tc allen: 2017

Friday, December 29, 2017

Review of the Race Problem and Human Progress

Review of the Race Problem and Human Progress

Thomas Allen

    The following is a review of The Race Problem and Human Progress by Dr. Wesley Critz George (Ostara Publication edition, 2013). I have provided references to pages in his book and have enclosed them in parentheses. My remarks are enclosed in brackets, and most are supporting commentary.
    George argues that racial differences need to be considered and accounted for in formulating public policies (p. 4). [Unfortunately, for both Whites and Blacks and the world, George and people like him have been ignored. The dogma that racial differences, especially in intellect and behavior, are nonexistent or at most insignificant has prevailed in the United States and Europe for decades. As a result, both the United States and Europe are fading away and will soon be no more than a historical footnote. Most of today’s social, economic, and political problems are caused by this nihilist, egalitarian dogma.]
    In the sixteenth century, tyrants suppressed the science of astronomy that declared a heliocentric solar system. Today, tyrants suppress the science of racial genetics that declares that human races differ significantly genetically and this difference extends to intellect and behavior (p. 7). Racial egalitarians and racial nihilists have distorted scientific and historical facts to promote their agendas and dogmas (p. 7).
    Socialists are racial nihilists, or at least act like they are. They promote the notion that racial differences are insignificant or unimportant. Their underlying principle “is that human beings are plastic creatures who merely reflect their exterior environment” (p. 7). [This is Lysenkoism. Lysenkoism denies that genes have any effect on an organism. Environment is the sole determinant of the characteristics that an organism has. Lysenkoism was the official policy of the Soviet Union under Stalin.]
    Archibald Roosevelt notes in the introduction that he wrote for George’s book that no “intelligent anthropologist will claim that one race is superior in all counts to other races. The only thing a scientist can say is that one race is better fitted to certain conditions — better adapted in mind, and better adapted in body” (p. 8). Then he states that Blacks can thrive and reproduce in tropical forests where Whites perish in a generation or two. Blacks fare even better than any other race except perhaps Indo-Australians in such habitat. On the other hand, Whites do better in modern technical civilization than do Blacks. Unfortunately, for Whites and Blacks, the guiding dogma of the United States and Europe is “that all people must be forced into one common mold” (p. 8). Thus, people are forced to do things that are unnatural to them (pp. 8-9).
    Dr. Henry Garrett, who wrote the forward to George’s book, notes:

. . . all individuals are unequal at birth, and as they live and pursue their divergent ways tend to become even more unequal, i.e., their differences increase. This would be true even if we lived under identical conditions, ate the same bread, slept the same sleep, breathed the same air. No two individuals have the same complement of genes (except identical twins), and each of us possesses different qualities of mind and character. . . . What applies to the individual, applies in a broad sense to races of men. Races differ, too (pp 8-9).

Garrett continues, “The equalitarian-collectivists argue — with no real evidence — that all men are born with equal endowment and can be kept equal if given the same opportunities and the same environment. . . . Yet this is the philosophy that dictates the social policies of our time” (p. 11).
George writes:

If we can continue to develop a programme of friendly co-operation between the races, with separateness in social life, we can go forward in promoting the talents of the white man and the Negro and can contribute to the welfare and happiness of both. Otherwise, tragedy lies ahead for the American people (p. 13).

[America has ignored George’s advice. Now it is at the edge of the abyss that George feared.]
    He feared that integration and amalgamation of the races would lead to a breed of people incapable of maintaining the American civilization (p. 13). [In only a few decades, what he feared has happened. After nearly 60 years of forced integration, the American civilization is on its deathbed.]
    George observes that the White race has produced most of the civilizations of history. The Black race has produced none (p. 14). Then he remarks, “The creativeness, the productiveness, or the lack of such qualities, in man are related to and in large measure the result of their inherent natures. These inherent natures have a genetic or hereditary basis” (p. 14).
    Next George discusses heredity verse environment (pp. 14ff). Heredity dominates some characteristics, such as “general body form, skin texture and pigmentation” (pp. 14-15).
    He comments that:

. . . each race has a pool of genes different from the pool of genes of every other race, although some genes in the pool appear to be common to all races, probably to all mammals. This pool of genes is the major factor in determining the appearance of individuals of a race, and not only their bodily appearance but their reactions, their intellectual capacity and their accomplishments (pp. 15-16).

    Then he concludes, “The importance of heredity in the production of physical features is scarcely denied; but in the sphere of intellect and behaviour there is a campaign of denial of the importance of heredity” (p. 16). [This denial of the importance of heredity in the sphere of intellect and behavior is the guiding dogma of today. This dogma has brought a great deal of destruction to the Western world.]
    George goes into more detail about the influence of genes on intelligence (pp. 16ff). He cites several well-known authorities who show the importance of genes in determining intelligence.
    Then he discusses the intelligence of Blacks, whose intelligence on average is significantly less than that of Whites on average (pp. 17-19). He quotes Dr. Carothers, who spent his life working in mental hospitals in Africa:

The African has accordingly been described as conventional; highly dependent on physical and emotional stimulation; lacking in spontaneity, foresight, tenacity, judgment and humility; inapt for sound abstraction and for logic; given to phantasy and fabrication; and, in general, as unstable, impulsive, unreliable, irresponsible, and living in the present without reflection or ambition, or regard for the rights of others outside his own circle. To counteract these ruderies, he has also been described as cheerful, stoical, self-confident, sociable, loyal, emotionally intuitive, and eloquent, and as bearing no grudges and having an excellent memory, a large vocabulary, and an aptitude for music and the dance (p. 18).

Next George comments on the high crime rate of Negroes (pp. 20-21) and Haiti (pp. 21-23). Haiti went from being the most productive colony in the Caribbean under White-man’s rule to one of the most impoverished countries in the world under Black-man's rule.
George continues his discussion of race, heredity, and civilization with a quotation from Ernest Hooten, formerly head of the Department of Anthropology at Harvard:

The errors of humanitarianism are based on the assumption that it is under-privilege that makes the underdog, and that the potentialities for intellectual and cultural development are essentially equal in all men — in short upon the delusion that mind and social capacity in man are independent of the organism and that an equalization of opportunity will bring the millenium (p. 23).

    Next George discusses the race problem, integration, differences in intelligence, and other race-related issues (pp. 24ff).
    He discusses some of the political and religious slogans used to promote racial integration (pp. 26-27). [Many of these same slogans can easily be used to promote sexually integrated restrooms and locker rooms — and some have been.]
    First slogan: “[C]ompulsory mixing of the races is the democratic, American way” (p. 27). George replies, “That, of course, is false. The United States was founded and for 180 years has prospered on the principle of union and strength in diversity. Compulsory conformity and uniformity is not the American way; it is a perversion of the American way” (p. 27). [Today, diversity emphasizes and even demands conformity and uniformity.]
    Second slogan. “[T]here is no fundamental difference between men” (p. 27). George replies, “Most of us will admit that all men should be equal in their right to justice and fair play; but in the biological sense there is no truth in the quotation and it has no valid force or use in solving the race problem” (p. 27).
    Third slogan: “the Fatherhood of God and the Brotherhood of man" (p. 27). To this slogan, George replies, “Fatherhood and brotherhood are fine ideas and factual states, but they do not solve social problems without regard to other facts any more than they solve family problems. In reaching decisions on vital social problems we are admonished to disregard ‘race, creed, colour and national origin.’ These are all major facts of life” (p. 27).
    Fourth slogan: “[I]ntegration is the Christian way and that separation of the races is un-Christian” (p. 27). George replies, “It is not clear why anything should be accepted as Christian when its virtue has not been demonstrated” (p. 27).
    George identifies several reasons for opposing racial integration. One is the low moral behavior of Blacks and their high rate of crime (p. 29). [Since integration, Whites have adopted the low moral behavior of Blacks instead of Blacks adopting the high moral behavior of Whites. Moreover, integration has done nothing to reduce the Black crime rate.]
    Another reason for opposing racial integration is that racial integration leads to interracial mating. Interracial mating destroys the unique gene pool of both the White and Black races. Destruction of their gene pools devastates the unique abilities of both races (p. 30).
    George comments:

There is much evidence to show that the Caucasoid people, the white race, have creative talents and abilities that have not been demonstrated to any considerable extent by the Negro race. Great achievement in human individuals is correlated with a high degree of intelligence combined with a number of traits such as zeal, vigour, persistence, co-operativeness, adaptability, imagination, courage, self-confidence (p. 31).

