The Creature from Jekyll Island, but be prepared to hear the echo-chamber refrain that only a commodity such as gold can be money.

[That “echo chamber” is the other side of their dialectic. Whatever the state may think, there was a time when it did not exist and no matter how impressive a bank building might be, banks have also failed. There never are any guarantees. Institutions and people in trouble scramble for the precious metals believing that we will all be forever fooled into thinking they have any special value, when they don't. The same has gone for diamonds, which aren't really scarce at all.

Yes, the state may seem an all powerful monster that may even become a sufficient idol for worship, but people abide while states do not (else the planet does not and civilization itself is in jeopardy, which it always is). We do not know when, though there are in place many scenarios right now that could provide the impetus, but the present monetary system shall certainly fail as it is built on fundamental frauds, as have all its predecessors back through time as they were just the same going all the way back to ancient Babylon. We know not when, but fail it shall and the process could come relatively quickly too, within days.

Most monetary systems die as a result of a Weimar meltdown in hyperinflation which proceeds over a few months or even a year or so; the bad notes of the regime become toilet paper and what purchasing power people might have tried to store up in them is destroyed. Of course there is always silver and gold and during such a catastrophe people tend to dump inflating paper currency and buy precious metals and yes they are commodities, so they will continue to be worth something, but they aren't money in Riegel's sense of money.

The Austrian side of the dialectic is wrapped up with the decisive role of the brokers for precious metals in London and elsewhere that determine the lowest possible market price for these metals (their spot prices). What no one ever acknowledges when they champion precious metals is that their value is determined by brokers not by supply and demand and furthermore these factors claim more of these metals than anyone else and ultimately, we can assume, make their claims, or fail, and what then? If precious metals reflect the worthlessness of a Weimar melted currency, they become objects of priceless status to most people and shall not trade (circulate) openly in commerce as money. They would have become far too expensive to use for that.

By the way, the obvious reason Gresham's Law always applies is that everyone knows (which proves Riegel correct once again) that the best money to use is the cheapest, which when it appears drives everything more expensive into ... collections.

All state issued fiat currencies are just the same, illegitimate money issues masquerading to the gullible public as the real thing, which is not gold and silver coin. These state issued fiat currencies all fail and all become inflationary by nature and by the design of the central bankers who place governments in the position of hostages to their perpetual debt. The interest charged for the use of their money is drawn back from money that was not created (usury on a grand scale, looting from everyone). Various gimmicks imply that for such a system to work and not produce inflation that the state must tax back what it spends (since as Riegel said we don't want to buy anything from the state). Obviously this is a machine devised by madmen. There is and will be many better alternatives, but ultimately the strongest design shall prevail.]

The Need for Protection

Riegel is also naïve regarding the protection of his own monetary system. A fully developed protection system is required by all participants in a successful monetary system: those who create the system and those who use the system. Riegel not only fails to deliver a protective system for his monetary system, he does not even see the need for such protection. Physical FORCE is a necessary component of a successful monetary system but the key is how to deploy it so that it is directed toward those who would use the monetary system to plunder— which is what we have now— and those who would try to steal from the system such as counterfeiters. Riegel is totally silent on these issues and yet they are fundamental.

[Very well, we have again stepped into the breach by suggesting in our proposal that restrictions on certain business forms and certain well known practises, including a total and eternal divorce of transaction clearing from finance functions, plus an automatic feedback system for all labour and credit contracts, would provide much needed protections. Our proposed exchange notes would all be quite diverse since each independent exchange (IE) could have its own obverse designs, all reverse designs would be roughly the same and all sizes of notes would be uniform throughout the system. Diversity would frustrate counterfeiters, plus there will be other simple tests to determine a note's validity. Per current law in most places within the US, none of our exchange notes would ever trade for a dollar or less. We have also proposed (not possible without reversing current laws in place against them) that sub-units of a Value Unit would be in coins useful as weights for measuring precious metals as well as offering a future for coin operated vending as all our coins would buy more than their dollar counterparts.]

Without that second agency— which I reluctantly define as Government— to keep the monetary system honest for all, the system will fail.

[No it will not, at least not from that cause. There are many private businesses which have been in private hands for centuries. There is no special reason to regard a government as any more trustworthy for offering protection than a private association enforcing its own rules. Need I remind Dennis that anyone who knows anything about dealing with “the mob” knows this.]

Riegel is a prototype anarchist in this regard: unable to see a need for the administration of physical FORCE to regulate the system for all concerned and confusing the Administration of Physical Force with the political state that we have now.

