2018: An Obscured Diagnosis

“If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at the people he gave it to.”― Dorothy Parker




In his classic but still riveting book “Fiat Money Inflation in France”, 19th century American educator, diplomat and historian Andrew Dickson White recounts how France’s prescription of fiat money as the cure for its fiscal ills initiated a ten year slide [1789-1799] into economic collapse, internal class revolution, ruinous foreign wars and imperial dictatorship. Americans living in 2018  might want to take notes.

Facing “heavy debt and a serious deficit”,  the French people began a “general search for some short road to prosperity”.  In spite of stern warnings from those who had lived through France’s devastating experience with fiat money 60 years before, the people were seduced by the promise that fiat money was a way of “securing resources without paying interest.” Reluctantly at first and over the uncompromising protests of “thoughtful men who saw that here was the turning point between good and evil”, the French turned to “eloquent theorists [who] arose to glorify paper [money]” and “issued a proclamation recommending that [the] people receive this new paper money without objection”.

But only five months after an initial burst of economic activity and proud promises of even more prosperity ahead, “times grew less easy” until the country “was again in distress … [and] the old remedy immediately and naturally recurred to the minds of men.” And so ... “in final rejection of a large minority [that] stood firm to their earlier principles [opposing fiat money]” ... and in fatal submission to demagogues crying “we must save the country … we must accomplish that which we have begun” ... France “fully committed to a policy of inflation … showing the exceeding difficulty of stopping a nation once in the full tide of a depreciating currency”.

“The great majority of Frenchmen now became desperate optimists, declaring that inflation is prosperity. … The nation was becoming inebriated with paper money … but as the draughts of paper money came faster the successive periods of good feeling grew shorter. Various bad signs began to appear … [but were quickly explained away by] giving any explanation for the new difficulties rather than the right one … [until the non-elite French were] living from hand to mouth.”

The “plethora of paper currency” spawned a host of complications including “the cancerous disease of [financial] speculation” which “grew [into] a dislike of steady labor and a contempt for moderate gains and simple living”. Ignorant politicians proposed treating these symptoms with new regulations “thinking that this would prove a sufficient remedy for an evil which had its roots far down in the whole system of irredeemable currency. As well might a physician prescribe a pimple wash for a diseased liver.”

“As these knots of plotting [financial] schemers at the city centers were becoming bloated with sudden wealth, the producing classes of the country, though having in their possession more and more currency, grew lean … which crippled a large class in the country. … [And although] the artful plundering of the people at large was bad enough, worse still was [a] growing corruption in official and legislative circles.” The result was “the breaking down of the morals of the country at large … [and] the decay of a true sense of national good faith.”
 ...

Well … I don’t want to give away the ending … read it yourself … it is short but powerful … and will sound quite familiar.

In 2018, America may find itself once again struggling to diagnose another breakdown of its social structures, economic systems and national good faith. And if/when we do … and our politicians tell us how they are going to “save the country” ...  it might be good to remember White’s advice about diagnosing and treating the deeply rooted symptoms of a nation that has embraced fiat money and credit … applying pimple wash to cure liver disease caused by alcohol addition is simply not helpful. We must sooner or later confront our addiction to monetary [aka fiscal] stimulus … and radically excise the entrenched and growing central banking cancer that is eating away at the republic … or suffer the fatal but predictable sociological consequences of our shameful choices … without hope or excuse.

American Empire

"Right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in might, while the strong do whatever they can and the weak suffer whatever they must."
― Thucydides c.400 BC

Hillary Emails Reveal True Motive for Libya Intervention, Foreign Policy Journal, Brad Hoff, Jan 6 2016

Horace Campbell on US Disregard for Black Lives, from “War on Terror” in Africa to U.S. Army Widow at Home, Democracy Now, Oct 24 2017

It is undisputed that the citizens of the Roman Empire so selfishly craved their bread and circuses that they neither understood nor cared about the consequences of their financial, political and military masters plundering the wealth and resources of other sovereign peoples to make the Roman elite rich and the Roman people comfortable. Voting was a formal holdover from the days of a once vibrant Republic which de facto died when the elite gained control of the candidates for public office.

