The Gold Myth and Commodity Money: Ancient Scams of Historical Proportions
By Richard Posner, published on The Hampton Institute, on June 25th, 2014
“Belief is the death of intelligence. As soon as one believes a doctrine of any sort, or assumes certitude, one stops thinking about that aspect of existence.”
~ Robert Anton Wilson
Can someone please give me a sane reason why anyone would pay over a thousand dollars for an ounce of shiny metal that has virtually no intrinsic value?
Or, better still, how about scientifically verifiable proof that gold is actually worth significantly more than a steaming pile of dog shit.
It’s my guess that most people who read this article will go ballistic, call me names, insist that I’m simply ignorant, have no understanding of “economics” and that the gold standard is the only possible solution to our economic woes. Yet not a single one will be able to offer any real reason why gold is actually “valuable.”
That’s because it isn’t. It must be valuable because they “believe” it is.
No society or culture in history has ever found any actual, practical or essential uses for gold. Aside from being foisted on a delusional populace as a valuable commodity, its only uses have been decorative. It has never been a substance that was essential to the survival of the species like, oh I don’t know, something inconsequential like food or water.
Gold is too soft to be used for tools or weapons.
It has no significant verifiable medicinal use that I’m aware of. It can’t cure AIDS, cancer, heart disease or anything else as far as I know.
It can’t practically be used in construction beyond the usual decorative applications.
It’s not suitable for making functional, useful clothing. It won’t keep you warm when it’s cold, cool when it’s hot or dry when it’s raining.
It certainly can’t quench the thirst or sate the appetite.
It’s never even been very useful as money. It’s too heavy and cumbersome to carry around in quantities sufficient to be used in commerce. That’s the reason paper money was created in the first place.
Gold never had any practical application until more modern times when it found its way into the cavities in people’s teeth. It’s rarely if ever used for that purpose any longer.
More recently it was found to be useful in electronics in small quantities and still is to some extent. Not enough to make it worth over a thousand dollars an ounce.
I’ve been given to understand it’s useful as a radiation shield just like lead, a base metal to which it’s quite similar in many ways.
It has only a single unique characteristic. It stays shiny and pretty for a very long time with minimal maintenance. Wow! It must have magical, supernatural powers! Well, at least that’s what some ancient societies “believed” as, apparently, do significant numbers of “modern” humans.
Simply put, at no time and in no way has gold ever been a vital necessity for human survival. It has nearly always served only one purpose; to enrich those who hoard it and manipulate its pretended “value” in order to take real wealth, unearned, from people who actually do productive work of benefit to society.
And yet today, members of modern, ultra-high-tech societies respond to gold like a horde of drooling, mindless, idol worshipping troglodytes at the yearly sacrifice of the virgins.
People have been indoctrinated for centuries and today still continue to perceive gold as some magically invaluable commodity. They do this without any substantiation or justification whatsoever. They simply “believe”.
This enables individuals in the “financial industry”, a non sequitur if there ever was one, to steal vast amounts of unearned wealth by manipulating the imaginary value of a basically worthless metal.
Gold is really not different from all the worthless paper and “financial instruments” that are used as chips in the Wall Street casino every day. They and gold alike are make-believe commodities and unlike crops, oil, iron, copper or other real commodities that are actually useful, are not resources vital to survival and have no intrinsic value.
Gold; the Emperor of Funny Money
Commodity money is useful only to those who lust for wealth but are unwilling to earn it. By fraudulently assigning intrinsic value to something essentially worthless, such as “precious metals” or specious financial “commodities”, “products” and” instruments”, they have created a monetary system based on lies and fraud.
Because powerful ancient tribal leaders, pharaohs, emperors, and kings prized gold for its seemingly incorruptible, immortal beauty, its fictitious “value” was, irrationally, accepted by their subjects, much as various non-existent “gods” are worshipped by vast numbers of otherwise relatively rational people. Eventually the gold myth became an accepted truism that has been passed on through the ages leading to a modern, highly developed, scientifically informed and technologically advanced society that nevertheless clings to an archaic and baseless belief in a “barbarous relic.”