    To dilute the gene pool of the White race with the genes of the Black race will bring to an end all the great religious, philosophical, political, artistic, engineering, medical, agricultural, and scientific advancements that the White race has given the world. Even the Negro has greatly benefitted from the achievements of the White race (pp. 33-34). [Is the annihilation of the White race being motivated by a desire to end these advancements?]
    Not only is intellect highly influenced by genetics, so are personality and various abilities (pp. 34-37).
    Some proponents of integration claim that integration will not lead to interracial marriages. [Marriage statistics disprove this claim.] George offers two examples to disprove this assertion: Portugal and Brazil.
    Portugal began importing Negro slaves in the mid-fifteenth century. The Portuguese interbred with these Blacks. Now many Portuguese display Negroid characteristics. Moreover, before racial amalgamation, Portugal was a first-class power. Now it is an insignificant nothing (p. 37).
    In Brazil, the Portuguese first interbred with the Indians and then with the imported Negro slaves. Today, Brazil has a highly mixed-breed population. It is a large country with a large population and is endowed with great natural resources. Yet it is still a backward country dependent on foreign aid (p. 37).
    Racial amalgamation will lead the United States down the road to Portugal and Brazil. [The United States are being so overwhelmed with non-White immigrants that amalgamation can only accelerate. Within a few generations, Whites will cease to exist in the United States. Furthermore, Europeans seem determined to annihilate the White race in Europe.]
    George overviews how the United States got into the racial mess that they were in when he wrote (pp. 38-40). [It is even worse today because Americans ignored the warnings of George and others like him. Because they ignored opponents of integration, White America will soon die. Sadly, many Whites look forward to that day with gladness. Oh, how they must hate themselves and their family. How they must hate the Negro to destroy him to destroy themselves.]
    He blames the clergy for America’s racial problems (pp. 38-41). About the clergy, George writes:

They preach sociological sermons that will not stand the test of analysis, they pass resolutions, they quote the Golden Rule. They seem not to realize that quoting the Golden Rule does not answer the question. What is the right and moral thing to do? It merely raises the question. The admonition ‘Do unto others as you would have them do to you,’ applies not only to our relations with Negroes.
It applies also to our children and to our children’s children through future generations. Do you think that the Golden Rule requires or permits that we make racial hybrids of our posterity? I hardly think so (pp. 38-39).

[The clergy is not only responsible for the race problem and the destruction of the White race; they are also responsible for many of America’s other problems — most of which are related to race. Because of them, the United States have become a tyrannical police state with the government spying on everyone. They are behind the endless war on terrorism to protect Israeli imperialism. The agendas of homosexuals and other sexual deviants have received much support from them. {Sexual integration is a natural outgrowth of racial integration.} Most support and promote unlimited non-White immigration, whether legal or illegal. Whether they support the destruction of America and the death of the White race out of ignorance or collaboration with the ruling elite is not known. However, most likely, it is the latter for most clergy.]
    George remarks, “The National Council of Churches and its predecessor, the Federal Council of Churches, have for many years made racial integration one of their main objectives” (p. 39). [The National Council of Churches is an illuministic front to promote the agenda of the ruling elite in religious circles.]
    George concludes his admonishment of the clergy, “By all means let us be kind, generous and helpful to Negroes and all men, but let us rid ourselves of the delusion that Christianity requires us to sacrifice our children and our children’s children to the cause of integration.” [Contrary to the teachings of the integrationist clergy, God does not demand the sacrifice of our children. He abhors such sacrifice.]
    Next George asks, “Shall we submit to programs designed to convert the American Caucasian race into an American mulatto race?” (p. 42). [As the last 50 years have shown, Americans chose to convert the American Caucasian race into an American mulatto race. The domestic Negro was not achieving this goal fast enough. So they open the borders to unlimited non-White immigrants. The White race, which many consider the cancer of the universe, must be eradicated! Naively, George thought that if the people knew the truth about genetics, race, and racial amalgamation, they would turn from the destructive effects of integration. Most did not and do not care to learn the truth — even those who opposed coercive big government. Of the few who care to learn, most will ignore it. All fear being called “racist” — a fear instilled with decades of propaganda by the ruling elite. So controlling has this fear become that nearly all Whites declare that they are not racists before they make a comment about race. Non-Whites can discuss race openly and frankly without fear. Whites cannot.]
    George remarks:

It should make a great deal of difference in many of our human affairs whether man is in the main an environmentally dominated creature or whether genetic heredity plays a major role in our lives.
Instead of seeking the facts bearing on these questions, environmentalism has been accepted and promoted as a dogma by those attempting to bring about socialism, communism, amalgamation of the races, and by the left wing generally. The scientific evidence they present is virtually non-existent, and yet we have been driven ahead into what may be very foolish programs (p. 43).

[The ruling elite and its lackeys and toadies do not care what the science shows. Environmentalism supports their dogma of statism, which transfers all wealth and power to them. To achieve this goal, they must annihilate the White race. Only the White race stands between them and their goal. The irony is that most of the ruling elite is White. Are they to be among those killed? Probably. Behind them is Lucifer, and his objective is to annihilate the White race by amalgamation or other means because it is the race created in God’s image.]
About a minister who declared “that love is the ultimate solution of the race problem” (p. 43), George writes:

Any one worthy of being the shepherd of a flock should know that unrestrained and unguided love has led many people to tragedy.
By all means, love should be involved in considering human affairs including race relations; but love is not necessarily wisdom and it does not eliminate the necessity for making judgments based on fact and reason (pp. 43-44).

    Then he remarks that this type of sophistry fills academia. Academia tries “to instill the idea that in human affairs the inherent nature of the seed corn is of little concern — that only the conditions of cultivation are important” (p. 44).
    Committing on political, religious, and academic leaders controlling and manipulating people, George writes, “In our present situation emotional words like ‘brotherhood’ and ‘love’ are made to do useful service for those who wish to manipulate people. ‘Prejudice,’ ‘racism,’ ‘bigotry’ are also signal words used to produce rejection responses while evading truth and reason” (p. 45).
    Regarding funding racial genetics research, George observes, “No money seems available to search out the truth although money is available from government and foundations to establish the dogma without the truth” (p. 45). [The same situation is found with the global warming dogma. Plenty of research money is available to show that human activity is the primary, if not the sole, cause of global warming. {Such finding gives the ruling elite something that they can use to scare the masses into giving the ruling elite more power over the masses.} Little or no money is available for research that questions global warming and that shows man’s contribution is insignificant.]
    To refute the environmentalists’ assertion that good schools are needed to produce eminent men and, therefore, schools need to be integrated, George offers examples of some eminent men, most of whom were born in poverty, and all of whom had little or no formal schooling (p. 47).
        George notes two primary factors that determine one’s life and achievements:

1. The pool of genes assembled when the egg is fertilized in the womb.
2. The concatenation of events in the prenatal and postnatal environments in which the genes operate. As evidence continues to accumulate, the importance of genes becomes increasingly clear (pp. 47-48).

Next George discusses the importance of genes on intellect and behavior (pp. 49ff). Genetics has a good deal of impact on personality traits, specifically dominance-submissiveness (p. 49). Intelligence has been found to have “about the same genetic correlation as do physical features” (p. 49).
About the problem of low-grade intelligence, George quotes Bradley Patten, formerly head of anatomy at the University of Michigan:

The most serious defects of the nervous system from the standpoint of human progress are neither extremely manifest or clinically remediable. They become evident only as an individual develops and proves to have an intelligence level too low to cope successfully with the problems of living in our modern complex and highly competitive society. As far as we know the background of such situations, it is the old and inexorable law of ‘like begetting like’ . . . But the fact remains that to have a good brain one must choose ancestors with good brains, just as one must stem from physically sound stock if one is to have a good body. . . (p. 50).

Then George adds:

A mouse, a seal, an elephant, a frog, a bird, or a man behaves according to his kind because he has inherited the brain of his kind. His brain, which guides his behavior, is of course embedded in and influenced by the matrix of his other organs and the body is embedded in and influenced by the matrix of the general environment (p. 50).

    Next George cites a few leaders in the field of neuroanatomy and neurology (pp. 49-53) to show that the brain is much more complex than “a mass of homogenous wax” (p. 51). People need “to look upon the mind as some transcendental essence” (p. 51). Studies have shown “that there is a striking relation between brain size, histological brain structure and learning capacity” (p. 53).
    George cites several studies on the development of the brain in infancy. These studies show “that most of the material substrate of mind (nerve cells and their fibers) develop before kindergarten age — only about ten percent after that age” (p. 57).
    He adds:

Experience, including schooling, undoubtedly exercises an important function in imprinting memory vestiges and in selectively facilitating synaptic transmission of impulses, but it is not evident that it can contribute significantly, if indeed at all, in adding to the inherited material basis of the mind (p. 57).

George remarks, “That there are many hereditary racial features, not evident to the casual observer, has been revealed by scientific researches” (p. 57). Then he identifies some pathological conditions that are hereditary and vary with race (pp. 57-59). He concludes, “Race is not merely skin deep” (p. 59).
Next George compares the Negro and White brains (pp. 59-62). Two important factors have been found:

1. [T]he average weight of adult male Negro brains is about ten percent less than the average weight of adult male White brains. And it has been established that intelligence in mammalian animal groups is correlated with the size of the brain. We have seen above that there is such a correlation also in the growing child.
2. Through microscopic study of many brains it has been revealed that there is a similarly significant difference in the two races in the thickness of the supragranular layers of the cortex — the layers that are credited with being those portions of the cortex most directly involved in the higher mental functions (p. 59).

