Is the Money Tree Healthy? by N.A.
I've spent most of my admittedly short activist career (5 years) trying to bring forth complicated and counter-common-understanding messages to the general public. I even boiled what I believe are the 5 most essential economic reforms to single 2-sided flyer (see here and here). Another flyer explains debt-free money. These flyers were fine for handing out - by the hundreds - at Zuccotti Park when it was Occupied, at 2 NYC Earth Day events and at a table at 2 Pace University Left Forums, etc. but obviously more is needed. I've written over 150 articles, mostly on economic issues, for Opednews, available here and on Huffington Post here. Sometimes I aim for a more scholarly crowd, like with my peer-reviewed paper on Henry George's view of money, here; it turns out there is more in common with Georgists and monetary reformers than is commonly believed! I've been interviewed on public access TV twice and radio three times and was even on the voluble but brilliant Max Keiser show once. This is in addition to serving as president of Common Ground-NYC and NY Coordinator for the Public Banking Institute. I even set up some e-petitions (see here).
As many of you probably know, the world is long on solutions
and short on access to those in power to implement them (well, many of
those people don't WANT to offer solutions - that is part of the
problem!).
It
also doesn't help, that people who ought to be
complimentary forces - like Public Banking advocates and Monetary
Reformers - find themselves at odds over issues that to the general
public might seem arcane or even trivial. The Georgists don't get along
with the Monetary Reformers, who don't get along with the Public
Banking Advocates, who sometimes get along with the Monetary Reformers,
but never heard of the Georgists...etc, maddeningly etc.
There
are a lot of good smart people out there, some groups getting more, or
less, traction with the general public, and of course, the protests are
only getting louder, bigger, and more frequent.
Yet
the elites seem to be gaining ground, ignoring the will of the people
and even doubling down on their crazy, unsustainable policies. It's not
like the politicians aren't aware that they face historic unpopularity
(Congress' approval rating hovers around 10%. Numbers like that reflect
those die-hards that give approval virtually no-matter-what, short of
species genocide...maybe). The president isn't doing much better. Even
if they don't understand the issues or even the problems, they certainly
know how to read polls and Obama especially knows the difference
between words that please and actions that don't. It is most puzzling!
I am coming to the uncomfortable belief that people at all levels want to hold onto their comfort zones, to the familiar, even when it hurts them .
We're all familiar with self-destructive acts, but it's beginning to
look like this is not the exception, but the rule, when it comes to
human behavior. To give one example, why do people insist that the
government can "run out of money" in a fiat economy (even leaving aside
for the moment that we've outsourced money creation to a network of
private banks and a private Central Bank whose main purpose is to bail
out the TBTF banks, not the U.S. economy)? Why do people believe the
president when he talks about "balancing the federal budget the same way
as every family has to balance their budget" when clearly only one can
tax and "coin Money" (Art. 1, Sec. 8, Clause 5 of the constitution,
SCOTUS affirmed in Julliard v. Greenburg, exemplified for most of U.S.
history in debt-free United States Notes (1862-1996))? It has to be
because they want it to be true . That is, because American families have to balance their
budgets, it is simply too uncomfortable to imagine that the government
has other options (I'm not saying we can ignore inflation, but that by
every responsible economist and expert's opinion, Right or Left, we are
producing WAY below our capacity, and one of the major reasons is lack
of effective demand - the kind of demand that could be increased by
public works jobs). It is too difficult to imagine.
Similarly,
I've had people tell me flat out that without speculation on land, no
one would ever build (Real Estate people especially, hold this
position). Never mind that people could speculate on actual buildings
all they want, while leaving the land rent to society, whose demand
created it in the first place (land rent is zero on Robinson Crusoe
island since there is no one to fight over land!). That is how it's
always been, they'll say, even though in actuality, the private
enclosure philosophy is both modern and specific to Western civilization
(see John Kelly's "The Other Law of Moses" for how the biblical land
law was implemented starting 5,000 years ago). The victor gets to write
history, I understand, but not for other, prior, civilizations too!
It's part of the social pathology of our times that we forget what is
right in front (or behind) us. That we attribute to "the natural
condition of Man" what are really just responses to sick economic and
political incentives.
At
this point in this screed, I guess I'm supposed to come up with
solutions, but frankly, it really seems like a breakdown is coming
before a rebirth. I hope it'll be along the lines of something good and
sustainable, but history suggests otherwise. Just look at the recent
set of revolutions in the Middle East, which have just led to a series
of despotic regimes. It's a work in progress, I understand, but it's not
going well.
It
is, of course, entirely possible, that Humankind cannot transcend it's
selfish, stupid, aggressive, short-sighted, ego-centric, fearful,
tendencies, and that we'll go the way of 99% of all species that have
passed through this planet (why should our big brains, only slightly
better than a Chimpanzee's, make us any different? That too, is mere
hubris). That may be the last
uncomfortable truth people will ever learn. The terrible tragedy will
be that there were solutions, right there for the taking, but we refused
to grab them, preferring the short-term comfort of the familiar to even
our long term viability.
Meanwhile, we press on, because we must...
Thoughts?
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