“Gold is not vital to human existence; it has, in fact, relatively few practical uses. Yet its chief virtues-its unusual density and malleability along with its imperishable shine-have made it one of the world’s most coveted commodities, a transcendent symbol of beauty, wealth, and immortality. From pharaohs (who insisted on being buried in what they called the “flesh of the gods”) to the forty-niners (whose mad rush for the mother lode built the American West) to the financiers (who, following Sir Isaac Newton’s advice, made it the bedrock of the global economy): Nearly every society through the ages has invested gold with an almost mythological power.
Humankind’s feverish attachment to gold shouldn’t have survived the modern world. Few cultures still believe that gold can give eternal life, and every country in the world-the United States was last, in 1971-has done away with the gold standard, which John Maynard Keynes famously derided as “a barbarous relic.” (source)
Gold, having no intrinsic value, is just as much a fiat currency as any paper instrument printed by any government or central bank (and who owns the ostensible “governments” anyway?).
“It is absurd to say that our country can issue $30 million in bonds and not $30 million in currency. Both are promises to pay, but one fattens the usurers and the other helps the people. If the currency issued by the Government was no good, then the bonds would be no good either. It is a terrible situation when the Government, to increase the national wealth, must go into debt and submit to ruinous interest charges at the hands of men who control the fictitious value of gold.” (emphasis added) – Thomas Edison
Unless made subject to legal regulation, gold is useless as a stable medium of exchange. Gold has no value in and of itself and therefore, if used for that purpose, should be treated as what it is; fiat money.
Therefore, if it is to be used as money, its exchange value must be set by law and not subject to speculation and manipulation by the gamblers of the imaginary “financial industry”. Only in this way could it become a stable and useable currency.
Was it ever Feasible to Use Gold for Money?
“Aside from going counter to the true nature of money as an abstract legal power, there is a very practical matter that supporters of Gold money can’t address: There is never enough supply of gold sufficient for such a money system. The Gold supply has not kept pace with the growth of population and commerce. This periodically increased the real value of gold.
Money systems usually solved this problem by cheating – pretending to be operating a gold based system but really mixing private bank paper into the money supply, pretending it was convertible; leveraging the amount of gold in the system through fractional reserves of one type or another. Because this bestowed great power and unearned wealth onto bankers, there has never been a shortage of apologists for such mixed systems – we call them ‘economists!'” (Stephen Zarlenga, Director, The American Monetary Institute)
It should also be kept in mind that, as a matter of historical fact, the use of gold as money is what set us upon the road to the current disastrous financial state we now find ourselves in.
The Birth of a New Religion
“Overvaluation did not depend on coinage. Banking is one form of such representative money. In the ancient empires of Egypt, Babylon, India and China, the temples and palaces represented important centers of production and they quickly became the centers of storage of grains and the precious metals, typically under the control of palace administrators and the priesthood. When commodities were thus accepted in the centralized warehouses, it would have been natural for the stewards of the palaces to issue some kind of certificate of deposit that would certify the evidence of debt. Probably these certificates from the temple-banks would be readily accepted in generally payments and could circulate as a form of (overvalued) money.” (source)
So, the obscene, debt-based, fractional reserve banking system was actually born in very ancient times. But the shit didn’t really hit the fan until somewhat later.
The evidence is much clearer for the goldsmith bankers of seventeenth century England.
“The modern banking system manufactures money out of nothing. The process is perhaps the most astounding piece of sleight of hand that was ever invented.” (Sir Josiah Stamp, president of the Bank of England and the second richest man in Britain in the 1920’s, speaking at the University of Texas in 1927)
“The goldsmith bankers quickly succumbed to the temptation to issue “extra” notes, (unbacked by gold). Why? Because the “extra” notes enriched the bankers by allowing them to buy property with notes for gold that they did not own, gold that did not even exist.” (source)
This is where the illusionary “financial industry” really began in earnest.