    George concludes, “It appears then that the Negro race is at a disadvantage in his mechanism for intellectual activity just as he is at an advantage through pigmentation for protection against the harmful effects of a tropical sun” (p. 60).
    He notes that the anatomical differences in the brains of the two races probably account for “the average Negro score on IQ and educational achievement tests [being] about 20% below the average White score” (p. 60). Also, the “high scores near the gifted-child level are 6-7 times as frequent among White children” (p. 60). During the 1950s and early 1960s, after a generation of compulsory schooling, 67.2 percent of Black inductees and enlistees were rejected because they failed the military education tests while only 18.9 percent of the Whites were rejected (p. 60). [Anyone who claims this disparity was caused by segregated schools is in effect claiming that Black teachers were too stupid or too incompetent to teach Black pupils.]
    George notes that the differences in the brains of Whites and Blacks may explain “why extensive integration of Negro and White children in schools has been a failure and destructive of the educational process” (p. 61).
    George states:

But in light of the historical record of the Negro race and their current behavior it seems highly probable that the hybrid blending of Negro and White nervous systems in the formation of a mulatto race would have a harmful effect on our civilization (p. 62).

    He adds, “It becomes therefore a matter of great importance that our people and politicians should be made aware of racial differences known to exist and the nature of hybrid mixing of genetic characters” (p. 62). [Many are aware of racial differences but have no desire to prevent racial amalgamation. Politicians like failed policies. Failed policies allow them to argue for more control and money, higher taxes. Moreover, if the genetic component is insignificant or nonexistent, the racial differences are caused solely by the environment. Attempting to manipulate the environment to overcome racial differences concentrates more power in the hands of the politicians and their owners. Also, environmentalism supports the prevailing and guiding ideology of the United States: equalitarian Marxism. {The 10 planks of the Communist Manifesto have been almost fully implemented.} Innate genetic differences do not. Furthermore, some desire total annihilation of the White race because they are filled with hatred. {Why would anyone want to breed a race out of existence, which is genocide, unless hatred is the motivation?} Most people just tremble in fear of being labeled a racist and, therefore, do not oppose racial amalgamation. {The great irony is that Whites who fear being called “racist” are already considered racists by non-Whites, and they can do nothing to change this no matter how much they grovel.}]
    George asks, “Is it too much to hope for an open minded consideration by politicians and the public of the facts vital to our problems?” (p. 62). [Yes. Most Whites would rather be tortured to death than to be thought of as racists. Most non-Whites like things the way they are: Whites cowering before their demands.]
    George states:

If intelligence, behavior, and achievement are primarily due to something within ourselves, then the genetic composition of our population is a matter of major concern for social planning but if they are brought forth primarily by external factors then social engineers and statesmen should be primarily concerned with manipulating environment (p. 63).

    He argues that social policies should be based on genetics being the primary determinant of intelligence, behavior, and achievement. He presents evidence to support his argument (pp. 63ff).
    To overcome the difference in achievement between Blacks and Whites, the government has made various programs to raise the socioeconomic environment of Black infants and preschool children. Being unable to overcome the genetic component, these programs have done little to close the gap (p. 64). [However, they have cost a great deal — thus, making some rich. More importantly from a statist perspective, they have given the government much more control over the people.]
    In conclusion, George writes, “We should try at least to ameliorate our race problems by more hopeful means than compulsory programs that violate established biological truths. The establishment of schools fitted to the Negroes’ intellectual talents would be a step in the right direction” (p. 66).
    Summarizing his book, he writes:

        1. Powerful forces in the world are trying to foist on the people an educational and social revolution based on the equalitarian dogma.
        2. This equalitarian dogma is unsupportable on the basis of scientific facts.
        3. Individual organisms including man vary in their genetic constitution, not merely in the effects of environment on body and personality.
        4. Genes are potent determining factors not merely for gross morphology and superficial features but for many, perhaps most, features down to molecular structure, including brains and consequently behavior.
        5. Biological racial features are numerous and all pervasive and involve the brain as well as externally visible characters (p. 67).

    [Racial integration is part of the illuministic program to transfer all wealth and power to a small number of illuminists. However, the primary purpose of racial integration is racial amalgamation. The purpose of racial amalgamation is the annihilation of the White, Aryan, Adamic, race — the race created in God’s image.
    At the time that George wrote, the major racial issue was White versus Black. For the most part, the American Indian issues have faded. If he were to write today, he would have focused a good deal on the exploding Turanian invasion — mostly from Mexico and other Latin American countries and the Far East (Japan, Korea, China, and the Philippines). Another important race that he would need to consider is the Melanochroi — mostly from India, Pakistan, the Arabian peninsula, and Somalia. Percentage-wise, the Melanochroi is probably the fastest-growing race in the United States. He would surely be weeping over the death of the White race and, thereby, the death of the American civilization.
    George feared that the mongrelization of the White race with the Black race would bring down America. As important as mongrelization is to the demise of the White race, genocide through replacement has become more important. Massive third-world non-White immigration is overwhelming White America and annihilating it. Whites will soon be a minority in their own country.]

Copyright © 2016 by Thomas Coley Allen.

Thursday, December 21, 2017

Poor on Macleod

Poor on Macleod

Thomas Allen

    In 1877, Henry Varnum Poor (1812-1905) wrote Money and Its Laws: Embracing a History of Monetary Theories, and a History of the Currency of the United States. He was a financial analyst and founder of a company that evolved into Standard & Poor’s. Poor was a proponent of the real bills doctrine and the classical gold-coin standard and, thus, the quality theory of money. He gave little credence to the quantity theory of money — especially if credit money, such as bank notes, were convertible on demand in species. Also, he contended that the value of money depends on and is derived from the value of the material of which it is made and with paper money, its representation of such value.
    In the latter part of his book, he discusses leading monetary theorists from Aristotle (350 B.C.) to David A. Wells (1875). Most of the economists whom he discussed were proponents of the quantity theory of money. We will look at his discussion on Henry D. Macleod. My comments are in brackets. Referenced page numbers enclosed in parentheses are to Poor’s book.
    Henry D. Macleod (1821-1902) was a Scottish economist. Among his works are Theory and Practice of Banking (1856), Elements of Political Economy (1858), A Dictionary of Political Economy (1859), Principles of Economist Philosophy (1873), and The Theory of Credit (1889). He is credited with coining the term “Gresham’s Law.” Poor reviews Macleod monetary theory presented in Theory and Practice of Banking.
    About Macleod, Poor comments that he “has erected a vast system, measured by the number of pages devoted to it, the fundamental principle of which is that gold and silver serve as money by reason of being representative of debt; that paper serves as such by reason of being the representative of transferable debt; and that whatever represents transferable debt is currency, — paper money” (p. 383). [Today, debt is money with no involvement of gold and silver. In today’s monetary system, money would cease to exist without debt. Under the gold standard, money would continue to exist as gold coin if all debt disappeared. {Some fiat money reformers would argue that government notes are not debt instruments. But they are albeit noninterest-bearing and nonpayable debt. They cannot extinguish debt; they can only transfer debt from one person to another, and eventually the government ends up with the country’s debt as government notes are its obligations.}]
    Macleod claims that the notion “that money represents commodities, and that paper currency may be based upon commodities” (p. 363) is a “stupendous fallacy” and a delusion. “Money does not represent commodities at all, but only debt; or services due, which have not yet received their equivalent in commodities” (p. 364). [This is a strange notion. In its origin, money did not represent a commodity, because it was a commodity, much less debt. In the ancient world, money was never thought of as representing debt. Credit and debt were not common and even abhorred. To discourage debt, much of the ancient world outlawed charging interest on loans.] Moreover, he claims that the quantity of money that a person has “is just the quantity of debt services due to him” (p. 364). Also, “the quantity of money a nation possesses is simply the quantity of accumulated industry it possesses over and above all commodities; but they have no relation to each other” (p. 364). Money “represents that portion of a man’s industry which is reserved for future use” (p. 364). He states that “the value of money depends upon its relations to what it represents, namely, debt, and not to commodities” (p. 364). Furthermore, he declares, “If money or currency increases faster than debt or services due, it immediately causes a diminution of its value. If debt increases faster than money or currency, then the value of money is raised” (p. 364). [Macleod errs with this statement. Raising prices nearly always results in a monetary regime of government notes and legal-tender bank notes, which are functionally the same as government notes. As such notes themselves are debt, debts are always increasing faster than money or currency. According to Macleod, the value of money, by which Macleod seems to mean the purchasing power of money, should rise, i.e., general prices should fall.] According to Macleod, John Law erred in basing his paper money on a commodity, land, instead of debt. Macleod writes, “Where there is no debt, there can be no currency” (p. 364). [As mentioned above, in the ancient world and even when Macleod wrote, many people used a currency that did not involve or represent debt. When people bought by shaving silver from a silver bar to buy goods priced in the weight of silver, as some people did in the nineteenth century, they were using a currency that neither involved nor represented debt. This seems to conflict with Macleod’s concept of money.] He also disagrees with the concept of bankers issuing bank notes on good bills, real bills of exchange (p. 365). Continuing, Macleod writes:

[T]hat the only true foundation of a paper currency is that substance which is the legal or the universally accepted representative of DEBT. . . . [A]mong all civilized nations, gold or silver bullion is the acknowledged representative of debt. Consequently, gold or silver bullion is the only true basis of a paper currency. Among all civilized nations, the weight of bullion is the acknowledged measure of value; and, consequently, bullion is the only true basis of the “promises to pay” (p. 365).

