In Part 1 I laid out a claim for the source of most problems: sociopaths.
Now, of course it may not seem like that much of a cause until someone can show you the way this butterfly sets a storm in motion.
It’s perhaps not the only source but for anyone capable of maintaining their attention on the prize for several years, it’s possibly the most important factor.
I’ll give you an example:
Years ago, I gave a series of speeches exposing the astounding ramifications and societal consequences of Fiat debasement.
It’s in general difficult for folks to see or even believe such a thing can have these effects, especially if you just make the claim and try to tie it back to the source. That’s why in my speeches I tried to derive these effects as inevitable consequences of the original intervention. Below was the MindMap I used to connect everything.
For example, it would seem far fetched to blame the rise of nationalism on money printing, but with proper realization that fiat money printing inevitably leads to local governments increasingly relying on federal government services, the emergence of 3 letter agencies and the reduced ability to vote with your feet, increased military spending, longer wars and an overall increased focus on collective decisions made by the central government, then it’s much less debatable.
In fact, when most people are asked why there is a surge of socialist or fascist nationalism in the world, they just don’t know and usually make vague claims about people or the culture changing, with no further explanation. It’s always those other idiots on the other side of the country or state making things more fascist, and that’s as far as where their knowledge takes them.
What about the loss of elaborate architecture, building quality and beauty, all replaced by monstrous concrete jungles of cold metal and glass or cracking brick veneer on stick houses in carpets of subdivisions ?
Take a look at the mind map, and see if there are leaves that surprise you, things that you didn’t know had an explanation.
The idea for this talk was spurred by lectures from Dr Guido Hulsmann of the University of Angers , when he gave various versions at the Mises Institute, and from reading his famous book “The Ethics of Money Production”. Later, I was really happy to see that Saifedean Ammous had published a book “The Fiat Standard” exposing the same disastrous consequences, because his audience is large and he explains things well.
I will leave you to ponder what sort of person would advocate for Fiat debasement, by recommending this excellent article by Dr Keith Weiner : Keynes was a vicious bastard
Quoting the article, quoting Keynes himself:
For a little reflection will show what enormous social changes would result from a gradual disappearance of a rate of return on accumulated wealth.
In short, the aggregate return from durable goods in the course of their life would, as in the case of short-lived goods, just cover their labour-costs of production plus an allowance for risk and the costs of skill and supervision.
Now, though this state of affairs would be quite compatible with some measure of individualism, yet it would mean the euthanasia of the rentier, and, consequently, the euthanasia of the cumulative oppressive power of the capitalist to exploit the scarcity value of capital.
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. The sight of this arbitrary rearrangement of riches strikes not only at security, but at confidence in the equity of the existing distribution of wealth. Those to whom the system brings windfalls, beyond their deserts and even beyond their expectations or desires, become “profiteers,” who are the object of the hatred of the bourgeoisie, whom the inflationism has impoverished, not less than of the proletariat. As the inflation proceeds and the real value of the currency fluctuates wildly from month to month, all permanent relations between debtors and creditors, which form the ultimate foundation of capitalism, become so utterly disordered as to be almost meaningless; and the process of wealth-getting degenerates into a gamble and a lottery.
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.
…the fatal process which the subtle mind of Lenin had consciously conceived.
You might think this is perhaps a little sterile or even irrelevant because there might not seem to be any way to stop it. Gold bugs have been trying for years, Libertarians have shouted from the roof tops and politicians have all paid lip service to it. I’ve been told many times: “so what, what do you want me to do about it ?
You would be justified to think the only recourse is to buy gold, bullets and move to the country , because it seems, this is unsolvable.
Now I want you to look at the chart and get a sense of how many of these consequences can be deadly, for you and others. Wars certainly are, so is health deterioration. In some sense many are disguised as increased risk.
In the next article, we’ll try to see what people have tried to fix all this.