“In other words, the goldsmith wrote receipts for people who were not depositing gold. These receipts too circulated as money. So receipts for more gold than the banker actually had in his vaults were circulating. The goldsmith had only a fraction of the amount of gold needed to meet the claims [receipts] against him. They were issuing $10 in receipts for each $1 in gold. This is the fractional reserve system…” (source) (Congressman Wright Patman of Texas)
So, there we have the probable cause for centuries of deceit; fraud and exploitation that have led to the rise of psychopathic corporate “persons,” a monolithic international banking cartel, globalised predatory laissez faire capitalism and all the rest of the deep “economic” shit we now find ourselves in, up to our collective nostrils. The stench has finally become insufferable. Much of it arose directly from the use of the make-believe commodity; gold.
“A gold standard or silver standard or any other finite, alternate “standard” akin to a precious metal monetary standard therefore can only fail altogether to sustain commerce requiring a greater circulation, to endow the circulation with truly consistent value, and to avert catastrophic failure as an inevitable consequence of interest: The finite quantity of any honored such standard cannot sustain industry requiring a circulation greater than available monetary reserves; Inevitable deficiencies regularly compromise/degenerate the purported standard into a fractional reserve.
There is no fixed linkage between circulation, the potential value of existent property or services, and the declared monetary value of currency; Thus the purported standard imposes perpetual inflation and deflation in fluctuations of the ratio of circulation to wealth, much like the very improprieties it purports to address.
Alternate standards such as the gold standard have no power whatever to arrest multiplication of debt by interest.
As only eradication of interest arrests artificial multiplication of debt by interest, the gold standard is even wholly redundant to this purpose.
In the first two cases then, the gold standard is actually an obstruction to the very thesis of monetary propriety; and in the third it is wholly redundant.
Thus, not only is there no need or use for a gold standard whatever; in the first and second cases the gold standard is substantially damaging, and in the last it is nothing but a delusion that it can protect us from the worst calamity of all.” (Mike Montagne, People for a Mathematically Perfected Economy) ( source)
“In truth, the gold standard is already a barbarous relic.”
– John Maynard Keynes, Monetary Reform (1924), p. 172
If It Ain’t Broke, Don’t Fix It!
Fiat money is neither more nor less than a unit of measure, a tally system that keeps accurate account of goods and services exchanged. There is no profit to be made from fiat currency; that is not its purpose.
Throughout history there have been sporadic occasions when real fiat money was used very successfully as a medium of exchange.
China
“In Mandarin China, where paper money was invented in the ninth century, this sort of fiat currency funded a long and prosperous empire.” ( Ellen Hodgson Brown, Web of Debt, Chapter 5 – From Matriarchies of Abundance)
When In Rome
“The growth of Rome from a small village in the eight century BC, to creator and ruler of the world order, resulted in large part from her bronze money. In the east, gold and silver were being coined as money, but Rome chose to base her money on bronze-a mixture of mainly copper, some tin and a bit of lead. And not just commodity bronze, but monetized pieces called the Nummi or Nomisma.” ( The Lost Science of Money, CHAPTER 2, ROME’S BRONZE NOMISMA – BETTER THAN GOLD, page 53)
From its humble beginnings in the eighth century BCE, into the second Punic war, 218 – 202 BCE, the empire of Rome was built using fiat money.
At the height of its prosperity, Rome’s money consisted of overvalued bronze coins that were not commodified. The money was legal tender, not subject to the vagaries of market swings or the purposed inflation and deflation of a privatised commodity.
This monetary system, which was nationalised and not privately controlled, created one of the great societies of history. Rome did not begin to fail and ultimately collapse until control of its currency was allowed to fall into private hands.
