#18.1 Gleanings from the John Galt speech - Part 1

The famous John Galt address was written by Ayn Rand (1905-1982) and appeared in her novel, Atlas Shrugged (1957). She put these words into the mouth of one of her most enigmatic characters, the arch individualist (as if that is such a bad thing), John Galt. To my thinking, from the first time I read these words, while still in my early 20's, they could have been, probably were, autobiographical. They certainly represent a coherent philosophy, one which it will be our business in these posts to uncover.

John Galt's speech is more than 60 pages long, therefore this is going to be a series, since one blog post encompassing this speech would be entirely too much to chew on. It will of course be necessary to try and keep the themes in this series grouped together around the few key concepts that emerge.

We are not in any way going to side with or align ourselves in some lock step manner with Objectivism, Ayn Rand or anything else. We are looking for the facts and the truth, wherever they may be found. Since this speech came up in the Peace Revolution podcasts, I considered it worth further investigation, critique and for relevance to the establishing of (the or an) VEN. John Galt's words will be in blue, mine in black. John Galt begins with this simple statement,

For twelve years, you have been asking: Who is John Galt? This is John Galt speaking. I am the man who loves his life. I am the man who does not sacrifice his love or his values. 

No matter who one is, no matter how humble, apart from whatever we have been taught, can we love our lives and not be willing to sacrifice our love of our lives or our values? Do we know what we will not give up or give away? Can we define it?

I am the man who has deprived you of victims and thus has destroyed your world, and if you wish to know why you are perishing-you who dread knowledge-I am the man who will now tell you.

The you in this sentence is not the you of the previous sentence. In the former, the people in the streets as well as those in high places had heard of John Galt and wondered who he could be. That may have been as it was back in 1957. Of course, these days they'd know who all the John Galts are and where they are, etc. so the same literary trick Rand used back then, wouldn't work today. The you in the present sentence is addressed to the overlords, the masters of the present world system. What John Galt did of course, he and his friends, was to bring the world economy to a screeching halt. What he means by deprived you of victims can well refer to everyone who is in the grip of the present world system; the money issued on principles running counter to the creation of value, etc. The rest of the yous are everyone, who are perishing and dread knowledge.

You have heard it said that this is an age of moral crisis. You have said it yourself, half in fear, half in hope that the words had no meaning.

A moral crisis affecting decisions based on right vs. wrong, hoping that words had no meaning. Starting from first principles, we accept identity; things are, they cannot be otherwise stated as not without the result being meaningless.

You have cried that man’s sins are destroying the world and you have cursed human nature for its unwillingness to practice the virtues you demanded.

This sounds most like the irrational whining of environmentalists or those hyping the CO2 climate change hoax, but it applies quite well to statists in general and certain kinds of elitists in particular.

Since virtue, to you, consists of sacrifice, you have demanded more sacrifices at every successive disaster.

A sacrifice is giving up something of value, usually of tremendous value, for nothing tangible in return; a sacrifice for some higher purpose, whether it really is or not. A theme that will be emphasized in this series is that sacrifice of this kind is usually foolish and unavailing even of the causes for which it is sought.

In the name of a return to morality, you have sacrificed all those evils which you held as the cause of your plight. You have sacrificed justice to mercy. You have sacrificed independence to unity. You have sacrificed reason to faith. You have sacrificed wealth to need. You have sacrificed self-esteem to self-denial. You have sacrificed happiness to duty.

Again the you here can broadly apply to the people in the street or those who would be their rulers. Sacrifices are listed:

Justice to mercy – letting the guilty get off scot free for whatever merciful reason having nothing whatever to do with the crime. This is especially true of those guilty of financial crimes, but is increasingly true of all crimes against life, liberty and property, the basic rights of each human being.

Independence to unity – this sacrifice was typified in Lincoln's war (known by most today as the American Civil War) but it applies in thousands of different ways. The calls for unity only benefit those who would sit on top and direct those levels below them, it actually serves no other purpose. There is a broader discussion we could have concerning how one chooses one's friends, generally those who agree with us on most issues are more likely to earn our friendship, those who disagree with us on most things we accept as true are not likely to remain friends for very long. The desire to make everyone conform to some unifying concept or conception of the world is the basis for all ideology; the political splitting up of a group of people, for political and usually economic purposes as well. We recognize the need for people to group together for mutual support, as in a Value Unit exchange network (VEN), but without respect for independence of mind or will, the group itself will become weak and prone to being swayed by a clever propagandist, charismatic demagogue or sociopathic despot. 

You have destroyed all that which you held to be evil and achieved all that which you held to be good.

The you here is plainly aimed at the political, social and economic leadership. The evils were those points the Communist Manifesto were supposed to right. The world John Galt might be referencing is a world where nothing but the state (and of course those elitists behind the state) have any power.

Why, then, do you shrink in horror from the sight of the world around you? That world is not the product of your sins, it is the product and the image of your virtues. It is your moral ideal brought into reality in its full and final perfection. You have fought for it, you have dreamed of it, and you have wished it, and I-I am the man who has granted you your wish.

The enemies of a collectivist order were the individual human being's rights to life, liberty and property, all sacrificed to the needs of the state and usually unspoken, the desires of its masters operating the levers of state power from behind the scenes. We are not going forward accepting the usual horrendous nonsense that any state stands alone without the power of some force behind it, which we may just go right ahead and describe as Mystery Babylon, that which was, was not, and is again, as it travels on its way to perdition, at the very least, the scrapheap of history.

Your ideal had an implacable enemy, which your code of morality was designed to destroy. I have withdrawn that enemy. I have taken it out of your way and out of your reach. I have removed the source of all those evils you were sacrificing one by one. I have ended your battle. I have stopped your motor. I have deprived your world of man’s mind.

Again the your in the first sentence applies to those who would claim to run society and those who support their efforts. The key word in the first sentence is ideal. An ideal is something that is supposed to be perfect, that hence does not exist in the real world. Idealism, is the most dangerous philosophy on earth, based in irrationality and is the fundamental breeding ground of ideology. Any thinking human being should become aware of the many ways in which idealism has ruined our lives and our world. Look around you, idealism is still doing its dreadful work. By depriving the world of the mind of man, John Galt is suggesting as anyone with any real knowledge knows full well, that all the great improvements and innovations in the world are creations of the free minds of free men and women working according to their own needs and desires as individualists, as independents. When a political or social order stops this activity, it makes everything in that society stop and results in a sterile and ultimately genocidal environment for most people, a giant concentration camp or reservation.

Men do not live by the mind, you say? I have withdrawn those who do. The mind is impotent, you say? I have withdrawn those whose mind isn’t. There are values higher than the mind, you say? I have withdrawn those for whom there aren’t.

I'm suggesting we do the same in today's world, just say no and walk out of the present system. Those who are protecting the elites, who really deserve no protection, should join us and just say no and walk out on them. They aren't worthy of protection as most have innocent blood on their hands. Want their crimes to be attributed as yours too?  There is such a thing as Misprision of Felony, check it out.

While you were dragging to your sacrificial altars the men of justice, of independence, of reason, of wealth, of self-esteem-I beat you to it, I reached them first. I told them the nature of the game you were playing and the nature of that moral code of yours, which they had been too innocently generous to grasp. I showed them the way to live by another morality-mine. It is mine that they chose to follow.