[Excuse me! Who, that is not wide awake these days is not making this exact connection? I remind our readers that anarchy merely means “without a ruling class” and does not automatically imply chaos as it is believed. Now as always, it will be rational self interest that will hold civilization aloft, not what flavour of state despotism we happen to be living under.]

Perhaps this is why many anarchist-types are now being drawn to Riegel’s work; being “birds-of-a-feather” and deluding themselves that their utopian systems just don’t need the administration of physical FORCE to function properly. If you find yourself in this trap, start by getting on board with the differentiation between the initiation of physical FORCE— Coercion— and the use of physical FORCE for protection.

[We understand the difference, and most people do. What's with this “birds of a feather” anyway, Dennis? Are you jeering us?]

Grasping Riegel

As simple and straight-forward as Riegel’s concept of money is, it has proven difficult for many people to grasp.

[It isn't difficult, it's easy and obvious.]

These Luddites are typically the types that do not grasp a principle in any academic discipline.

[Luddites?  That's a jeer!  But so what? Prove to me beyond any shadow of doubt that any “academic discipline” per se is really worth a shit! These days, better ideas are produced by college dropouts. And furthermore being possessed of a “dizzying intellect” is not going to help anyone make a better life for themselves or anyone else.]

For me it is as if I am standing on the shore of a lake and trying to explain to someone who has no clue about the principle of buoyancy that it is possible to build a boat that will float on the water that is made out of a material such as steel which will not float on the water in its compacted form. But properly formed, it can be made into a ship hull that will float. All the while this person thinks I am crazy when “everyone knows” that a boat must be made out of a material that will float, such as wood. These are the same ones that cannot grasp that money is not gold or any other commodity.

[Yes, perhaps. The metaphor is acceptable.]

It is true that Riegel did not serve up a Bounded System; his system was lacking the items discussed above. But the objections to Riegel’s monetary system always come from the mistaken view that “money must be a commodity,” not from a viewpoint about a system of exchange lacking essential components. The gold-bugs listen for one idea only: gold is money; and not hearing that, their thinking process shuts down. It is analogous to them saying that the football scoreboard must display the score in numbers made out of gold. Electronic numbers are just fiat numbers and not the real thing and hence the score of the game is not right. It’s the score on the playing field that matters, not that the scoreboard has numbers made out of gold. They simply do not get it.

[It's particularly difficult given the educational system most have been subjected to. They got many other foolish ideas spread far and wide the same way. Now, many years after one was in school, these same unchallenged ideas surface as suspect and most people don't know why and most favour something reactionary like, “why can't we just reverse the clock and go back to a time in the past that was better, when things worked better,” etc. There was no such past. It was all screwed up back then just as well. Doing the same over and over again is insane, so why are we doing it?]

Riegel’s Legacy

I shall close by letting Riegel speak for himself. {My comments in brackets.}

From the Introductory to Private Enterprise Money (1-v) entitled: Money or Your Life 

“The life of modern man depends upon his mastery of money. {Amen}

“Our political money system is breaking down and must be displaced by one that serves the needs of modern exchange. Otherwise our civilization will perish. {Amen}

“As technological improvements tend to specialize and confine each man’s production, the need for the exchange of products increases and, therefore, man’s dependence upon money makes the mastery of this vital agency more and more imperative.” {Amen}

The two lasting contributions of Riegel are:

1) money is a pure number, however stored, and never a commodity and

2) the money-creation power must be as widely distributed as possible. 

[I'd add a third; the Value Unit however called begins as a Figure 1 and thereafter stands apart and independent of all it measures, and yes, though the specifics Riegel had in mind (value is always compared with value in an exchange) nevertheless money does measure value and settles the terms of barter after they are resolved and the deal is made.]

These insights by Riegel are greater than those of Copernicus. Copernicus discovered the true position of the sun. Riegel discovered the true nature and origin of money— and the ramifications of Riegel’s work go far beyond those of Copernicus in human affairs.

[On this point I certainly agree!]

On these magnificent concepts…. we build. Let’s go to work.

Dennis Riness

May 5, 2012

We remain open to any worthy correspondence and comment.

David Burton

dpbmss@mail.com

[16 May, 2014: UPDATE I thought you might like to know that this man has been arrested for organizing a tax evasion scheme involving a phony "church." 
Man Gets 13 Months for Role in Tax Evasion Plot

Thank-you and duly noted.  This blog's proposal does not involve tax evasion so if anyone had that in mind they are advised to look elsewhere.]

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