He continues:

[I]t is not as a commodity that bullion is the basis of a paper currency, but as the substance which is the accepted representative of debt. . . . Bullion, then, as the symbol of debt, is not only the sole proper basis of a paper currency, but is the only true regulator of its amount. As all paper currency is a “promise to pay” gold or silver bullion at some definite time, it is quite evident that the “promises to pay” floating in a nation must bear some proportion in quantity to the actual quantity of the bullion (pp. 365-366).

Macleod claims that a yard of broadcloth or a Dutch cheese could represent debt and be the measure of value as well as gold (p. 365). Poor response to this notion as:

flippant and incoherent nonsense, swollen into two spacious volumes, when Dr. Schliemann shall have dug up at Troas or Mycenae Dutch cheeses perfectly fresh and sweet, and bearing upon their surfaces the dimples in the exact form and shape in which they were impressed by the tiny fingers of the pretty Dutch milkmaids three thousand years ago. Till then the habit or prejudice of mankind in assuming gold, as money, to be capital instead of debt, will be considered as resulting not from accident, but from law (p. 366).

Next Macleod discusses inconvertible paper currency. If paper money ceases to be convertible into gold or silver, the paper money will establish a new standard that replaces the gold or silver standard (p. 367). [This occurred with the U.S. note when it was not convertible into gold.] The only way for an inconvertible paper currency to remain at par with gold is to limit its quantity. [Even reducing the quantity of U.S. notes could not keep it at par with gold. Only making U.S. notes convertible into gold on demand kept them at par with gold.] By limiting its quantity, he means, “devising some means whereby a greater quantity of it shall not be issued than if it were convertible into gold” (p. 367). If more than this is issued, the paper currency will trade at a discount to gold (p. 367). [Even with a fixed quantity several years before U.S. note became convertible into gold, they always traded at a discount to gold. Basically, what Macleod is proposing is using the price of gold as an index for regulating the quantity of paper currency.]
About Macleod’s concept on inconvertible paper currency, Poor writes:

This is only the old story over again, that value is not necessary to the circulation of a government or inconvertible currency; that, no matter how worthless it may be, it will circulate at the value of coin, if it do not exceed the amount of convertible paper which would have circulated in its place, or if its quantity do not exceed the wants of the community in its exchanges (p. 368).

Wednesday, December 13, 2017

Mencken on Liberty and the Inferior Man

Mencken on Liberty and the Inferior Man

Thomas Allen

    In 1926, H. L. Mencken (1880-1956) wrote Notes on Democracy in which he expressed his views on democracy and related issues. He was a journalist, satirist, and critic and a libertarian and one of the leaders of the Old Right. In his book, he describes liberty and the inferior man, pages 51-58. Below is an overview of his discussion on the liberty and the inferior man; my comments are in brackets.
    “All the revolutions in history have been started by hungry city mobs.” From this fact, some historians deduce “the doctrine that city life breeds a love of liberty.” To this notion, Mencken replies, “It may be so, but certainly that love is not visible in the lower orders. I can think of no city revolution that actually had liberty for its object, in any rational sense.” For example, freedom of speech “was actually given its first support in law by the most absolute monarch of modern times, to wit, Frederick the Great.” Mencken adds, “When it [the city] wins, its first act is to destroy every form of freedom that is not directed wholly to [satisfying hunger].” Its next objective “is to butcher all professional libertarians.”
    Mencken notes “that liberty, in any true sense, is a concept that lies quite beyond the reach of the inferior man’s mind. He can imagine, and even esteem, in his way, certain false forms of liberty — for example, the right to choose between two political mountebanks, and to yell for the more obviously dishonest — but the reality is incomprehensible to him.” “[G]enuine liberty demands of its votaries a quality he [the inferior man] lacks completely, and that is courage. The man who loves it must be willing to fight for it; blood, said Jefferson, is its natural manure. More, he must be able to endure it — an even more arduous business.” [Perhaps this explains the great clamor for the welfare state by people with a lower-class mentality.] Mencken continues, “Liberty means self-reliance, it means resolution, it means enterprise, it means the capacity for doing without.” [Sacrifices the inferior man is not willing to make — especially those in the Democratic party and many in the Republican party.]
    “The free man is one who has won a small and precarious territory from the great mob of his inferiors, and is prepared and ready to defend it and make it support him.” Having no friends, the free man “can hope for little help from other men of his own kind, for they have battles of their own to fight.”
    The inferior man has no talent for self-reliance. Furthermore, he cannot even “understanding that such a talent exists. Liberty is unfathomable to him.” Moreover, “[h]e can no more comprehend it than he can comprehend honour.” To the inferior man, liberty “is simply the banal right to empty hallelujahs upon his oppressors. He is an ox whose last proud, defiant gesture is to lick the butcher behind the ear.” He shrinks from the responsibility of standing and acting alone.
    Mencken explains that until the latter part of the eighteenth century, 80 percent “of the people of the world, white and black alike, were slaves, in reality if not in name.” Liberty to most people is a recent occurrence. “Thus the lower orders of men, however grandiloquently they may talk of liberty to-day, have actually had but a short and highly deceptive experience of it. It is not in their blood.” He adds, “The heritage of freedom belongs to a small minority of men, descended, whether legitimately or by adultery, from the old lords of the soil or from the patricians of the free towns.” Mencken contends “that such a heritage is necessary in order that the concept of liberty, with all its disturbing and unnatural implications, may be so much as grasped — that such ideas cannot be implanted in the mind of man at will, but must be bred in as all other basic ideas are bred in.” Consequently, most men are “still incapable of bearing the pangs of liberty.” Liberty makes them uncomfortable, alarms them, and fills them with great loneliness. Not only does the common man not long for liberty, “he is quite unable to stand it. What he longs for is something wholly different, to wit, security. He needs protection. He is afraid of getting hurt.” [The type of person whom Mencken is describing can be seen in the masses of people who were ready to abandon all liberties for security following 9-11. They all but shouted from the rooftops, “I will be your slave if you will protect me from the bogeyman.” And many did shout it. Of course, the elite who controlled President Bush was willing to oblige, and they brought forth the police state.]
    As a result, “[t]he great masses of men, though theoretically free, are seen to submit supinely to oppression and exploitation of a hundred abhorrent sorts.” Obviously, they can resist but do not. “The worst tyrant, even under democratic plutocracy, has but one throat to slit. The moment the majority decided to overthrow him he would be overthrown. But the majority lacks the resolution; it cannot imagine taking the risk. So it looks for leaders with the necessary courage, and when they appear it follows them slavishly, even after their courage is discovered to be mere bunkum and their altruism only a cloak for more and worse oppressions.” Consequently, “[p]olitics become the trade of playing upon its [the majority’s] natural poltroonery — of scaring it half to death, and then proposing to save it. There is in it no other quality of which a practical politician, taking one day with another, may be sure. Every theoretically free people wonders at the slavishness of all the others. But there is no actual difference between them.” [Democratic and Republican politicians have become highly skilled at making half the population fear the other half. Only Democrats can save the masses from the evil Republicans, and only the Republicans can save the masses from the evil Democrats. And that is why the country has one party with two names.]

Copyright © 2017 by Thomas Coley Allen.

More political articles.