We will be getting into more of John Galt's code of morality as we proceed and doubtless, we will be cherry-picking to some extent, because even as good as Rand was at understanding rational frames of reference and argument, she held a few fallacies that we will lay bare. But the people John Galt references who have been withdrawn from the collectivist system are those who had real talent, who were capable of inventing things, who knew about farming and how best to grow the best crops, raise the best animals, etc. Those who actually know how to work and run things are Galt's people. 

It's worth noting who these people are by the labels given; justice, independence, reason, wealth and self esteem. Don't jump to any ready made conclusions. These people belong to no set political party or ideology. Justice is really easy to grasp, most people know injustice when they see it whether it takes the form of the Taliban cutting off a woman's head for using makeup or someone being stopped for an insignificant traffic violation. Independence is also easy to spot as most these days are dependent on something or someone, so the truly independent stick out. Reason becomes impossible as one is forced to accept irrational bases for common philosophy. All statists rely on something irrational; devotion to a controlling state power, so in effect, sorry Mr. Still and others, your ideas are irrational. There is no such thing as issuance of state currency or any other money “in the public interest.” All such “public interests” are essentially local and derive their meaning from local application. The broader that focus becomes, the less that interest can possibly be public. I recommend to anyone who doubts this to study how public works benefited special interests, whether those public works ever accomplished anything or in some cases were ever even completed.

Wealth is the least well understood by the majority, and that too is likely by design. Wealth, as we have said, is simply and only that which produces income. Though we habitually speak of a commonwealth, in fact all wealth must be essentially private, so that it may be properly directed by the individual owners of that wealth, who have the most to gain or lose by failure of its productivity. Public wealth, managed by a group, is never efficient and usually falls prey to whoever can control the group. Public corporations that are said to be wealthy and bestow income on their shareholders in the form of dividends or capital appreciation of their stock (and wow is that ever a fiction) are likewise excluded from our discussion concerning (the or an) VEN, because the natural and rational linkages between ownership, management, responsibility, etc. and wealth are all broken. An absentee owner has less reason to be concerned than someone who must rely on the produce of their wealth.

If one has self-esteem to any noticeable degree in this society they are held to be arrogant or stigmatized for holding themselves up above “the masses” (as if they were breaking some moral law which in fact doesn't exist), who are supposed to be given self-esteem as if it were available in pill form (another pharmaceutical dream / nightmare). Real self-esteem is based on what one knows from experience and has proven to themselves countless times from practice. People in a collectivist scheme are not expected to gain anything like this, they are expected to become dependent on state sanctioned authorities, who don't have to explain their theories or themselves to anybody, who are in most cases deemed above the law (another great fallacy of the modern world).

What most people have become aware of however is how wealth has been destroyed, or more than likely stolen from those who were producing by those who cannot produce anything themselves. The aim of these looters (in UN Agenda 21 parlance, the “stakeholders”), no matter how rich they are in granted state currency (all from private central banks at interest of course) is to REDUCE productivity, while proclaiming the value of their paper assets to more unwary people with too much money to burn, as a scheme that intends on creating the illusion of value through imposed scarcity of goods and services produced. Please let that thought sink in. These billionaires one hears about, but whose names few people know, have managed to acquire their tremendous riches and supposed wealth without producing anything! They do not strictly speaking belong in John Galt's definition of the wealthy. 

Happiness to duty. This will be perhaps the last card that falls as people would like to hold onto their illusions, that their states and nations really matter, when all the collectivist forces have been arrayed in a centuries long process to destroy them and replace them with some new world collectivist order that knows no borders, no barriers to its encroachment, etc.

The you in the following refers directly to statists and collectivists wherever they are at whatever socio-economic level.

All the men who have vanished, the men you hated, yet dreaded to lose, it is I who have taken them away from you. Do not attempt to find us. We do not choose to be found. Do not cry that it is our duty to serve you. We do not recognize such duty. Do not cry that you need us. We do not consider need a claim. Do not cry that you own us. You don’t. Do not beg us to return. We are on strike, we, the men of the mind.

... and of course the women of the mind as well. In fact what will happen, is already happening and is a direct result of the combination of looting of wealth and empowerment of the state; there will be less for everyone, except those at the top who produce nothing. They intend it this way because George Carlin was right, they do not care about you. Get rid of that idea too; the powers that be, who make all the rules and set in place FORCE to compel obedience, do not care about you, they do not care about the environment, about the earth, about anything but themselves.

We are on strike against self-immolation. We are on strike against the creed of unearned rewards and unrewarded duties. We are on strike against the dogma that the pursuit of one’s happiness is evil. We are on strike against the doctrine that life is guilt.

If someone ever tries to make you feel guilty about something you do not feel guilty about, the best course is to turn from that person, shun them, have nothing more to do with them. That is your right. I am one who has and would sever ties over such dangerous follies. No one is guilty for driving a car, even a large one, for eating more than someone in a less well run society can or would, for living in a better house than someone who doesn't, etc. Those who suppose that some state or other can rectify matters, make them “fair” etc. is an enemy to the human race, since “fairness” as they define it, is an irrational conception backed up by the use of FORCE to impose it on all.

There is a difference between our strike and all those you’ve practised for centuries: our strike consists, not of making demands, but of granting them. We are evil, according to your morality. We have chosen not to harm you any longer. We are useless, according to your economics. We have chosen not to exploit you any longer. We are dangerous and to be shackled, according to your politics. We have chosen not to endanger you, nor to wear the shackles any longer. We are only an illusion, according to your philosophy. We have chosen not to blind you any longer and have left you free to face reality-the reality you wanted, the world as you see it now, a world without mind.

For the most part, we are living in that world right now. Just look around you.

We have granted you everything you demanded of us, we who had always been the givers, but have only now understood it. We have no demands to present to you, no terms to bargain about, no compromise to reach. You have nothing to offer us. We do not need you.

Therefore those who can, and that number shall be growing, will drop out of collectivist society. Those who remain will behave as they did in places like the former Soviet Union, pretend to work and pretend to be paid. Nothing of any value will be produced until the whole society tends to resemble a huge concentration camp where everything becomes dismal, grey and depressing (which will give the pharmaceuticals the market they want to place more people on drugs they can't get off of without becoming psychotics). In two or three generations of this, human population will be drastically reduced. They wont bother cleaning up the planet, they'll let nature take care of that. That's the overall plan of things like UN Agenda 21, etc.

Are you now crying: No, this was not what you wanted? A mindless world of ruins was not your goal? You did not want us to leave you? You moral cannibals, I know that you’ve always known what it was that you wanted. But your game is up, because now we know it, too.

No, they are not crying now. They believe themselves to be at the top of their game, kings of the heap. The heap of what? Of the garbage dump they helped produce to replace that which was of real value that was produced by those who put their minds, hearts and souls into it? We'll come to the “intellectual property” issue in a future paper. It will explain much. [Now, particularly with the break between myself and Laurence Gilbert, this issue will be far more important.]

Through centuries of scourges and disasters, brought about by your code of morality,

- insert here, statism, collectivism, private central bank monopolies over money and credit, public corporations with limited liabilities, fractional reserve banking, usury of all kinds, which supports a war making power just as it did in ancient Babylon, and you have in essence their code of morality.

you have cried that your code had been broken, that the scourges were punishment for breaking it, that men were too weak and too selfish to spill all the blood it required. You damned man, you damned existence, you damned this earth, but never dared to question your code. Your victims took the blame and struggled on, with your curses as reward for their martyrdom-while you went on crying that your code was noble, but human nature was not good enough to practice it. And no one rose to ask the question: Good?-by what standard?