Rome’s overreach in wars of conquest gave plutocrats the opportunity, and profiteering the impetus, to insinuate themselves into the monetary system and take control. What caused the Roman economy and ultimately the empire itself to collapse was artificially induced inflation caused by unregulated infusions of privately issued coinage and the upward redistribution of wealth to an increasingly smaller number of individuals. Sound familiar?
Evidently, disaster capitalism was being practiced even in ancient Rome.
“The numerary system lasted for nearly two centuries, during which all that was admirable of Roman civilization saw its origin, its growth and its maturity. When the system fell, Rome lost its liberties.” (Alexander Del Mar, A History of Money in Ancient Countries, pg 241)
It was usury and the money changers that destroyed the Roman Empire.
“Once a nation parts with the control of its currency and credit, it matters not who makes the nations laws. Usury, once in control, will wreck any nation. Until the control of the issue of currency and credit is restored to government and recognized as its most sacred responsibility, all talk of the sovereignty of parliament and of democracy is idle and futile.” (William Lyon Mackenzie King, the tenth Prime Minister of Canada from December 29, 1921 to June 28, 1926)
Tally Ho!
“The tally stick system worked really well for 726 years. It was the most successful form of currency in recent history and the British Empire was actually built under the Tally Stick system, but how is it that most of us are not aware of its existence?
Perhaps the fact that in1694 the Bank of England at its formation attacked the Tally Stick System gives us a clue as to why most of us have never heard of them. They realised it was money outside the power of the money changers, (the very thing King Henry had intended).
What better way to eliminate the vital faith people had in this rival currency than to pretend it simply never existed and not discuss it? That seems to be what happened when the first shareholder’s in the Bank of England bought their original shares with notched pieces of wood and retired the system.” (source)
“The tally system was in use for more than five centuries before the usury bankers’ goldbased paper banknotes took root, helping to fund a long era of leisure and abundance that flowered into the Renaissance.” ( Ellen Hodgson Brown, Web of Debt, Chapter 5 – From Matriarchies of Abundance)
Franklin’s Folly
In and around 1763 the use of fiat money in the British colonies of North America brought great prosperity to the colonists. Colonial Scrip, which they printed themselves for their own use, served very well until the private Bank of England, which, through usury, had become the real ruling force of the Empire, instructed the subservient British parliament to forbid its use with the Currency Act of 1764.
“The English bankers, being informed of that, had a law passed by the British Parliament prohibiting the Colonies from issuing their own money, and ordering them to use only the gold or silver debt-money that was provided in insufficient quantity by the English bankers. The circulating medium of exchange was thus reduced by half.
“In one year,” Franklin stated, “the conditions were so reversed that the era of prosperity ended, and a depression set in, to such an extent that the streets of the Colonies were filled with unemployed.” source
This attempt by the bank to keep the colonies in debt bondage was the primary cause of the revolution.
Lincoln’s Two Cents’ Worth
Despite disinformation to the contrary, the Greenbacks of Abraham Lincoln were highly successful. Had his monetary system been continued, as he planned, the world would be a very different place today.
“Lincoln took Col. Taylor’s advice and funded the war by printing paper notes backed by the credit of the government.
These legal-tender U.S. Notes or “Greenbacks” represented receipts for labor and goods delivered to the United States. They were paid to soldiers and suppliers and were tradable for goods and services of a value equivalent to their service to the community.
The Greenbacks aided the Union not only in winning the war but in funding a period of unprecedented economic expansion. Lincoln’s government created the greatest industrial giant the world had yet seen.
The steel industry was launched, a continental railroad system was created, a new era of farm machinery and cheap tools was promoted, free higher education was established, government support was provided to all branches of science, the Bureau of Mines was organized, and labor productivity was increased by 50 to 75 percent.