Tuesday, December 5, 2017

America’s Adulteration of the Gold Standard

America’s Adulteration of the Gold Standard

Thomas Allen

    Between 1879, when the United States returned to the gold standard, and 1914, when World War I began, was the peak of the gold-coin standard. However, a pure gold coin standard did not exist. Perhaps the United States had the most adulterated gold standard among the major countries. The United States adulterated the gold standard with various forms of fiat money.
    In 1789, Congress adopted a silver standard with a bimetallic silver-gold system. It defined the dollar as 371.25 grains of fine silver. It fixed the silver-to-gold exchange rate at 15 to 1 (the value of 15 ounces of silver equaled the value of 1 ounce of gold). This ratio overvalued silver relative to gold. Thus, gold coins did not circulate.
    To encourage the circulation of gold coins, Congress changed the silver-to-gold ratio from 15 to 1 to 16 to 1 in 1834. It did so by reducing the weight of gold in a dollar to 23.20 grains of fine gold from 24.75 grains. Three years later it changed the weight of gold in the dollar to 23.22 grains of fine gold. (Thus, a $10 gold coin with 232.2 grains of fine gold was equivalent as legal tender to 10 silver-dollar coins with a total of 3721.5 grains of fine silver.) These changes placed the United States on a de facto gold standard. As the dollar continued to be defined as 371.25 grains of silver, the United States remained on a de jure silver standard. (They remained of a de jure silver standard until 1900 when Congress changed the definition of the dollar to 23.22 grains of fine gold.)
    In 1837, Congress changed the gold content of the dollar to 23.22 grains. It remained at this weight until 1933 when the United States abandoned the gold standard.
    In 1863, Congress enacted the National Banking Act. A key part of the Act was requiring banks charted under the Act to secure their bank notes with U.S. government bonds. (Later bank notes of State-chartered banks were taxed out of existence.) Thus, the Act guaranteed a market for U.S. government bonds. As a result, bank notes represented U.S. government bonds instead of the gold value of goods on which real bills of exchange were drawn — the real bills doctrine. Bank notes did not increase or decrease in response to the market demand for them pursuant to the real bills doctrine. They increased and decreased in response to the expansion and contraction of U.S. government debt. (As hard as it is now to believe, there were times when the U.S. government’s debt actually decreased.)
    The first major adulteration came in 1862 when Congress authorized the issue of legal-tender government notes, called U.S. notes and nicknamed greenbacks. These notes immediately became undervalued relative to gold. Thus, the United States quickly converted to the U.S. note standard. (The West Coast remained on the gold coin standard. In the East, gold traded at a premium to U.S. notes. In the West, U.S. notes were discounted against gold.)
    After reducing the quantity of U.S. notes during the late 1860s and early 1870s, Congress fixed the quantity of U.S. notes at $346,681,000. It required the Secretary of the Treasury to maintain this level.
    Pursuant to an 1875 law, U.S. notes became redeemable at par with gold on January 1, 1979. In anticipation of redemption, the U.S. government acquired enough gold to back about a third of the U.S. notes.
    After U.S. notes became redeemable in gold, U.S. notes remained a fiat currency for two reasons. First, the government instead of the markets determined the quantity issued. Second, they were never fully backed by gold.
    The next major adulteration came in the form of the silver dollar. With the Coinage Act of 1873, Congress ended the free coinage of silver. (This Act became known as the Crime of ’73.) Ending the free coinage of silver ended bimetallism in the United States. However, under the Act, silver dollars continued to be full legal tender in unlimited amounts. (No rational person would have used silver dollars to pay a debt when this law was enacted. Then the silver content of a silver dollar was worth more than a dollar in gold, which was worth more than a U.S. note dollar.)
    Soon after the enactment of this law, the value of silver began to fall relative to gold. Thus, if the free coinage of silver had remained, the United States would have returned to the silver standard.
    Because of the fall in the value of silver, the sliver mining interest, greenbackers (people who wanted the country to remain on the irredeemable U.S. note standard), populists (most of whom came out of the greenbackers), and debtors agitated for the free coinage of silver at the 16 to 1 ratio. In response, Congress passed the Bland-Allison Act in 1878.
    The Bland-Allison Act ordered the Secretary of the Treasury to buy silver bullion and coin it into silver dollars. It declared the silver dollars legal tender. Moreover, they were not directly redeemable in gold. It required the Secretary to buy between $2 million and $4 million of silver bullion each month for coinage.
    Although each of these silver dollars contained 371.25 grains of silver, they were fiat money — albeit expensive fiat money. Instead of the markets deciding the quantity of silver dollars to issue, Congress and the Secretary of the Treasury decided. Furthermore, the monetary value of a silver dollar exceeded the value of its silver content. Unlike silver dollars coined under free coinage, these silver dollars were the property of the U.S. government. (Silver dollars coined under free coinage were the property of the person presenting the silver bullion for coinage.)
    In 1890, Congress revised the Bland-Allison Act with the Sherman Act, also called the Silver Purchasing Act of 1890. The Sherman Act created a new fiat money: legal-tender Treasury notes of 1890. It ordered the Secretary of the Treasury to buy 4.5 million ounces of silver bullion each month at the market price with Treasury notes until silver reached $1.29 per ounce. This was the price at which 16 ounces of silver had the same value as 1 ounce of gold, i.e., the 16 to 1 ratio. The purchased bullion was coined into silver dollars as necessary to redeem the Treasury notes. However, the Secretary had the discretion to redeem them in gold. In 1893, Congress repealed the silver purchasing provision of the Sherman Act and by that the issue of Treasury notes.
    With the enactment of the Gold Standard Act in 1900, Congress placed the United States formally and clearly on the gold standard. It defined the dollar as 23.22 grains of gold. It required the redemption of U.S. notes and Treasury notes of 1890 in gold only. Thus, it converted Treasury notes into government notes redeemable in gold. Treasury notes were to be replaced gradually with silver certificates. As silver dollars became convertible in gold on demand, the Act made the silver dollar a subsidiary coin like dimes, quarters, and half-dollars. However, silver dollars remained full legal tender. However, even with the enactment of the Gold Standard Act, the silver dollar because of its legal-tender status remained a fiat currency along with the U.S. note.
    The monetary system of the United States began as a bimetallic silver-gold system with the dollar defined as 371.25 grains of silver. Between 1862 and 1879, the United States were on the fiat U.S. note monetary standard. As long as the United States remained on the gold standard, the U.S. note and the silver dollar adulterated the gold standard. The United States never operated on a pure gold coin standard.

Copyright © 2015 by Thomas Coley Allen.

Saturday, November 25, 2017

Poor on McCulloch

Poor on McCulloch

Thomas Allen

Fully accepting the doctrines of [Adam] Smith, and the wide distinction which he made between the qualities of the precious metals which fit them for money and those which determine their value in exchange, he proceeds to consider the laws by which their value is determined when their movement is perfectly free; and those by which they are affected when artificial restraint is imposed upon it (p. 318).

McCulloch states that under free competition, the value of gold and silver depend on the cost of their production. The prices of commodities, i.e., their value measured in money, vary with their cost of production, supply and demand, and the cost of gold and silver to which they are compared (p. 318). When the supply of gold and silver is restricted, the supply of money is limited. He writes, “Whenever the supply of money is limited, its value varies in inverse ratio to its quantity as compared with the quantity of commodities brought to market, or with the business it has to perform” (p. 318). For that reason, if the supply of commodities doubles while the amount of currency remains the same, their price would be reduced by half. On the other hand, if the supply of commodities were reduced by half and the amount of currency remains constants, their price would double (pp. 318-319). Thus, money is merely a ticket or counter used to compute the value of property, and in transforming it from one to another. [McCulloch seems to confuse value with price. The two are different. Price measures value, but it is not value. Furthermore, some items, e.g., air, patriotism, and religious beliefs, have great value, but are not priced.] He claims “that a debased currency may, by first reducing, and then limiting its quantity, be made to circulate at the value it would bear were the power to supply it unrestricted, and were it of the legal weight and fineness; and, by still further limiting its quantity, it may be made to pass at any higher value” (p. 319). [History shows that when governments debase their currency, prices rise even if the supply is limited, which it seldom is.] He believes that nonconvertible paper money can be given a higher value than an equivalently denominated gold coin if its supply is sufficiently limited. A half-sovereign coin can be made to do the work (number of exchanges) as a one-sovereign coin if all one-sovereign coins were replaced by half-sovereign coins and no new coins were minted. [He means replacing each one-sovereign coin with a one-half-sovereign coin. He does not mean replacing each sovereign coin with two half- sovereign coins.] The same quantity of commodities would now be exchanged for the same number of coins. [This conclusion is highly unlikely. When exchanges were made under the gold standard, they were based on the gold content of the coin and not the number of coins. People compared the value of the product to the value of the gold content of the coin and not to the coin itself. Most likely, what would happen if half-sovereigns replaced all one-sovereigns, dealers who sold their products for one sovereign would now sell them for two half-sovereigns. Cutting the money supply in half as in McCulloch’s example would significantly hamper commerce and, by that, production.] He offers no example where what he suggests would happen has ever happened. McCulloch maintains that the value of inconvertible paper currency “depend[s] on the proportion which its amount bears to the commodities brought to market, or to the demand; and wherever a currency of this kind, or a limited gold currency, is in circulation, the common opinion that the price of commodities depends wholly on the proportion between them and the supply of money is quite correct” (pp. 319-320). However, “with a freely supplied currency consisting of gold and silver, . . . fluctuations in the supply and demand of such currency have no permanent influence over its value. This is determined by the cost of its production” (p. 320). [In The Value of Money, Anderson argues that the cost of production determining gold’s value is incorrect. He asserts that the “value of money is a quality of money, that quality which money shares with other forms of wealth, which lies behind, and causally explains, the exchange relations into which money enters.” “Value {of money} is prior to exchange. Value is not to be denned as ‘power in exchange.’” According to Anderson, the social value theory best explains the value of money: “the social value theory is the only way of giving a psychological explanation to the demand-curve, and a marginal value explanation of marginal demand-price.” Thus, the value of money derives from the value of the commodity of which it is made and from its services as money. The value of the commodity as money is combined with the value of the commodity in its non-monetary use. Like all other commodities, and everything else, the value of the monetary metal and of its use as money is psychological. Anderson concludes, “The physical weight in gold, which itself is an object of social value, is commonly the immediate basis of the value of the dollar to-day, but money may get its primary value from other sources than valuable bullion. Given this primary value, the dollar may get an enhancement in that value from the services which it performs in the social technology of adjustment.”]
Poor retorts:

Mr. McCulloch might as well have assumed a particular county of England to be fenced off by a wall so high that only a small amount of vital air could get into it; and that, in such case, the right to breathe would sell at an enormous price; and have inferred, therefrom, that, should the amount of money be limited, its price would rise in like ratio. One illustration is as pertinent, or rather as impertinent, as the other (p. 320).