Whether this be “the noble lie” or something like the UN Agenda 21, it matters not. All collectivist logic boils down to similar idealisms; those who support their new world order or its enemies.

You wanted to know John Galt’s identity. I am the man who has asked that question.

His question was, how good was / is the collectivist social and economic morality? It's a LIE for one thing and is also based on frauds that mask the essential intent; to steal and ruin that which does not by natural right belong to them, so that they can set up a “fair” system, “fair” in their own eyes, since they have arrogated to themselves the position of being unassailable authorities on the subject. Now, who is arrogant?

Yes, this is an age of moral crisis. Yes, you are bearing punishment for your evil. But it is not man who is now on trial and it is not human nature that will take the blame. It is your moral code that’s through, this time. Your moral code has reached its climax, the blind alley at the end of its course. And if you wish to go on living, what you now need is not to return to morality-you who have never known any-but to discover it.

The actual truth being that the collectivists did not believe in a rational morality at all, that anything per se could be good or bad, since they threw out reasoning from first principles and allowed irrationality to parade itself around as a genuine philosophy, one that they accepted although it was not, at inception anything but a means to uphold the dubious rights of a ruling elite to call the shots on everyone else, “the masses” to be looked down upon and herded like cattle for their own good, which was really for the good of the ruling elites, who I thus remind you all out there are “the useless eaters.”

You have heard no concepts of morality but the mystical or the social.

We are going to maintain that matters of right and wrong are in fact rational and no morality (including business ethics) having any meaning needs rely on irrational philosophy (which includes ALL mysticism) or some claim to what is good for society, the earth the ecosystem, the biosphere, or any of that. We will be on guard against all arguments from authority as essentially bogus. We will know the truth and this knowledge shall set us all free.

You have been taught that morality is a code of behaviour imposed on you by whim, the whim of a supernatural power or the whim of society, to serve God’s purpose or your neighbour’s welfare, to please an authority beyond the grave or else next door-but not to serve your life or pleasure.

Parenthetically, we have good reason to believe that while there may have been real encounters between deities and people in past ages, that it is highly likely that these encounters were misinterpreted, misrepresented and that no constituted authority whatsoever can adequately claim that they even have understood the intended messages of these encounters correctly. What happens when you get to the other side and realize that all that you thought was really something else? Who knows? It's irrational speculation perhaps, but anything held onto simply because it has long been believed, by tradition or some other set of fables, deserves to be immediately suspect.

Your pleasure, you have been taught, is to be found in immorality, your interests would best be served by evil, and any moral code must be designed not for you, but against you, not to further your life, but to drain it.

This gets a little complicated but it is essentially this: Real immorality is doing that which is literally wrong in any sense. Since real morality has a rational basis on acceptance of identity as a fundamental principle; that which is, actually is, then we have mentioned here that someone taught that pleasure was to be had in doing that which is rationally wrong. How is that possible? Look around you, you see it everywhere. On closer examination, all that is supposed to be pleasurable that falls into the irrationality of deliberately doing something wrong, is shown for exactly what it is; a stupid or unfortunate action that is ultimately wasteful or ruinous of one's life, liberty or property. We may get into this more in a different paper.

For centuries, the battle of morality was fought between those who claimed that your life belongs to God and those who claimed that it belongs to your neighbors-between those who preached that the good is self-sacrifice for the sake of ghosts in heaven and those who preached that the good is self-sacrifice for the sake of incompetents on earth. And no one came to say that your life belongs to you and that the good is to live it.

We in the Value Unit / VEN camp are going to say this too; your life belongs to you and that the good is to live it.

Both sides agreed that morality demands the surrender of your self-interest and of your mind, that the moral and the practical are opposites, that morality is not the province of reason, but the province of faith and FORCE. Both sides agreed that no rational morality is possible, that there is no right or wrong in reason-that in reason there’s no reason to be moral.

In contradiction to statists and collectivists, as well as mystics, we are taking John Galt's (Ayn Rand's) message as a given; a true morality is always rational and one can indeed find great pleasure in pursuing a moral life, once clearly understood.

Whatever else they fought about, it was against man’s mind that all your moralists have stood united. It was man’s mind that all their schemes and systems were intended to despoil and destroy. Now choose to perish or to learn that the anti-mind is the anti-life.

Man’s mind is his basic tool of survival. Life is given to him, survival is not. His body is given to him, its sustenance is not. His mind is given to him, its content is not. To remain alive, he must act, and before he can act he must know the nature and purpose of his action. He cannot obtain his food without a knowledge of food and of the way to obtain it. He cannot dig a ditch-or build a cyclotron-without a knowledge of his aim and of the means to achieve it. To remain alive, he must think.

But to think is an act of choice. The key to what you so recklessly call ‘human nature,’ the open secret you live with, yet dread to name, is the fact that man is a being of volitional consciousness. Reason does not work automatically; thinking is not a mechanical process; the connections of logic are not made by instinct. The function of your stomach, lungs or heart is automatic; the function of your mind is not. In any hour and issue of your life, you are free to think or to evade that effort. But you are not free to escape from your nature, from the fact that reason is your means of survival-so that for you, who are a human being, the question ‘to be or not to be’ is the question ‘to’ think or not to think.’

It's axiomatic that those who are reading this are by definition thinkers. Oh yes, your thinking may have been tarnished by years of public education or the just as bad private equivalents, but at least you read. Those of you who use the translate function on this webpage and read my words in your own language are thinkers. It's time to think our way out of the mess the ruling elites have placed us in. The next sections provide a starting place for many relevant considerations.

A being of volitional consciousness has no automatic course of behaviour. He needs a code of values to guide his actions. 

We are not assuming anything like a mystical code of values or a social code of values dictated by someone who claims special knowledge from outside the system of general human affairs. 

‘Value’ is that which one acts to gain and keep, ‘virtue’ is the action by which one gains and keeps it.

Wealth then is not an evil but an essential. Since it is normal, natural and rational to want to acquire something that produces a livelihood, an income, the acquisition of appropriate wealth to one's needs is a real value. Notice that virtue, that which cannot help but be good in the strict moral sense, is the appropriate action that is under normal circumstances not hindered by nature, or by irrational FORCES; church or state. We should everywhere and always be mindful of our unique virtues and apply them to action in the acquisition of value.

‘Value’ presupposes an answer to the question: of value to whom and for what? ‘Value’ presupposes a standard, a purpose and the necessity of action in the face of an alternative. Where there are no alternatives, no values are possible.

Values must relate directly to fundamental alternatives; life or death.

There is only one fundamental alternative in the universe: existence or non-existence-and it pertains to a single class of entities: to living organisms. The existence of inanimate matter is unconditional, the existence of life is not; it depends on a specific course of action.

Right there, the poisonous notion of “unconditional love” should see its demise in the mind of any thinking, rational human being. Nothing that is alive and living can be unconditional at all. Those who have blithely (without critical thought) accepted this notion are under the sway of idealists, who know nothing, nor care anything about truth, believing truth to be relative. What then is the obvious contradiction between “unconditional love” preached by those who only accept a “relative truth”?

Matter is indestructible, it changes its forms, but it cannot cease to exist. It is only a living organism that faces a constant alternative: the issue of life or death. Life is a process of self-sustaining and-self-generated action. If an organism fails in that action, it dies; its chemical elements remain, but its life goes out of existence. It is only the concept of ‘Life’ that makes the concept of ‘Value’ possible. It is only to a living entity that things can be good or evil.