The Greenback was not the only currency used to fund these achievements; but they could not have been accomplished without it, and they could not have been accomplished on money borrowed at the usurious rates the bankers were attempting to extort from the North.” (source)
Once again, the bankers of England took matters into their own hands. They issued this public proclamation in the London Times, through Lord Goschen, spokesman of the Financiers:
“If this mischievous financial policy, which has its origin in North America, shall become indurated [sic] down to a fixture, then that government will furnish its own money without cost. It will pay off debts and be without a debt. It will have all the money necessary to carry on its commerce. It will become prosperous beyond precedent in the history of civilized governments of the world. The brains and the wealth of all countries will go to North America. That government must be destroyed or it will destroy every monarchy on the globe.” (source) (emphasis added)
Lincoln’s intention to make his monetary system permanent is actually what cost him his Life. There was a failed attempt to assassinate Andrew Jackson, the only president to ever pay off the “national debt”, which he did by shutting down the central bank. A similar effort by another american president to restore control of the monetary system to the treasury would be thwarted in the same manner 98 years later in dallas texas.
But for Lincoln and his Greenbacks america would have been transformed into a third world country before the end of the nineteenth century. By rejecting the usurious loans offered by the bankers in favor of government-issued, debt-free, interest-free currency, he succeeded in preserving the union.
In every case when and wherever a genuine fiat currency has brought prosperity to a society, the usurers/private bankers/money changers, have leapt to the offense and killed the seed before it could grow. The same principles and tactics are applied by the military and “intelligence” branches of the system of capitalism whenever an experiment in any system independent of it shows even a glimmer of success.
The common factor in the resounding success of the fiat monetary systems mentioned above was the absence of usury.
USURY
1 archaic: [original, archaic] INTEREST (notice the oldest, established meaning of the word does not even mention any amount or rate. rwp)
2: [original, formal] The lending of money with an interest charge for its use (once again, even the “formal” definition says nothing about a rate or amount. rwp)
3: [later re-definition] an unconscionable or exorbitant rate OR AMOUNT of interest: specif:[sic] interest in excess of a legal rate [or an unconscionable or exorbitant AMOUNT of interest] charged to a borrower for the use of money. (here we see the machinations of revisionists, perverting the meaning of a word for their benefit and to the great detriment of society. rwp)
So here in the very dictionary we see an actual chronology of the purposed morphing of the term. In other words, according to the oldest (archaic/traditional/biblical) definitions, (1 and 2), interest and usury are equivalent.” source (emphasis added)
The bible contains an inordinate amount of useless dogma and outright nonsense. Nonetheless, there may also be found a few principles that make perfect sense. So, for those who believe, the money masters have made sure their message stays in the media.
“12 In you men accept bribes to shed blood; you take usury and excessive interest [a] and make unjust gain from your neighbors by extortion. And you have forgotten me, declares the Sovereign LORD.”
The cited revision of the Old Testament above relates a forbidden behavior to excessive interest.
The word “excessive” however has recently been introduced to the re-translation ; and so only if we refer to a footnote [a] can we return toward the actual translation / meaning: a. Or usury and interest.
Where does the word “excessive” come from, particularly if there wasn’t even an equivalent term for the word “interest,” and either usury or interest could only be deduced from the metaphors which originally comprised the expressions?
Here is an even earlier translation of the same paragraph of Ezekiel 22: “12 In thee have they taken gifts to shed blood; thou hast taken usury and increase, and thou has greedily gained of thy neighbours by extortion, and hast forgotten me, saith the Lord God.”
Here we see the metaphor carried forth. Thus “increase” was interpreted all the while to apply to what we understand to be interest/usury.
Interest therefore is usury; and because either comprises irreversible processes to but one inevitable state of dispossession, interest too is always usurious.” source (emphasis added)
The Poison Seed of Representative Currency
Representative currency isn’t really money at all. It is a token, like gold, representing a chosen commodity. The token may be used as a medium of exchange to purchase goods or services and may also be converted, upon demand, to the commodity it represents at whatever the going rate happens to be.
Since the value of any given commodity can and will fluctuate radically as a result of market manipulation, no currency backed by a commodity can ever be stable.