Poor continues, “Whoever gets gold, gets it to spend. There may be quarrels between those who dig and those who rule as to who shall enjoy the product; but, whatever the result, it would immediately go into circulation” (p. 320). [Today, the rulers have resolved the quarrel by driving gold from the monetary system. They have given themselves absolute control of the monetary system. Contrary to the claims of most orthodox fiat money proponents and probably all fiat money reformers, the Federal Reserve is not an independent agency independent of the government and does as it pleases. It is just the junior partner in the scam to pillage the American people. The government is the senior partner. It created the Federal Reserve; the Federal Reserve did not create the government. It exists at the pleasure of the government, which may abolish the Federal Reserve anytime. Working together, the government and the Federal Reserve can confuse the people by blaming the other for the country’s economic problems although both are guilty.]
Poor notes that in another work of McCulloch, McCulloch claims that controlling the movement of precious metals is impossible for governments (p. 320). Poor writes:

His illustrations, however, are in keeping with those of the school to which he belonged, which is always assuming impossible instances as a means of setting forth its conclusions and beliefs. It is the way of children, not the method of men of full stature. Neither the production nor possession of the precious metals can be monopolized. Their value everywhere, under all conditions (allowing for the influence of accidental circumstances), is measured by their cost (pp. 320-321).

[Governments may not be able to prevent the movement of gold, but they can greatly hamper its movement. For example, with few exceptions, the U.S. government prohibited Americans owning gold between 1933 and 1974.]
Commenting on McCulloch’s belief that if the currency’s quantity is strictly limited, a debased currency can function as well as full-weight coin, Poor remarks that Locke had proven more than a century earlier, that a debased coin will not function as well as a full-weight coin. About the period of recoinage of English money in 1696 when Locke made his argument, Poor writes:

For a time, the amount of coin in circulation, or currency of all kinds, equaled hardly a tithe of that required for the exchanges of the country. These, for a considerable period, had to be made by means of credit or barter. Yet the necessity which then existed for a “circulating medium” did not exert the slightest influence in raising the value of the debased coins. The value of each was measured by the cost of the metal that each contained. Had their value risen greatly above their cost, supplies would immediately have flowed in from other countries. If tickets or counters were all that were wanted, these could easily have been provided, as McCulloch suggests, by cutting the pieces in circulation into a sufficient number of parts. It was capital, not counters, that was wanted, and relief came only when that was supplied (p. 320).

Poor continues:

But even admitting that, by reducing the amount of metal in coins, their value might be maintained from the necessity of their use, there was still an important link wanting to connect his premise with his conclusion. Gold gets into circulation by means of its value. It circulates at its value. If its amount were permanently decreased, its value would increase. This is palpable enough; but how is that which is valueless in itself to get into the category of values (p. 322)?

[This is the question that others also ask: How can that which has no value itself and is not the representation of value measure value?]
Poor asks how can something that has little or no value get into circulation in the first place? He answers that McCulloch would claim that some medium of exchange is needed and people agree that this worthless thing would be their medium of exchange. To this answer, Poor replies, “[I]t is useless to reply to such assumptions as these. They are the dreams or vagaries of persons bereft of all sense in reference to the subjects to which they relate, and who, unfortunately, are wholly impervious to reason” (p. 322).
Commenting on bank notes, McCulloch writes:

Notes not legal tender, and payable on demand, or at some stipulated period, are not paper money, though they serve the same purposes during the time they continue to circulate. The value of such notes is wholly derived from the confidence placed in the ability of the issuers to retire them when presented for payment, or when they become due. Whenever, therefore, this confidence ceases, their circulation necessarily ceases also (p. 322).

    About paper money, i.e., government notes, McCulloch states that “confidence in the solvency of the issuers exercises the smallest influence over the value of paper money” (p. 322). Paper money is legal tender and not legally convertible into gold or anything else. “It circulates because it is made legal tender, and because the use of a circulating medium is indispensable; and its value, supposing the demand to be constant, is, in all cases, precisely as the quantity in circulation” (p. 322). He believes that the issuer of inconvertible paper money can maintain par with gold or silver without difficulty (pp. 322-321). To maintain a constant price of gold, all that the issuer needs to do is to decrease or increase the quantity of paper money. [This is the recommendation of some supply-side economist in recent years.]
    Poor questions McCulloch’s assumption that “an inconvertible government note of the nominal value of an ounce of gold, to be of equal value, and exchangeable therefor” (p. 323). Moreover, Poor comments that according to McCulloch, inconvertible government notes circulate “not from any value it possessed, but from the necessity for its use as a ticket or counter of exchange” (p. 324). Furthermore, according to McCulloch, such money need not be made legal tender (p. 324). Poor wonders how such money would ever get into circulation and who would accept it (p. 324). Also, how would the excess be retired? [The government can get its notes into circulation by printing them and paying them to its employees, welfare recipients, and suppliers. It can further encourage the circulation of its notes by requiring them in payment of taxes and making them legal tender at the debtor’s option for payment of debts. In theory, the excess could be removed by having tax receipts to exceed expenditures enough to retire the excess — when was the last time that happened?]
    McCulloch proposes eliminating precious metal, either as bullion or coin, as money because of the excessive cost. Paper should be substituted for metal. Thus, paper would replace gold as the reserves held by banks (pp. 324-325). [In the United States between 1862 and 1879, U.S. government notes replaced gold largely as reserves for banks. Today, all bank reserves are in paper and its electronic equivalent, which is even cheaper than paper.]
    If McCulloch’s proposals were implemented, Poor sarcastically remarks, “The monetary millennium would then dawn on the world” (p. 325). [If McCulloch had lived another hundred years, he could see the results of his monetary millennium. His monetary millennium arrived in 1971 when the world divorced itself completely from gold and substituted entirely a paper and electronic monetary system in its place.]
    In response to McCulloch’s proposal, Poor writes:

But what does every one seek in exchanging that which he possesses? To better his condition; to get something which will be more valuable to him than that with which he parts; in order to have that which, when he wishes to use it, will bring to him the greatest possible amount of values in other forms. Gold and silver, therefore, are always demanded in exchange, for the reason that they are values in their highest forms. The whole effort of mankind is to convert its industries and products into such values, or into that which shall produce them; and which, till its possession be demanded, is drawing interest in kind for the benefit of the party entitled to it. The whole effort of nature is in the same direction, — to convert lesser into greater values (p. 325).

Then Poor remarks that McCulloch “would invert all this order, by converting whatever a person has to sell, not into the most valuable, but into the least valuable form” (p. 325).
In his concluding remarks on McCulloch, Poor writes, “Nothing can be more disgraceful in a man like him, — Professor of Political Economy in the university of a city which, commercially, is the very eye of the world, and standing at the very apex of his school, — than the ignorance and assurance he displayed” (p. 327).

Endnotes
1. B.M. Anderson, The Value of Money (New York: The Macmillian Co., 1917), pp. 8-9).

2. Ibid., p. 9.

3. Ibid., p. 42.

4. Ibid., p. 591.

Copyright © 2017 by Thomas Coley Allen.

More articles on money.