There are those out there, who have decided that they can't believe in anything greater than themselves, so they will believe in the earth as a living entity that is capable of having a life and of losing it to good or evil actions by ... guess who? mankind. Once they have accepted this nonsense, they then can entrust some new priesthood “science” with the task of settling moral issues based on another “higher power” than basic human reasoning. We have heard of this long enough. We will simply not accept it, not today, not next week, not next year, NEVER!

A plant must feed itself in order to live; the sunlight, the water, the chemicals it needs are the values its nature has set it to pursue; its life is the standard of value directing its actions. But a plant has no choice of action; there are alternatives in the conditions it encounters, but there is no alternative in its function: it acts automatically to further its life, it cannot act for its own destruction.

An animal is equipped for sustaining its life; its senses provide it with an automatic code of action, an automatic knowledge of what is good for it or evil. It has no power to extend its knowledge or to evade it. In conditions where its knowledge proves inadequate, it dies. But so long as it lives, it acts on its knowledge, with automatic safety and no power of choice, it is unable to ignore its own good, unable to decide to choose the evil and act as its own destroyer.

There is a fallacy here. I wonder if anyone else caught it? Rand (John Galt) is assuming that they know everything there is to know about animal volitional consciousness, when of course they do not. One cannot in fact infer that plants are incapable of feeling distress or pain, and the same of course can be said for animals. Mankind on the other hand is all too keenly aware of what makes it feel good and what makes it feel bad, and these are not in categories of deliberate actions to find pleasure in that which is morally wrong. Before leaving this topic, there is likewise no rational basis for any authority representing the supposed rights of plants or animals, as presently exists. Since no one can know and more importantly since these authorities frequently represent the entrenched statist or collectivist interests and are paid by the “stakeholders” from behind their Mystery Babylon curtain, they are ALL invalid and the rules we are suggesting for a rational morality apply to them as well; have no more dealings with them.

Man has no automatic code of survival. His particular distinction from all other living species is the necessity to act in the face of alternatives by means of volitional choice. He has no automatic knowledge of what is good for him or evil, what values his life depends on, what course of action it requires. 

This does not mean that we require a sanctioned or sanctified group to tell us what to do either. 

Are you prattling about an instinct of self-preservation? An instinct of self-preservation is precisely what man does not possess. An ‘instinct’ is an unerring and automatic form of knowledge. A desire is not an instinct. A desire to live does not give you the knowledge required for living. And even man’s desire to live is not automatic: your secret evil today is that that is the desire you do not hold. Your fear of death is not a love of life and will not give you the knowledge needed to keep it. Man must obtain his knowledge and choose his actions by a process of thinking, which nature will not force him to perform. Man has the power to act as his own destroyer-and that is the way he has acted through most of his history.

One of the soundest proofs for God, or some higher authority, rests on this consideration; that mankind has survived its own follies this long without going extinct. In fact we don't know precisely or for certain that there weren't a few close calls in the past.

A living entity that regarded its means of survival as evil, would not survive. A plant that struggled to mangle its roots, a bird that fought to break its wings would not remain for long in the existence they affronted. But the history of man has been a struggle to deny and to destroy his mind.

Man has been called a rational being, but rationality is a matter of choice-and the alternative his nature offers him is: rational being or suicidal animal. Man has to be man-by choice; he has to hold his life as a value-by choice: he has to learn to sustain it-by choice; he has to discover the values it requires and practice his virtues-by choice.

A code of values accepted by choice is a code of morality.

So far, we have encountered some concepts that are actually pretty old, but are new to most; that value is rational and based on human life. That a rational morality upholds rational values and a rational immorality denies them and is basically a system of death. We'll continue this conversation in the next post in this series.

David Burton 

NEXT

#13.10 Peace Revolution Podcasts 66 thru 68

Additional podcasts in this series will be associated with #13 papers.  See INDEX for all updates to this series.

2012-11-7: #66 How Central Bankers Harness and Manipulate Human Resources

This episode is over 5 hours long. It begins with the heart of one of my favourite movies, My Dinner With Andre. If you've never seen it. It's available on You Tube, for how long, who knows? Then you hear from Nixon, and other clips. The subject is Central Banks and the role of central bankers. I note with some glee, as Richard Grove, reads from Rothschild's description of itself as a business, the copy is peppered with the word “advisory” which is the same as the word Soviet. Yes, these are not coincidences.

Most people keep their attention focused on the fronts and never bother to notice the numerous “advisers” who mill about just behind the scenes and in all cases never far from their charges. Likewise, most people do not normally concern themselves with the designs of organization as it has come down through history, specifically the networks of spies and other intriguers, all of course paid for by those, the financial power, ever looking for opportunities to extend their power over others. There is a real conspiracy, no theory. Jeckyll Island and the Federal Reserve are real history. It was and is a conspiracy; plain as the nose on anyone's face. So too was much else. Take your damn blinders and glasses off! We should be prepared to take our gloves off too, verbally in any case if necessary, to recognize all ad hominem arguments (jeers) they will throw at us and be prepared to respond to them. Do not choose to argue with any of them. Those who get it will get it. Those who wont, perhaps cannot extricate themselves so easily. To the extent they are worried is a good chance they will begin to understand and respond accordingly. Meanwhile most of the sheep in their pens still prefer watching the shadows on Plato's cave TV and other silly media and generally do not like being reminded of their present dismal condition.

We consider this whole episode “grist for the mill” for all those who would contemplate starting (the or an) VEN. To those in my audience who understand and value the words of scripture, to the present financial system, “come out of her (Babylon), my people” applies. We note also, since it matters greatly, that we can go one better than G. Edward Griffin's demand that we base money or currency on silver and gold, which is just what they who currently rule would want just as well and indeed still use themselves, not behind the scenes either, but through the gold traders in London setting the daily (every day except Saturday, which should tell you something) “spot prices” (bottom prices: wholesale prices) for silver and gold as commodities. We admit that we who would intend forming (the or an) VEN need precious metals in the short run to make exchanges between other currencies and proposed Value Units, since as restated here, we do not recognize the viability of holding ANY of these private bankers' currencies by any IE within the VEN, whereas a piece of a precious metal is at least something that can be traded as a go between, a conduit between present currencies and Value Units.

Much else will become apparent from what Griffin says; it has at this point nothing to do with money and everything to do with power, not just in any one country but everywhere on earth. Joan Veon also comes across pretty well too. It's long past time to wake up.

Homework:

James Kunin- The Strawberry Statement
Bella Dodd- School of Darkness

2012-12-1: #67 Integrity as the Measure of Value

Very good news concerning John Taylor Gatto's recovery from stroke. Richard informs that he will be producing DVD's instead of posting videos on YouTube due to so called copyright infringements -bogus canards! These will be available at TragedyandHope.com.

This episode is over 5 1/2 hours in length, core material nonetheless; a montage of speakers, Alan Watts, Manly P. Hall, Ron Paul, Chengiah Ragaven (listen to how he describes Oxford), Richard Grove, all communicating the various shades of the message of liberty and in congruence with Brett Vienotte's School Sucks Project, criticism of the public school system, etc. the focus is integrity. Integrity is moral, rational and instrumentally relevant. Money is a key part of the discussion.

I might add that none of these speeches expresses the key ideas perfectly and that nobody is perfect, we can learn much from everyone if we have the patience and the training (the Trivium) and experience to discern truth from illusion, etc. Richard Grove brings us back to the missing Trivium; fiction accepted as fact, discusses John Taylor Gatto and other detriments of the public school system, etc.