Even though representative currency is used for the sake of convenience, it is the commodity that is actually the final medium of exchange. If the currency is a valid representation of the backing commodity then the holder should be able to exchange it, at any time, for the commodity it represents.
This is nothing other than barter, albeit of an unnecessarily complicated and unstable nature. This perverted form of barter, the use of representative currency, has contributed significantly to the nightmare we are currently sleeping through.
Since a commodity may be privately owned, its value can and will be manipulated by those in a position to acquire it at will. Consequently this will enable them to “corner the market”. Therefore they will be able to manipulate the perceived value of the commodity, which will inevitably lead to such special interests gaining control of the economy, the monetary system and the government.
“I care not what puppet is placed upon the throne of England to rule the Empire on which the sun never sets. The man who controls Britain’s money supply controls the British Empire, and I control the British money supply.” – Nathan Mayer Rothschild
If the commodity that backs a currency is nationalised by a bona fide representative government or direct democratic process and its value thereby regulated and stabilised, it is then no longer a commodity. It is now owned equally by every member of society. It can no longer be traded as a commodity and thus manipulated by market speculators to control the economy.
Nothing with a fixed value is of any use to the capitalist “free” market. If you can’t sell something for more than it’s worth, you can’t make a profit from it.
Using a commodity for money in a global economy of very large urbanised societies or nation states could in no way be successful. To the best of my knowledge, there is no valuable commodity that exists in sufficient quantity to be used as currency for the monetary system of even a single nation let alone the entire world.
Since the financiers never limit currency in circulation to the worth of the backing commodity, there could never be enough of said commodity available to cover all the currency in circulation at any given time. That means a fractional reserve system and that means trouble.
The only viable means of providing a stable economy for the sorts of societies we live in today is by the use of legal tender, real money. Let commodities be what they are and allow them to be bought and sold in a free and fair market. No commodity such as gold can ever be real money.
“So both Aristotle and Plato noted the paramount principle – that the nature of money is a fiat of the law, an invention or creation of mankind. This principle, part of a lost science of money, must now be relearned in the 3rd Millennium in order to achieve the monetary reforms needed to move back from the brink of nuclear disaster, to move away from a future dominated by fraud and ugliness, toward a world of justice and beauty.” – Stephen Zarlenga, “The Lost Science of Money”
The creation of representative currency was the seed that has grown into the monstrous weed of the international banking cartel, which is now strangling the entire planet.
This cadre of bankers, investors and financiers are the modern equivalent of the money changers that the legendary Jesus allegedly drove from the temple. They are those who worship Mammon in churches such as the Federal Reserve, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Bank For International Settlements, the City of London and Wall Street.
They take unearned wealth through the crime of usury and employ a plethora of Ponzi schemes to assure that all profit fills their coffers whilst all debt becomes the burden of those who are actually productive. They privatise the profit and socialise the debt.
“Labor is prior to and independent of capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.” (Abraham Lincoln, Annual message to Congress, December 3, 1861)
The highest of the aristocracy, the owners of the banking cartel, build their power through usury, which allows them to control the economies and monetary systems of the world. They then use their false monetary wealth, which they have created out of nothing, to acquire possession of all real wealth, the vital resources of Earth, resources that are essential to all Life and should never be owned by anyone.
The theft of the commons is perhaps the greatest of all crimes against humanity and against all Life. It’s not really money per se these imperious supremacists are interested in, but rather the ownership and control of Earth and all its resources, including the human.
Money for Nuthin
The bogus money in use today is handled as if it were a valuable commodity with intrinsic value. It is not fiat money. Nor is it representative currency since it is not backed by any “precious” substance. As with the myth of gold, this funny-money is only valuable because everyone believes it is.
Ironically, it seems only its creators are aware of the worthlessness of their pretend commodity currency. But they have apparently managed to convince just about everybody else that this funny- money, or even electronic money, which exists nowhere but in a computer database, is a precious commodity with its own inherent worth. In fact, since it is loaned into circulation with interest due (usury), it is nothing but debt, a private tax upon everyone save those who create it.
