MODERN SLAVERY
So long as we humans
However, since the dollar they were going to be incredibly establish mutual consent, was decoupled from the gold wealthy, but the amount of goods we can share and enjoy standard, it has lost around and services available back home 90% of its purchasing power. had not really changed. Result? our collective resources Thinking back to our milk for Prices simply went up!) The real and life seems a whole lot eggs exchange, you might be privilege of the super-rich is their more sunny-side-up for the tempted to picture a bottle priority lane access to this newly both of us... of slightly cloudy water being created money. In essence, it’s not handed to you over the garden so much the quantity of money fence, or a fistful of worthless they have, but the fact that they “milk certificates.” But think get to spend it into circulation again. For, if I am assuming the role of the banker in this first, before the rest of us cotton on to the fact that it’s been scenario, I’m actually asking you to borrow some pieces of watered down. By the time these dilute dollars finally meander paper (with no mention of milk, eggs, sex, honey or anything to you and me, it’s little more than cloudy water, or symbolic else that’s tangible) and pay interest for the privilege! All these cloudy water, or … confused? Good. Now get back to work. pieces of paper represent is your debt to me—a debt that I have created out of nothing, meanwhile you pledge to forfeit Perhaps we need to ask ourselves this very simple question: what your house if you don’t keep up the repayments! Perhaps the is money? Don’t shy away from it—no need to overcomplicate it Polynesian islander’s example wasn’t so far out of whack? either. You don’t want to spend your life chasing an enigma now do you? Don’t leave this to the “experts”—the people whose With the woe-is-us-machine we know and love as the Internet career depends on maintaining their intellectual propriety with now running on all twelve-cylinders, it’s easy to blame Wall confusion and obfuscation. You shouldn’t make the mistake of Street greed, the Illuminati, the neoconservatives, the royal thinking that money is intrinsically a bad or evil thing either. At family—anybody, in fact, but ourselves for the mess we’re the very least concede that it’s very useful stuff, helping us to in. But the inescapable fact is the only thing that holds up transcend the limitations of direct barter. Problems really occur our monetary system is our persistent belief in it and our when we seek money as if it were the true wealth in and of itself, unwillingness to embrace viable alternatives. Our problem is rather than merely a symbolic means of exchange. one of philosophy, not politics. How have so many of us been hoodwinked into accepting such an absurd tautology: a dollar So what are we to do? Should we join some protest movement is worth another dollar—what sort of insidious, circular, waving “End the Fed” banners? Should we petition our recursive symbolism is this? But then, take these dollars away governments for greater freedoms, or is that, as the monetary and how are you going to pay for your groceries? prophet E.C. Reigel wrote over fifty years ago, just an absurd act of deference, “wholly lacking the spirit of a freeman.” In short, You really don’t need a PhD in economics (or any other are we going to take responsibility for the mess we’re in, or are pseudo-science for that matter) to understand that as more we going to let “the economists” sort it all out for us? make-believe money is pumped into the financial system, the purchasing power of each dollar is diluted, just like the All facetiousness aside for a moment, one by one, we are nourishment of our watery milk. This is inevitable so long as indeed waking up to the fact that something is very wrong. an inflated money supply chases the same amount of goods Looking at the world with the eyes of our ancients we realize a and services. (The Spanish discovered this when they returned fundamental truth—our monetary system has been corrupted from the Americas with boats laden with gold. They thought to one where national sovereignty is a joke on a naive populous. GA R D EN CU LT U R E M AGA Z I N E.CO M
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