Grove explains that source material as a past record of a previous search into the same data mine. The same ideas and data emerge, the same questions are asked, assessed against reality, etc. what Grove found in Gatto's work and put together with other obvious research into present systems, which originated in 19^th century Prussia. Grove presents the history of the Prussian system pretty well, sees the import of these ideas back through Boston and elsewhere in America, then out elsewhere throughout the world. Gatto's educational functions are reviewed. Inglis' contributions are reviewed. The discussion gets into master plans and schemes of the wicked, the unscrupulous, the elitists at the top, their actions known and unknown, and Grove also gives a very clear description of the realistic response to psychopathic behaviour on any scale at whatever level, laying the blame for our unawareness squarely on the public school system.

Homeschooling is likened to the modern equivalent of moving West in the American experience. It's not just enough to know how to read, it's about applying critical thinking to what you read, otherwise you become the slave of whoever wrote or printed what you are reading. {Through the Trivium, critical thinking becomes an acquirable skill and used to be taught to children from the age of 7 until about 150 years ago.) Grove is realistic, inspiring and essential on these points, especially related to educating one's own children (and oneself!).

Grove runs down the Trivium process, through grammar, logic and rhetoric. He describes clearing one's RAM. He talks about thinking, reality, etc. Critical thinking defined again. Time management and integrity are linked. The internet as an open source educational tool. More on critical thinking, discerning fallacies.

Another speech from Manly Hall and a song called The Ghost of Tom Joad to close out the episode.

(To those who hear this entire episode: rhetorical critical questions; 1) after hearing this presentation, and assuming that most of what's presented is hard evidence, what would be the most natural emotional response? If you get the first one then 2) is this; knowing what you already know, and some of you will from your own experiences know far more than others, what is the most natural emotional reaction that would prove the most detrimental to the survival of humanity?)

Homework:

Jean Shinoda Bolen- The Tao of Psychology: Synchronicity and Self
John Taylor Gatto- Dumbing Us Down: the Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling 
Alexander James Inglis- Principles of Secondary Education
 

2012-12-31: #68 From Feudalism to Agenda 21

The process of financial conquest has been underway. Getting at some material that's often hotly contested as regards validity, reality, etc. Richard Grove puts together another lengthy but essential episode. More of what you never hear anywhere else, for good reason; they really would prefer that you just didn't know, stayed asleep and did what you were led by them to believe, to conform, obey, etc.

Subjects cover relevant history, it's probable course, etc. We say again, since much of this material has multiple sources and is in most cases decades old, the best approach to all historical study is to follow the money. Who issues it, what the chief buyers in an economy want to buy (what governments want to buy), the affairs of so called “royals” and the whole plan to conquer the world, bringing in their new collectivism, which is just old feudalism in new clothes. In this case they happen to be green, as in environmentalism (the term ecologism is used once), other isms, always a disease of the human psyche and society for blatant political agendas by the elites, who laugh while they tell lies, the chief one if you have been following along, is the noble lie, that there is something special about them that they have a right to rule over the rest of us.

Listen to the incredible lies officials and bureaucrats (college professors too) use to try and obscure the truth. Who indeed are the “stakeholders” mentioned? “Sustainability,” as we have said before, has absolutely nothing to do with what real people everywhere want, a restoration and clean-up of the environment, which they have no intention of doing; this is a takeover, pure and simple. When it is finally unmasked, as it will be sooner or later, we can expect many “natural courses” will play out. Such is the warfare between tyranny and liberty down through the ages. Which side are you on?

The core conceit, which you hear from a variety of these people, is that they somehow have a right to conduct the affairs of others, for whatever supposed flipping reason, they never even give it a single thought, they uncritically accept (often with disgusting laughter where laughter has no place) brutal collectivist dogma. So they imagine their actions advance human progress, when in fact they are advancing an agenda of universal oppression and genocide. The supporters think they'll be the ones pulling the levers of power. Really? Damn fools! Wait til they have a gun at your head. It will suddenly dawn on you that, oh yeah Stalin had his purges, even Lenin had them, Hitler too. So by aiding the establishment of a totalitarian regime, for whatever unsupportable green stupidity you can imagine, you believe you'll be on the winning side of history.  You wont.

Anyone considering themselves a pragmatist (a proven fake philosophy with no ethics at all) or a social democrat, a statist lite, is a fellow traveller with the oppressors. If the ultimate leftist power is represented by Bolshevism, which had an impressive record of innocent casualties resulting from its ruthless takeover by FORCE of old Russia, may it never ever be forgotten, then I suppose socialism lite is more workable? Come on, giving the state that kind of power is always a bad idea. It will be a worse idea this time around too because of technology. But already unforeseen developments have been made possible by this same technology, so there may be room for hope.

All the historical material covered in this episode is at least as old as the steps listed in the Communist Manifesto (and a lot of it much older) and traces itself through UN initiatives and conferences in Rio de Janeiro and elsewhere. People involved in these initiatives should take a good look in the mirror, congratulate themselves as the new pseudo-god tyrants, the new communists, the new Bolsheviks, hurrah to the almighty state and the oligarchs who run the money, hurrah! Until of course, should these gangsters win, they turn on those who lifted them to power in some huge purge, which certainly will follow a statist takeover of the world, the establishment of a world government to grind the boot into the face of the people, a world economy to grind the people into the earth, a world religion that teaches some phony radical atavism, a worship of the earth, etc. all parts of their grand plan to remain in power. Very informative.

The lecture by Walter Veith “The Beamable Sustainable Princes” goes very deep and is of utmost significance. This is basic historical data: ignore and deny it at your peril. Those closest to it, know it as fact, which is stranger than fiction. 

Webster Tarpley's lecture “The Coming Fall of the House of Windsor” follows. He puts a lot together and brings it all into the present. Sometimes the audio could be better. In such places, headphones work better.

The episode closes with an in depth discussion of oligarchy, which is the reigning system of today. The model presented represents religion as in service to the state (Byzantine style) with the oligarchs running the government from behind the scenes. These oligarchs would be the UN projects “stakeholders” mentioned above.

Tarpley traces this system back to and through Venice. We believe that the banking institutions that developed in Europe from the 13^th century onward, headquartered in places like Venice, derive their business models, practices and polices from the Babylonians (the gold and silver bullion dealers, managers of metals storehouses, finance magnates, etc.) and while they rule, they remain in the background, as they have in fact since the Congress of Vienna in 1815.

(Parenthetically, the present beast -and the last- is Mystery Babylon. Figure it out, it's staring us right in the face. The previous beast, for a short time, was Napoleon. Before him, the Roman Catholic Church was the beast, a military power on the European continent that was kept alive after a mortal blow was suffered by the head of the previous beast, the Roman Empire, which was saved by becoming the Holy Roman Empire. Before Rome there was Alexandrian Greece, and before them the Persians, before them the Babylonians, who developed modern – ancient banking and finance and the whole war making, slaves, gold, silver, etc. dirty businesses. Before them was Egypt. But that's just my addition to what Tarpley is saying).

The way out of all of this? Beginning locally, thinking of yourselves as local networks of interest, people who have things naturally to trade and share with each other. It starts from there, together with awareness of what the tyrants are up to. Discussing alternative economies, alternative tokens of exchange, the proposed Value Unit exchange notes and coins, thinking linkages between local businesses, etc. Prepare to establish local Value Unit monetary exchange (IE) centres. Propose to this blog rules for setting up a local IE that would be applicable to all.