Friday, November 17, 2017

Mencken on Politics under Democracy

Mencken on Politics under Democracy

Thomas Allen

    In 1926, H. L. Mencken (1880-1956) wrote Notes on Democracy in which he expressed his views on democracy and related issues. He was a journalist, satirist, and critic and a libertarian and one of the leaders of the Old Right. In his book, he describes politics under democracy, pages 29-35. Below is an overview of his discussion on politics under democracy; my comments are in brackets.
    Since fear controls politics under democracy, politicians use it to manipulate the mob. “The demagogues, i.e., the professors of mob psychology, who flourish in democratic states are well aware of the fact, and make it the corner-stone of their exact and puissant science.” Thus, “[P]olitics under democracy consists almost wholly of the discovery, chase and scotching of bugaboos. The statesman becomes, in the last analysis, a mere witch-hunter, a glorified smeller and snooper.” The whole history of the United States “has been a history of melodramatic pursuits of horrendous monsters, most of them imaginary: the red-coats, the Hessians, the monocrats, again the red-coats, the Bank, the Catholics, Simon Legree, the Slave Power, Jeff Davis, Mormonism, Wall Street, the rum demon, John Bull, the hell-hounds of plutocracy, the trusts, General Weyler, Pancho Villa, German spies, hyphenates, the Kaiser, Bolshevism.” [Many of these threats were real; however, politicians exaggerated them to terrorize the mob. Politicians used this tactic of fear to get the American people to beg for the police state following 9-11. Fear has been used to terrorize the people to demand just about every enslaving program that the US government have ever adopted.]
    Under democracy, the plain people “never vote for anything, but always against something.” Consequently, the democratic state tends “to pass over statesmen of genuine imagination and sound ability in favour of colourless mediocrities. The former are shining marks, and so it is easy for demagogues to bring them down; the latter are preferred because it is impossible to fear them.” [The demagogue is a democratic man and is, therefore, part of the mob. Thus, being one of them, the plain people understand him and do not fear him. Does this explain the rabid fear that the common Democrat and many Republicans have of President Trump and especially his supporters and their embracement of Hillary Clinton?] Mencken continues, “The demagogue himself, when he grows ambitious and tries to posture as a statesman, usually comes ignominiously to grief, as the cases of Bryan, [Theodore] Roosevelt, and Wilson dramatically demonstrate.”
    Using Bryan as an example, Mencken shows the rise and fall of a demagogue. “If Bryan had confined himself, in 1896, to the chase of the bugaboo of plutocracy, it is very probable that he would have been elected. But he committed the incredible folly of throwing most of his energies into advocating a so-called constructive programme, and it was thus easy for his opponents to alarm the mob against him. That programme had the capital defect of being highly technical, and hence almost wholly unintelligible to all save a small minority; so it took on a sinister look, and caused a shiver to go down the democratic spine.” [Consequently, most political campaigns consist almost entirely of slogans and mudslinging with little or no details about what the candidate plans to do if he wins.] Continuing, Mencken writes, “It was his cross-of-gold speech that nominated him; it was his cow State political economy that ruined him.”
    According to Mencken, “[g]overnment under democracy is thus government by orgy, almost by orgasm. Its processes are most beautifully displayed at times when they stand most naked — for example, in war days.” He uses World War I, which was then known as World War, to illustrate the use of fear to manipulate mob psychology. “[T]he World War is simply a record of conflicting fears, more than once amounting to frenzies. The mob, at the start of the uproar, showed a classical reaction: it was eager only to keep out of danger. . . . In 1916, on his fraudulent promise to preserve that boy from harm, Wilson was re-elected.” Then came the task of the demagogue to convert the people to warmongers. “The problem was to substitute a new and worse fear for the one that prevailed — a new fear so powerful that it would reconcile the mob to the thought of entering the war.” Right after the election, all agencies of the US government began clamoring for war. “No ship went down to a submarine’s torpedo anywhere on the seven seas that the State Department did not report that American citizens — nay, American infants in their mothers’ arms — were aboard. Diplomatic note followed diplomatic note, each new one surpassing all its predecessors in moral indignation. The Department of Justice ascribed all fires, floods and industrial accidents to German agents. The newspapers were filled with dreadful surmises, many of them officially inspired, about the probable effects upon the United States of the prospective German victory.” As a result, the mob became convinced “that a victorious Germany would unquestionably demand an accounting for the United States’ gross violations of neutrality.” Thus, the demagogue gave the mob a choice of fears. “The first was a fear of a Germany heavily beset, but making alarming progress against her foes. The second was a fear of a Germany delivered from them, and thirsting for revenge on a false and venal friend.” The second fear won. Soon the mob “was reconciled to entering the war — reconciled, but surely not eager.” Now the demagogues had the task “of converting reluctant acquiescence into enthusiasm.” A new fear was the solution. Thus, the government strove to throw “the plain people into a panic. All sense was heaved overboard, and there ensued a chase of bugaboos on a truly epic scale. Nothing like it had ever been seen in the world before, for no democratic state as populous as the United States had ever gone to war before.” By the end of 1917, the American people “were in such terror that they lived in what was substantially a state of siege, though the foe was 3,000 miles away and obviously unable to do them any damage.” Only the draft “gave them sufficient courage to attempt actual hostilities. That ingenious device, by relieving the overwhelming majority of them of any obligation to take up arms, made them bold.” Mencken continues, “Before it was adopted they were heavily in favour of contributing only munitions and money to the cause of democracy, with perhaps a few divisions of Regulars added for the moral effect. But once it became apparent that a given individual, John Doe, would not have to serve, he, John Doe, developed an altruistic eagerness for a frontal attack in force. For every Richard Roe in the conscript camps there were a dozen John Does thus safely at home, with wages high and the show growing enjoyable.” Mencken concludes, “So an heroic mood came upon the people, and their fear was concealed by a truculent front. But not from students of mob psychology.” [Today, the same use of fear is being used to manipulate psychology in the War on Terrorism with all agencies of the government and their collaborators in the media inciting war. President Bush’s inane remark that “if we do not fight them over there, we will have to fight them here” was an insult of the highest magnitude of the U.S. Air Force and U.S. Navy. How could anyone with no air force and no navy attack the United States, unless the Bush regime let them into the country?]

Copyright © 2017 by Thomas Coley Allen.

More political articles.