With sympathy for all four Americans who recently died in Niger, the outrage we are experiencing is seriously and fundamentally misunderstood and misguided.

• The reason those men died is that they were legionnaires for the American Empire ... mercenaries engaged in subjugating the poor and black citizens of Niger for the benefit of western oligarchs and the clueless citizens of their empires.
• Furthermore [as noted in the links above], it is well documented in State Department emails that France is a co-conspirator with the American Empire in the intentional destabilization and colonization [divide and conquer] of the African continent which "the West" began in earnest with the Clinton-orchestrated overthrow of Gaddafi in Libya who [the elite rightly feared] was going to further the economic liberation and unification of the African nation states by issuing a gold and silver backed pan-African currency for commerce in and with Africa to replace the fiat currencies [the Euro and US$] which western empires have long used to enslave foreign peoples.

Surprise, Surprise

Trump lied twice

• once when he told Serviceman La David T Johnson's widow, Myeshia, that La David "understood what he was signing up for"
• and again when he denied saying that.

Of course, Johnson did not understand that he was agreeing to become a mercenary who in his case happened to die subjugating blacks in Niger.

But the real tragedy here is that the American media and voters do not understand [or care about] the real story behind Johnson's death ... the rise and fall of the American Empire ... because they are too busy with their own bread and circuses ... getting obese as they broadcast and watch internet news and reality entertainment starring Donald Trump [and a host of other celebrities] on their big flatscreen TVs.

Post Scripts

Those precious few with an inquiring mind that has reached dialectical maturity need only consider the recent Arab Spring or the current struggles for independence in Catalonia and Kurdistan ... which our politicians and media seldom discuss and never analyze ... to see that the decentralized republic and the totalitarian empire are thesis and antithesis that will be forever locked in history's Hegelian conflict to see which will destroy the other. And before YOU place YOUR bet, consider this:

"God wills men to be free."
attributed to Henri-Frédéric Amiel

The Great Oops

oops - a natural exclamation of dismay or surprise at doing something awkward
― [OED 1933]

“Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.”
― Aldous Huxley

“Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.”
― Martin Luther King Jr.

“There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.”
― Isaac Asimov


When Fed  Czar Yellen recently admitted that inflation and wages are a "mystery" because they are not rising as expected after decades of unparalleled monetary manipulation, anyone who still believes the Fed knows what it is doing should have broken out in a sweat.

However, ignorance is not a sin ... unless it is willful ... which in this case it is. Why? Because money is the oldest and remains the most important social medium by which individuals reliably communicate accurate information about themselves with one another in real time with real economic and political consequences. It is more important than the printing press, radio, TV or the internet. And this means money directly and powerfully influences virtually every facet of individual and communal action across the globe and across the generations.

It also means that when money is subverted into political propaganda by modern central banks, pervasive economic and political destruction is set in motion and spreads with no breaks to stop its descent into deviancy.

One of no less stature than Keynes himself said this about the hubris of those who believe they are wizards who can pull monetary levers behind the curtains to manage human action with confidence that they are collectively omniscient and understand the full consequences of their actions:

"Lenin is said to have declared that the best way to destroy the Capitalist System was to debauch the currency. By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. By this method they not only confiscate, but they confiscate arbitrarily; and, while the process impoverishes many, it actually enriches some. ... Lenin was certainly right. There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose."

Modern day politicians and central bankers have tinkered with and fallen prey to the demons of central planning and they are dragging the population of the world down to hell with them.

You owe it to your progeny [if not to yourself] to get educated ... and to act forcefully ... because you can no longer claim ignorance ... you have become aware of the greatest crime in world history [yes I mean that] ... for you have seen The Great Oops.