Homework:

Post Sustainability Institute

Democrats against UN Agenda 21

Rosa Koire- Behind the Green Mask
Cheng Nien- Life and Death in Shanghai 
BF Skinner- Walden Two 
Barbara Tuchman- A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century

INTERMISSION

#17 On Monetary Theory - A Conversation

Referenced link: http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article1113.html

This will be a response in the manner of a conversation with Christopher M. Quigley, who wrote a provocative piece on the The Market Oracle, posted on May 29, 2007 · entitled MONETARY THEORY OF E.C. RIEGEL. Mr. Quigley's words will appear in blue, mine will appear in black.

In a life spanning over 70 years, one of the greatest students of money, and its meaning, was the American E.C. Riegel. Many regarded him as a genius for his understanding of the nature and functioning of money as a human and social institution. This essay is a direct introduction to his main ideas on this subject, as, increasingly, people are beginning to realise the need for a more stable monetary unit. In essence, in his book "Flight From Inflation" he identified money as the mathematics of value and argued, that for a democracy to thrive, he believed the "money power" must be free. He basically viewed any political economic monetary system as socialist. For this reason he was at odds with Adam Smith's view of the World. Indeed, he felt that Smith in his "Wealth Of Nations" pre-empted Marx as a social theorist.
 
Not only are we inclined to agree, but we would regard any monetary theory that failed to address the mathematical anomalies created by usury, fractional reserve banking, central banking and government issue of money that Riegel identified, as inherently suspect. We would include the so called “Austrian school of economics” as suspect as well as the Keynesians, socialists, etc. all being products of the same ruling elite: basically if an economic theory or system fails to recognize the fraud involved in usury, private central bank issue, government issue or fractional reserve banking, etc. they are automatically discarded as worthless for much else but basic economic understandings of barter and trade relationships among traders, assuming they even get those right.

Regardless of his views, Riegel has come to be respected for his unswerving belief in mankind and his heroic efforts to champion practical freedom based on the realities of exchange systems, which are based on value.

Riegel was not one who based monetary value on measures of a commodity like gold or silver and recognized immediately that such rare commodities were susceptible to manipulation from outside the monetary system. Because this is so, their only possible ready value within a genuine Value Unit based monetary system would be as a means of exchange between Value Units and other currencies, since no genuine Independent Exchange (IE) EVER wants to be holding ANY of these currencies, which are strictly speaking the private property of fraud based businesses with which no IE wants any direct dealing. The same for the moment includes governments, although this relationship will change with the immediate needs of each community; the first governments to be considered for B membership will be local governments, always based on the number of A members who work for them.

The freedom of exchange is the foundation of all freedoms, and the freedom of exchange unencumbered is the truest democratic freedom of mankind.   

Please let this sink in, because it's true and everything including the continuance of life itself on this planet, depends on it. Deciding the issues surrounding this fundamental understanding will be the most important task facing mankind in this century, and in relative importance, nothing else even comes close.

Civilization began with exchange, and exchange began with whole barter i.e. things traded for things. The first improvement on whole barter was indirect barter. This was the practice of utilizing commodities of common use as reserves to be later traded for items of immediate need. 

Some would have us believe that we need to return to such a system, because gold and silver are said to be rare items not easily manipulated, created or destroyed. But the truth is, and history shows, that all markets are essentially local when it comes to point of sale prices and that therefore prices can be manipulated in such a system by local insertions or depletions of these precious metals as was done in the case of gold in Europe during the 16th century. Importation of gold from the New World spread a ruinous inflation which destroyed the countries that had the most gold, Spain and Portugal. During the same period financiers connived to keep silver from circulating, causing economic depressions, until usury was allowed to them.

The relative abundance of specie plus financiers willing to lend it at interest and good at conniving rulers to go to war, led to the sustained conflict, profitable to bankers, known as the Thirty Years' War, the first instance of a deliberately prolonged war that was tremendously profitable to banking and war materiel businesses, including land owners in Eastern Europe where much of the food to sustain troops on both sides was grown.

Quigley continues ...

The adoption of precious metals, such as gold and silver, developed this trend. This step reflected a growing emphasis upon facility in exchange. Accordingly, through the passage of time, a new means of completing transactions arose through the practice of depositing precious metals with goldsmiths, who in turn issued warehouse receipts. Such pieces of paper became negotiable through custom, and so purchases could be effected by their transfer.

The benefit of this practice was to facilitate trade over longer distances. The simple basis for this is that a gold coin located in London is the same as a gold coin of the same weight and minting located in Rome, One was safer taking a piece of paper from one place to another rather than the gold which could be taken up in exchange for the paper once one got to where one was intending to spend the gold back into circulation. Now, we have electronic transfer of mere digits with no backing. The issue of whether one moves or effects transfer of pieces of gold or digits from one electronic account to another does not effect local purchasing power one iota! Problems contributing to inflation or deflation arise from different quarters, of which Riegel was very much aware, as are we today.  

Acceptance of negotiable gold receipts, i.e. promises of future delivery, marked the first real step toward the utilization of money. It was at this point that barter was finally fully split into two halves, WITH THE BUYER RECEIVING VALUE AND THE SELLER RECEIVING ONLY A CLAIM.

Caps were in the original. At this point Quigley states Riegel's obvious observation that MONEY REQUIRES NOTHING TO BACK IT BUT WHAT IT BUYS. Putting that a different way, if you recognize that something you want to buy is worth how much money you want to spend for it, then the money you spent was backed by that which you decided to buy.

That way perhaps a bucket of corn meal backed some money on Monday, a basket of peaches backed some more money on Wednesday, and even that the backing based on these commodities backed more or less money during the week, depending on what? Depending on things like demand for the commodity, how perishable it is over time, etc. Specifically, the “claim”, the money with which to effect SPLIT-BARTER has NO INTRINSIC VALUE IN ITSELF which would further complicate matters. In fact Riegel postulated that whatever money was made of should be of the least intrinsic value possible.
 
This was the first faint glimpse of the tremendous liberating power of money. We can also see that the ideal of money is to split barter absolutely in half, without any limitations imposed upon the seller. Hence, we realise that money is a device that operates within the trading community, for that community's own self-interest.

Community self interest is something that is usually dwarfed in most people's educated consciousness these days by such ideas as national, multi-national or even international corporate or globalist self interest. A return to local focus and consciousness concerning where one buys anything and where what one buys originates is going to become increasingly necessary.

The necessity of splitting barter into halves in order to motivate trade is the motivating force: sellers want to sell and buyers want to buy with the least amount of inconvenience.

It therefore follows that ANYTHING that further complicates the use of money is going to be a detriment to its use. This actually for one reason, although there are many other issues with it as well, pretty much disqualifies bit-coin as a long term reliable alternative. [Bit-coin was recently hacked, it's built in scarcity model made it into an attractive new investment vehicle which may just have experienced a burst bubble, in which many people may have lost a lot of money.  Any solution that begins and ends on the internet is NOT a real solution.]  People the world over, regard money rightly as an appliance that effects transactions involving exchanges of value for value; a product or service for a valid and recognizable claim for a product or service of similar or comparable value.

Riegel himself said that theorists were not helpful, rather putting his ideas into practice so that people would get to appreciate the advantages of a Value Unit based Value Exchange Network (VEN) would be necessary.