Modern currencies are neither money nor commodity. They represent nothing of actual value, nor are they legal tender, which is a contract between people who agree to its use as a medium of exchange. Today’s money is nothing but debt, based upon a lie, the deceit that it is somehow naturally valuable, like food or water, and are therefore a precious commodity in and of itself.
“The Fed was deliberately designed to appear as a sort of government body to hide the fact that it is a private banking cartel whose member banks share in the vast profits of seigniorage (i.e., the difference between the cost of printing/minting or otherwise creating money [a few cents per $100], and its face value).”
“The Federal Reserve Notes we all accept as currency (there are no U.S. Notes printed since passage of the ill-advised, 1994 Reigle Act abolished Lincoln’s greenbacks) are actually sold to the Fed at the cost of printing – a few cents per sheet – by the Treasury Department Bureau of Engraving and Printing.” (source)
Try to understand; the ruling class creates this funny-money out of nothing, at little or no cost. They then lend it into circulation and charge interest for its use because of the “risk” involved in lending something that cost them nothing and is worthless in any case.
To add insult to injury, only the principle is created. No money is printed or entered electronically to satisfy the interest, a self-perpetuating fraud and a logical fallacy of epic proportions.
What the Market Will Bear
Money is not meant to be a means of making more money. It only exists to be a medium of even exchange.
Today there are manifold false commodities such as international currencies. The money changers tell us they are valuable and most people believe them.
Along with these phony commodity currencies, there is an overabundance of fallacious financial “products” and “instruments”, which are utterly worthless but are treated as precious commodities demanding astronomical prices on the “market”.
Since modern currency is not representative and not backed by anything, gold and other allegedly precious metals remain commodities to be used solely for the purpose of conning people out of more of their faux money.
Since everyone has been convinced that this funny-money is valuable, it can be used, by devout Mammonites, to make more profit through “investments” like currency trading and all the other scams that are the “products” of the “financial industry”.
Ultimately, because everyone believes it is valuable, the funny-money profit can be used to buy things of real value, vital resources that no one has any business owning.
The ownership of resources vital to human survival is nothing less than the theft of the commons. These are things that belong to everyone, like the air we breathe. No individual or group of individuals has any right to their ownership.
But you may rest assured that once the air has been polluted beyond breathability, the corporatocracy will be happy to sell you machines to purify it. “Air-conditioning” will take on a whole new meaning.
Anyone who can afford it will be able to breathe just fine, thank you very much.
Goldbugs
There are a very large number of people who, for no valid reason, “believe” that gold is intrinsically valuable. When pressed to explain their “belief”, none I have asked has ever been able to provide a rational explanation. Belief in the value of gold and commodity money based upon the “gold standard” is not much different from belief in god, santa claus, the tooth fairy or the easter bunny.
For centuries, a small minority of avaricious individuals have been manipulating “economies”, which they conjured out of nothing but their own greed. The fabricated “value” of gold, the pretty, shiny, worthless metal that was once believed to be a possible source of immortality, has been one of the primary weapons in their perpetual class war against those whose labour for the benefit of us all.
Today we are confronted with massive, virtually immortal, “corporate persons”. With nearly infinite resources and unconstrained by any governing agency, they behave in the same psychopathic manner as their owners.
Today, instead of impacting only a few villages, townships and perhaps several hundred or some thousands of people, the global ruling class are laying waste to most of Earth and bringing poverty, suffering and death to millions. For the first time, feudalism has attained global proportions.
Few people seem willing or able to accept or even acknowledge the magnitude of the possibly irreversible damage being done in the name of profit.
“When one day money becomes useless and I have food and water while you have gold, come to me then and offer your gold in exchange. Unless I am feeling irrationally benevolent, you will remain hungry and thirsty.” – Richard William Posner
Consummatum est