Dear John

“It is easier to forgive an enemy than to forgive a friend.”
― William Blake


“You must be able to say "I understand," before you can say "I agree," or "I disagree," or "I suspend judgment.”
― Mortimer J. Adler

Dialectical Ambiguation

The foundation for any dialogue is laid by establishing basic grammar ... trust in the sanctity of a shared understanding of elemental terms. Without this trust, relationships are vulnerable to collapse when one party senses that the other is "using language" ambiguously to persuade them of something that is against their expressed position ... instead of "honoring language" and "using logic".

This is why politics is referred to as "doublespeak" ... and why all political parties and nearly all politicians embrace it as they call for loyalty ["trust me"] not logic. Meanwhile much of the public suffers from chronic uneasiness about how to take consistent stands on various subjects. But they sheepishly conceal their dialectical disability and react more or less blindly and confidently by following some "party line". Never has this been more obvious or dangerous than in the incoherent age of Trump.

The most important political occurrence of ambiguation today is the juxtaposition of the words "liberal" and "conservative" which largely exchanged meanings after they were first coined in the 19th century to describe classical economic and political ideologies ... and which are being adulterated again as those on both the political left and right are increasingly referred to as "neocons".

But regardless of how the terminology is twisted, it is becoming clear that both major political parties are now manifestations of entrenched collectivism [which includes socialism and totalitarianism ... communism and fascism ... central banking and crony capitalism]. And, for those of us who cling to individualism as the foundation for any republic [be it democratic or not], this means we are now betrayed by those we once considered allies as well as repressed by an openly declared opposition.

The Needed Disambiguation of Individualism

In his landmark work, The Road to Serfdom, Chapter 3: "Individualism and Collectivism", F.A. Hayek positively defines individualism as a belief that

• the recognition of private property [including the ability to labor] and
• the use of voluntary exchange and principled competition among property owners,
• whenever structurally possible [ie. not structurally impossible],
• facilitate a decentralized plan by which property is continuously reallocated
• to sustain the maximum overall perception of material well-being [aka justice]
• consistent with the maximum overall perception of personal freedom [aka liberty]
• that is possible in any society.

However, Hayek goes on to make it clear that property can only be private when

"the owner benefits from all the useful services rendered by [it] and suffers from all the damages caused to others by its use."

If we simply replace the word "damages" with "costs", we see that individualism assumes

the ability and willingness of the acting individual to receive all the benefits and bear all the costs of his actions.

Thus, by negative inference,

• when individual action externalizes costs away from the acting individual or
• when public policy diverts benefits away from the acting individual
• we have manifestations of collectivism [common wealth] not individualism [private property] and we need to make this distinction thoughtfully.

Furthermore, using this logic, one may argue that state regulation, taxation and/or spending in any form are manifestations of collectivism per se. And this is true regardless of whether or not the individual regulated by or paying a tax to the state actually receives a benefit [commensurate or not] from the state.

Is ALL Government Collectivism?

YES ... and there is no sense in mincing words. The state can protect but can never advance individualism. The only question is to what extent and according to what principles the state will protect individualism or replace it with collectivism. In this regard, F. Bastiat in 1850 argued that

"[The Law] is the collective organization of the individual right to [self] defense. ... [in order] to cause justice to reign over us all.

"But, unfortunately, law by no means confines itself to its proper functions. And when it has exceeded its proper functions, it has not done so merely in some inconsequential and debatable matters. The law has gone further than this; it has acted in direct opposition to its own purpose. The law has been used to destroy its own objective: It has been applied to annihilating the justice that it was supposed to maintain; to limiting and destroying rights which its real purpose was to respect. The law has placed the collective force at the disposal of the unscrupulous who wish, without risk, to exploit the person, liberty, and property of others. It has converted plunder into a right, in order to protect plunder. And it has converted lawful defense into a crime, in order to punish lawful defense.

"How has this perversion of the law been accomplished? ... The law has been perverted by the influence of two entirely different causes: stupid greed and false philanthropy."

Indeed, one might argue that greed and philanthropy are the two sides of the coin of collectivism and that wherever we observe one of them at work in shaping the law, the other will be close by ... and they will be the irrefutable evidence that both the law and collectivism have run amuck.