IN A COMMUNITY MONEY IS ISSUED BY A BUYER. Such a money issuer, must, in exchange for the goods and services he buys from the market, place other goods or services into the market. Thus money as a money instrument is evidence of a purchase that is issued by a purchaser to the seller. Therefore, money is actually backed by the value surrendered by the seller and potentially backed by a value in the possession of the next seller.

This is the heart of the matter, it defines exactly what money is and divides those who understand the basic definition from those who continue to hold to absurd, erroneous and invidious notions of valid money requiring intrinsic value, requiring that it be issued by the state, or borrowed at interest from a central bank. Many basic facts issue from statements Quigley has made above; only a BUYER issues money. Riegel further required that buyers are primarily limited to individual human beings, excluding all organizations of any kind from the privilege of issuing money.

To print bills and mint coins is not to issue or create money. This has no more monetary significance than if you were to write a cheque and leave it in your chequebook. Instruments that have not been put into exchange are non-existent in the World of exchange and money. Money simply does not exist until it has been successfully accepted in exchange.

Something most people do not know is that since money in its simplest and truest form is merely bookkeeping entries, it functions in circuits that create money and destroy comparable amounts of money to settle claims in completing a barter exchange. Much mischief and trouble to the human race has arisen from conceptions of money that defied the simplest rules.

In theory, two factors are necessary for money creation. A buyer who issues it, and a seller who accepts it. Since the seller expects in turn to reissue the money to some other seller, it will be acknowledged that money springs from mutual interest and co-operation among traders and not from authority.

This too is an absolutely key point. While a state authority may restrict what may be traded within a limited jurisdiction, thus affecting market conditions there, no authority would be necessary or desired to complicate the simple transactions of honest free trade. In fact all such allegations to the contrary are based on arguments from authority which are all fallacious to begin with. Knowing this, it is wise to ask who then are they who support these fallacies and to what purposes? Inconvenient truths are thus uncovered.

It is a fallacy to think that a government can issue money. Money can be issued only by a buyer for himself, and he must in turn be a competitive seller to recapture it and thus complete the cycle.

This is the critical cycle of money that completes trades, settles barter, etc. between traders. When a government or in the case of the EU, a group of governments, issues money, it is the BUYER and it buys what it wants, in return it sells its services as public policy by direct spending (or it goes to war with somebody) and attempts to recover the money it has issued with taxes. But this is not freedom in the best or strict sense because the government must take back by FORCE instead of offering something people want and are willing to pay for in a competitive market for similar goods and services.
 
Put another and perhaps more convincing way, experience has amply demonstrated that governments do not make the best producers and providers of consumer goods, food, personal services, etc. There are basic reasons for this having to do with orders of size as effects efficiency and responsibility, the diminishing returns to scale rule, which is a law of nature and cannot be evaded. The rest of the applause for continuing the present system derives from the indefensible idolatry of the state, of political power and other aspects of human bigness. The simplest observable example of this fundamental limitation of size rule is the tremendously obese person with an insatiable appetite who becomes just too heavy and large to live under the force of gravity.

Quigley continues,

This competitive co-operation for goods and services creating value in the market is actually what makes money work.
 
… which also implies that the more money falls into fewer hands, the less likely that money will work doing what it is best at doing; splitting barter. The natural result of having most of the money in the fewest hands thus results in market sterility, which is a magical sounding phrase for genocide. Recall the words of the Declaration of Independence, yes that old rag Tom Jefferson, Johnny Adams and Ben Franklin knocked out that sent the high and mighty of Britain and Europe reeling. In there they speak of when a government becomes oppressive of natural rights (which are inalienable and since they are, there is no law that can rightfully apply to them). Well the same goes for money. If the few have most of it, then that money ultimately becomes worthless.

This competitive situation, in which the trader redeems his original monetary issue, through the sale of his own goods and services, assumes that the community's money will maintain its stability.
 
The stability of the money within a Value Unit system is assured since issuance is limited and there is always enough money to complete a transaction. In fact in future papers we'll even illustrate how this works in regard to finance, which is in plain English how to buy something you can't afford.

All enigma as to what causes money to circulate and maintain its power is thus dissolved by comprehending this natural law of money issue.

THIS LAW STATES THAT THE LEGITIMATE ISSUE OF MONEY IS CONFINED TO PERSONAL ENTERPRISERS IN THE MARKET PLACE, SINCE, THEY ALONE, BY THE LOGIC OF THEIR SITUATION, ARE ABLE ISSUERS OF VALUE. Thus, in essence: money is issued by a purchaser, but it must be issued by a purchaser who can, and is, prepared to issue value; it is a tradesman's agreement to carry on split barter among themselves.

Caps are in the original.

We see that money is the mathematics of value exchanged, based on mutual agreement. The monetary instrument is but the evidence of the consummated trade. It is a mistake to attribute purchasing power to the instrument, for it has none. It is merely the conduit through which purchasing power flows; such purchasing power lying in the commodities or values exchanged.  

We might as well boldly ask everyone at this point, why accept Value Units in trade for goods or services? The answer would be that they know where they can spend their Value Units and about how much a Value Unit can buy. If that becomes reliable knowledge, everyone will want Value Units, in fact we predict that they will demand payment in them as the other currencies become sterile, or as we would prefer saying, toxic.  

From this analysis we can deduce that commercial banks do not "lend" money. They, in fact, permit the "borrower" to issue money. Once given permission, the borrower now has the legal authorization to write cheques to the extent of the loan and tender them in trade. UPON THEIR ACCEPTANCE BY A SELLER, WHO IN FACT PROVIDES VALUE, new money has come into existence. This money remains in circulation until such time as the borrower, through becoming a seller, recaptures money with which to liquidate the loan.

Quigley does not get into it here, but we will because it is one of Riegel's key observations. The example above, which can be replicated millions of times the world over, leaves out one very important fact; the INTEREST demanded with repayment of the loan was NOT created. The borrower must pay back his loan WITH INTEREST. Where is that extra money going to come from? It is going to come from someone else in the process of trade. But sooner or later, someone will get stuck unable to pay, and then the financier steps in and takes real value for repayment of that which was never created in the first place. This practice lies at the heart of most of the evils in the world.

From the premise of the natural law of money issue, it must be accepted, that governments cannot qualify as issuers because they are not in the real situation of personal enterprisers. They cannot qualify, as they do not barter. They do not bid for money in the market place. Their taxing power relieves them entirely from selling. They take by taxing. When they are admitted to the issue power, their issue cannot be a genuine promise to deliver value in trade.

All ye statists out there, please try and let this simple fact get through your muddled brains. Their taxing power relieves them entirely from selling. Those who always look to the state to save them do not reckon with the government's use of FORCE, believing all sorts of weird and wonderful fables that of course the government would never do anything disagreeable to them or that their support of the collectivist monster is to benefit humanity at large, its evolutionary prospects or whatever. This play of selflessness is frankly quite nauseating! But being aware of it is at least half the battle to stay awake. Of government issued money, Bill Still and others kindly take note, Quigley continues,

It must, of necessity, be counterfeit, regardless of any statutory laws intended to validate it. From this failure to discriminate between money issued through bank credit by personal enterprisers and by governments, has come an inflationary mixture of true and false money that will eventually threaten social order. Money cannot be issued in perpetuity by man-made laws; it operates by its own natural law. To ignore this law invites uncontrolled inflation.

The destructive force of inflation is not confined to its covert taxing power. This is only its early manifestation. Its later destructiveness lies in its power to amend, and finally, to nullify the contractual relationship upon which the social order depends.

The whole philosophy of freedom is encompassed in the single phrase; POWER TO CONTRACT. While a small distortion of the unit of account impairs contracts previously written, a consistent inflation actually destroys all existing contracts and prevents the making of new ones.

Quigley is underlining Riegel here. As more people wake up to the realities of the present monetary situation under which they live, there will be fewer and fewer contracts made that will have any meaning until all basic respect is lost for an incompetent, arbitrary, inefficient and irresponsible order, itself based on FRAUD but empowered by FORCE. It will concern those doing the FORCING too as they must be paid in something or they would prefer to stay home.

Adam Smith in his political economy allocated the money power to the state, thus he ante-ceded Marx as a socialist. It is his followers, unconscious socialists, and not those of Marx, who constitute the greatest peril to the order of free exchange. The Smith philosophy is taught in all the schools and colleges. Students become indoctrinated by this ideology unaware that in its monetary concept it is contrary to the true philosophy of personal enterprise and individuality. 

Thank-you, we couldn't have said it better. You can now just chuck anything that involves money being issued by a state, hear that Bill Still? as worthless.

An unnatural monetary system begets unnatural economic manifestations. How can a free economy work with the monetary system socialised?

It can't and ultimately wont ...

Rampant inflation makes a mockery of any true accounting for any true contract. When the future businessman discovers that his pride in cash was a delusion and a snare; that his cash reserves, which he meant to freeze have melted and evaporated; that his balances might have been preserved if they had been cast into materials; that his bonds and money claims on others have shrunken and that he might have profited had he known enough to get into debt; that his tax refunds are far less in power than those paid in; that he must pay capital gain taxes on what are actually losses; then that businessman will realise that the whole contemporary inflationary accounting picture is a delusion.

Read it again if you didn't get it. 

1. Cash is only good if it RETAINS ITS VALUE in future trades. It also follows of course that paying anything on idle cash, interest bearing savings accounts, etc. are just more foolishness, and as we have pointed out previously are not even legitimate since again they are paid out of that which was not created.

2. Bonds and money claims on others are promises to pay on which the whole present system operates. Promises to pay? How about actually paying? How about actually producing? How about clearing transactions so they don't stick around? We'll consider these questions in a future paper on the nature of markets.

3. Tax refunds are getting your own money back later when it is worth less; has less purchasing power. What a deal! Wake up, you're being cheated! 

4. Capital gains taxes, another attempt by FORCE to get back what it had previously issued by FORCE, whether “in the public interest” or not, Mr. Still. As a businessman, if your expenses were higher than your gains, you fall out of the “musical chairs” economy and may have nowhere else to go but to the government to get a handout to survive. Those at the top or more correctly behind the scenes of course could care less. They have all the money they'll ever need … and they want still more.

Quigley continues,

If money is issued under the natural law of issue, unit stability will be in evidence. Under natural law, if exchange plays no tricks on us, we are all really working for ourselves. We will all be interested in stability. In reality we are all buying for ourselves; we are all selling for ourselves. But just exactly what is it we are buying and selling? In the final analysis, it is simply human energy, mental and physical. Labour is the basic, or virgin, commodity. It has no quality of obsolescence, for it is always associated with the latest, and therefore, the timeliest products. IT IS THE ONLY VALUE.

Others have comprehended this, from the premise that all value is labour and since money is based on value, they have reached the correct conclusion that money must be, in actual fact, labour. However, the fatal error that labour money planners have made is that they set a measure of labour, such as an hour, as a unit of value. While it is true that labour, both physical and mental is the only value, and therefore, the sole commodity that passes through exchange, IT DOES NOT FOLLOW THAT ALL LABOUR IS OF EQUAL VALUE. Labour may be so unintelligently applied that it is completely worthless. We are all labourers, and therefore, fountains of wealth because we all emit human energy. We must, however, direct that energy to meet the demands of our fellow labourers. By the measure to which we successfully respond to this demand will our energy be valued. Money is not a measure of value, it is a method of stating a value that has already been determined through exchange.

Yes indeed, so Marx was right but could not conceive of it properly; human labour is the measure of all things, except that you must allow money to measure it rather than say an hour worked, because your hour worked and mine might be quite different. An hour of brain surgery or flying a passenger aircraft might rate higher than an hour of operating a financial business or an IE or an hour of teaching something or an hour of a farmer's time, etc. The key point is that absolutely no collectivist scheme or statist model can ever hope to successfully control any of this without invariably being factors contributing to genocide. It really can't be put more simply than that, which is why settling matters concerning money and its future are THE fundamental issues of the 21st century.

If money is ultimately the mathematics of value set by exchange, what is value? VALUE IS THE RELATIONSHIP OF DESIRE. It is arrived at in the mind by comparing one thing with another. Thus what actually takes place in trading is the determination of values and this mental process is the act of "moneyizing". It is a mathematical process. As the act of "moneyizing" is psychological, so the act of "monetizing" is material. It should also be noted that both arise out of and do not ante-cede, exchange. Trade produces money; money cannot produce or induce trade. TRADE, LIKE MONEY, IS A SOCIAL PHENOMENON BASED ON MUTUAL CO-OPERATION AND INTEREST.

In conclusion, value, mathematically compared, is money. The purpose of the medium is to achieve split barter and to allow the monetary unit of exchange to be universally accepted for any good or service. The discovery of the power of money as a social mechanism has freed mankind and has been immensely influential in the development of society and civilization. Its importance cannot be over emphasized. 

Repeat … Money's importance cannot be over emphasized. Those who postulate some system where there is no money condemn us to return to terms of absolute barter which quite simply cannot be tolerated. So just as we will have trade, we will have markets and we will need money. The question isn't even what money would look like or how it would work as all those things are pretty much known already. The question relates to who gets to issue money and once that is resolved in favour of each and every human being on the face of the earth, denying it forever to banks, governments or other institutions, humanity will be on to a better world for everyone, not just a few.

Quigley continues and reaches his conclusion, 

However since 1909 the influence of government policy, both national and international, has steadily brought about monetary debasement. Should the level of inflation currently in place be allowed to continue, sound money will be driven out by bad "fiat" legal tender. This problem will only be resolved when our leaders come to terms with the realization that there is a natural law governing the issuance of media of exchange, and if this law continues to be broken by socialist ideology, the very bedrock of the western tradition of freedom and individuality will be broken.

The Heather Foundation
Los Angeles, California.

© 2007 Christopher M. Quigley, B.Sc., M.M.I.I., M.A.

Christopher M. Quigley, B.Sc., M.M.I.I., M.A.
www.wealthbuilder.ie
Dublin, Ireland

We might maintain that the western tradition of freedom and individuality is largely already broken, bred and educated out of us for the agenda of the elites. Those reading this blog may be regarded as a vanguard against but the latest tyranny (as there have been many attempts before this). Tyrannies, even those which succeed eventually come to an end. In the past they usually have gotten away with it for many hundreds of years, but times and conditions are quite different now. A word to the wise: those who understand and get themselves prepared to participate in the only monetary system that will be worthy of survival, since it is based on the most obvious, basic and local facts, will be tomorrow's community leaders, whether or not they hold elective political office. Those who were too wrapped up in the present system may have a much harder time to adjust. After all, they too will have to ask themselves on what they really wish to find value in themselves in which to trade within their local communities.

David Burton

FINIS