The Attempted Ambiguation of Individualism

The line of reasoning set forth above will not surprise those who espouse socialism or communism ... indeed, they will probably agree. The objections will arise from those who claim they can advance individualism through prudent state policies ... those who call themselves "conservatives" ... but who in reality are merely practicing less obvious forms of non-individualism [aka collectivism] ... including crony capitalism, totalitarianism and fascism.

Why do they attempt to mislead and confuse ... to make people think they are individualists when it is clear they are not? Some do it unintentionally, because they are dialectically disabled themselves and simply do not understand the logical implications of their actions. But most are motivated to do it because they [some in addition to being dialectically disabled] are possessed by one or both of Bastiat's twin demons ... stupid greed ["I am better than you"] and false philanthropy ["I know what's best for you"].

It is time to notify "conservatives" who advocate using the law without meeting the standards of [or by exceeding the limits of] the logic set out by Bastiat

• that they are advancing less obvious but equally aggressive forms of collectivism ... not individualism,
• that they do not somehow deserve the blind loyalty of authentic individualists and
• that their policies must be rigorously compared in terms of costs and benefits with those of other collectivists if intelligent choices must be made among them.

The Perversion of an Archetype: Money

It should be enough to put the "conservatives" on notice that they are giving individualism a bad name. But the problem goes even deeper than their shameful perversion of language to their consensual perversion of an archetype ... money.

archetype - a collectively inherited unconscious idea, pattern of thought, image, etc., universally present in individual psyches

"Being unconscious, the existence of archetypes can only be deduced indirectly by examining behavior, images, art, myths, religions, or dreams." Wikipedia

Money is the most basic archetype in our collective perception and practice of economics. It stands behind everything from crude bartering to sophisticated derivatives ... from price to profit. Every precept relies on it ... every conclusion rests on it ... and every action reveals it. And when we attempt to distinguish "central planning/socialism" from "free markets/capitalism", we implicitly rely on the assumption that the fundamental difference between the two has to do with the role and behavior of money.

• Socialism empowers the state to take money from somebody and give it to somebody else. 
• Capitalism ensures the individual who earns the money will decide how to spend it.

On this foundation we have logically constructed two political parties in America which, we are told, are opposed to one another in their approach to economic policy ... giving us a choice.

"Permit me to issue and control the money of a nation, and I care not who makes its laws." ― Mayer Rothschild

However, those who control our money understand that if they can pervert the archetype of money without us realizing it, they can effectively control us while preserving important psychological illusions about the choices we think we have when, in reality, we have no choices at all ... only uninformed acceptance of what they have chosen for themselves.

As long as Washington enables hidden powers to pervert and plunder money, there can be no language with which and no economic archetype on which we can rely to logically distinguish

• capitalism from socialism or
• free markets from central planning.

The entire political dialogue in America today is little more than sad psychological delusions created by monetary powers to give us the idea that we still have freedom of choice.

Time to Break Off Our Illicit Affair with Conservatism

Before individualists can even hope to engage honestly and choose intelligently, we must work to

• cleanse the archetype of the money and
• restore the sanctity of the language

on which our collective economic consciousness and our common political dialogue rely. Until that happens we will have only ideological confusion and political manipulation.

It is time for individualists to send their "conservative" consorts a "Dear John letter" ... and for all Americans to break off our destructive love affair with central banking.

The Road Ahead

“I was surprised, as always, by how easy the act of leaving was, and how good it felt. The world was suddenly rich with possibility.”
― Jack Kerouac, On the Road


As America looks out on the road ahead, we are surprised ... emotional ... and increasingly vehement.

Our political preoccupation over the years as citizens in a democracy has been with "who is at the wheel".  And this obsession has systematically and foolishly distracted us from the more important question of "where we are headed".

And so, it is time to ask Americans a threefold question:

1. Are we at a crossroads in America?
2. Or are we nearing our final destination?
3. And how can we know which it is? 

With that in mind I invite you to review the following thoughts on The Road Ahead.

Bob Love
rwlove51@gmail.com