Wednesday, November 8, 2017

Usury

Usury

Thomas Allen

    Usury as used in this article means interest or fees charged on loans or loans on which interest or fees are charged and not just exorbitant interest or fees. Loans may be in money or other goods. Anti-usurers are opponents of usury.
    During the Middle Ages, moralists, the scholastics, claimed that charging interest on loans, usury, was immoral and, therefore, unlawful, although people devised convoluted ways to circumvent this prohibition against charging interest. Even today, some moralists maintain that charging interest on loans is immoral and should be prohibited. They based their argument against usury in part on the teachings of Aristotle and in part on the laws of Moses.
    Since the Reformation, primarily since Calvin, most moralists have ceased believing that charging interest on loans is immoral. (Some have accused Calvin of being a crypto-Jew or an agent of the Jews for justifying usury.)
    Moralists of the Middle Ages claim that if a lender charges interest on a loan, exacting hire for money lent, he is guilty of the sin of extortion. Modern moralists, as Dabney calls them, disagree. They hold that reasonable interest is as just as a reasonable hire for any work or instrument of work.
    Aristotle argued that usury was against nature, unnatural, and beneath the dignity of citizenship. To Aristotle, even the use of money, though necessary, was tainted and not worthy of study. Money, gold and silver, was sterile. (If money is sterile, why are people willing to pay to use it?) If one planted seeds in a chest of gold or silver coins, nothing would grow. (Planting seeds in a box of nebulous electronic money, which is what most of today’s money is, would prove even less fruitful. Nevertheless, if properly watered, seeds planted in a chest of coins will sprout, and these sprouts are eatable.) Moreover, a bag of coins stored for years does not increase by a single coin — thus, proving the barrenness of money. (Food stored for years will not increase in amount either, but unlike gold coins, the stored food will deteriorate and become worthless. Does this mean that food is barren?) Because the use of money was unnatural, usury was unnatural since it is an increase based on money. Only an increase in herds, farming, hunting, and war were natural. Thus, even trade and mechanical arts were unnatural. Money was something used by those involved in trade, and, therefore, its use was base and beneath the dignity of a citizen. Since trade for money was contrary to nature, so was usury on its use. To Aristotle, money was a mere medium of exchange and did not increase by passing from one person to another, so he saw no justification for interest. He never sought to discover why people paid interest and never developed a theory of interest.
    In Exodus 22:25, Moses declares, “If thou lend money to any of my people that is poor by thee, thou shalt not be to him as an usurer, neither shalt thou lay upon him usury.” In Deuteronomy 23:19, he declares, “Thou shalt not lend upon usury to thy brother; usury of money, usury of victuals, usury of any thing that is lent upon usury.” Most who condemn usury today overlook Deuteronomy 23:20, which reads, “Unto a stranger thou mayest lend upon usury; but unto thy brother thou shalt not lend upon usury: that the Lord thy God may bless thee in all that thou settest thine hand to in the land whither thou goest to possess it.” Thus, the laws of Moses allowed charging interest on loans to strangers. The scholastics interpreted “stranger” to be anyone who was not a Christian. Consequently, a Christian could not charge interest on loans to another Christian.
    As the Church forbade Christians from lending Christians money at interest, it drove borrowers to the Jews for loans. As a result, the Church gave the Jews a virtual monopoly on lending money, which largely explains why today Jews dominate banking. (Hypocrite that it was [is], while condemning usury as a venal sin, the Papacy lent and borrowed at interest, although it called the interest “fees,” “gratuities,” etc. — anything but “interest” or “usury.” By the Reformation, the Papacy was allowing charitable loans, called contracts, to pay interest while it continued its prohibition against interest-bearing business loans. Businesses often used “insurance contracts,” which guaranteed the lender a fixed rate of return, otherwise known as interest, instead of a percentage of the profit.) When Christian lending to Christians at interest became acceptable, Christians no longer had to borrow from Jews.
    As Dabney explains, the modern moralists and the Middle Ages moralists, the scholastics, do not disagree on morals, but they do disagree on a merely economic question. They disagree on money being an effective force or influence in the production or creation of new value. Whereas the modern moralists argue that money is an effective force in the production or creation of new value, the scholastics argue that it is not. To the modernists, money is an exchangeable form of capital, and capital is the agent that creates new value. Thus, charging interest is not a moral issue; it is an economic issue.
    The modern moralists and the scholastics agree on the major premise, but they disagree on the minor premise. Both agree that if a person takes something from another for nothing, he is guilty of extortion — the major premise. For the scholastics, the minor premise is that money lent yields nothing in the creation of new value. Therefore, the inference is that charging interest is extortion. For modern moralists, the minor premise is that money lent is the capital that the borrower uses to create new values. Therefore, the inference is that when the lender receives interest on the money lent, he does not extort. As shown, the disagreement between the Middle Ages moralists and the modern moralists is with the minor premise, which is an economic issue and not a moral issue. Much of the opposition to usury, then and now, comes from confusing interest with physical production and associating interest with money. Interest does not have to be in money; it can be in other goods.
    Today, nearly all monetary loans are exchanges of credit. The borrower exchanges his credit for the lender’s credit, which is usually more readily acceptable by the public than is the borrower’s credit. The borrower gives the lender a note, usually written, but occasionally oral, promising to repay the lender the money or credit borrowed. In exchange for this promise, the lender gives the borrower the lender’s credit, although occasionally the lender will give his cash, which today is another form of credit, to the borrower. Today, the credit is lent as checkable deposits where the lender promises to pay all valid checks present against these deposits. (In the past, bank notes were commonly used. The lender promised to pay his notes, which were his credit instruments, when presented for payment.) For the use of the lender’s credit or cash, the lender charged a fee called interest.
    Meyer defines interest “as the price paid for the use of loanable funds. Loanable funds may be used either for purchase of consumer goods or as capital in the process of production.” Mund defines interest as “the price paid for the use of loanable funds (money or credit) which are to be repaid at a later date.”
    According to Menger, interest is the payment for “the exchange of one economic good (the use of capital) for another (money, for instance).” By opposing the charging of interest, anti-usurers hold that money either is not an economic good or, if it is, not worthy of payment. As interest is the payment for the use of capital, the opponents of usury must assume that the use of capital has no value. If it does have value, then why is paying for this value immoral? If it does have value, then the anti-usurers believe that the user of capital is entitled to steal that value. Why is not such theft immoral?
    According to Ely, “[i]nterest represents the difference in value between present and future goods.” In effect, people who oppose usury claim that the future value of a good is the same as its present value. However, by charging interest, the claim is that a good today is worth more than the same good in the future. That is, an ounce of gold or a loaf of bread is worth more to its holder today than it will be ten years later. Interest represents that difference in value. According to the anti-usurers, an ounce of gold or a loaf of bread ten years from now is worth the same to the holder as it is today. Usury assumes risk over time; zero interest assumes no risk over time. Usury assumes that present enjoyment and satisfaction are greater than future enjoyment and satisfaction; zero interest assumes that future enjoyment and satisfaction are greater in the future than they are in the present. That is, usury assumes that most people prefer to have an automobile today than ten years later. However, anti-usurers believe that people have no time preference and have no more desire for an automobile today than ten years later. If they do and are willing to pay a premium, interest, for an automobile today rather than waiting ten years, they are sinning — just as viewers of pornography are as guilty, as the producers and dealers are, of sin. Likewise, anti-usurers believe that given a choice between receiving $100 today and $100 a year later, people will be indifferent to when they receive the $100. (Most people would probably prefer the $100 today to $101 a year later. However, a majority probably would prefer $200 a year later than $100 today. The $1 and $100 are interest paid for delayed satisfaction.) To the anti-usurers, present value and future value are equal, and, therefore, interest is not only immoral, it is not even needed.
    According, to Alchian and Allen, “Interest is the price of earlier availability, rather than later availability, of rights to use goods.” Whenever people evaluate and exchange present goods or money for future goods or money, interest is involved whether they realize it or not. Moreover, contrary to the implied, if not expressly stated, claim of the anti-usurers, present goods or money are more valuable than the same goods or money in the future. Interest represents the difference in the present and future value.
    Interest is merely a result of people preferring something sooner rather than later. Why is paying for the expression and consideration of this preference a sin? It must be a sin because the moralist anti-usurers want to prohibit usury in the name of morality.
    Rothbard states that “present money is worth more than present expectation of the same amount of future money” — the law of time preference. That is, the future always exchanges at a discount to the present. This discount is the interest that bridges the time preference. Anti-usurers reject the law of time preference, and if it does exist, it is a sin.
    North gives a similar definition: Interest “is the discount we apply to future goods as against present goods.” Moreover, “[i]t is not a uniquely monetary phenomenon.”
    Anti-usurers argue that the future and future goods do not need to be discounted. Thus, they imply that the future is known; people do not live in an uncertain world. Furthermore, they assume that all people will live long enough to enjoy the future; therefore, people do not have to discount the future, i.e., charge interest.
    As interest gives time economic value, the anti-usurers must maintain that time has, or should have, no economic value. An item will have the same value a year or a century from now as it has today. In spite of the assertions of the anti-usurers, time is a scarce economic resource that needs to be economized. (People are not God, who exists outside time; they are prisoners of time.)
    As North notes, “Time is mankind’s only absolutely irreplaceable environmental resource.” Time is the foundation of all economic planning, and interest is the expression of this foundation. Anti-usurers must maintain that either time is irrelevant to economic planning or, if it is relevant, it has no value.
    In the name of morality, anti-usurers would deny compensation, interest, to anyone who saves his money, a present good, and makes it available to entrepreneurs to produce future goods. According to the anti-usurers, this service of capital, saving, to provide an advance in time, as Rothbard calls it, should be without charge; it should be free. To charge for this service is extortion.
    Usury rewards the farsighted and prudent — people who anticipate their future wants and needs and save for them. Anti-usurers want to reward the spendthrift — the impulsive who must have immediate gratification. The anti-usurers would have the prudent to lend to the spendthrift at no charge.
    Interest is payment for the use of capital. Anti-usurers have no problem with paying wages to managers and workers for their labor. Most would not deprive the entrepreneur or owner of his profit for organizing and superintending, either directly or indirectly through managers, the operation of his business. However, they would deprive the capitalist, who may even be a lowly worker via his meager savings or retirement account, of any return on the use of his capital. Thus, the entrepreneur deserves a return on his entrepreneurship; the manager deserves a return on his management; the worker deserves a return on his labor; yet the capitalist does not deserve a return on his capital.
    Besides covering the cost of time preference, part of the interest covers the cost of administrative expenses of transferring money from one person to another. Opponents of usury assume that this cost is either negligible or at least not worthy of compensation. Another part of the interest covers the cost of risk. Most anti-usurers assume that all loans are risk-free. The few who realize that loans do involve risk to the lender believe that such risk should not be compensated. Why would anyone want to risk his money at no cost, zero interest, and give up the present enjoyment and satisfaction that it can bring so that another can satisfy his desires, either in consumption or production, today?
    As Mises notes, when the natural or ordinary interest is zero, no consumption occurs even into eternity. High-interest rates show that people want to consume in the present and near term. Low-interest rates show that people are willing to wait longer to enjoy consumption. At zero interest, which is what the anti-usurers demand, present consumption ceases, and everyone’s labor and resources go toward future consumption. Thus, people would starve as they invest all their labor and resources in capital goods. Do anti-usurers expect lenders to be so future-oriented that they will choose death over usury?
    Hunger prevents the natural rate of interest from becoming zero. If food is available, people will eventually eat it before they starve. Thus, the present value of food will eventually exceed its future value, which means people start applying an interest rate to saving their food for future use, and consuming it in the present.
    Therefore, anti-usurers have to resort to the coercive power of the government to suppress interest to zero. As contradictory as it seems, if the government forces interest to zero, as the anti-usurers want it to do, people will consume their capital. As a result, future goods will become more scarce and eventually cease to exist. Again, people will starve because they have consumed their “seed corn.” The few who survive would return to the hunter-gatherer stage of humanity. Thus, when the government outlaws usury, it forces people to become extremely present-oriented.
    Is starvation what the anti-usurers want? If they succeed in outlawing all interest, starvation is what they will get.
High interest rates occur when people are present-oriented; they have a high time preference. Low interest rates occur when people are future-oriented; they have a low time preference. Future-oriented people value future income and satisfaction more than present-oriented people value them. Generally, future-oriented people and societies are much wealthier and more advanced than are present-oriented people and societies. The burden of time is much higher for present-oriented people and societies than it is for future-oriented people and societies.
    Anti-usurers seem to prefer present orientation to future orientation. They seem to prefer people consuming everything as quickly as possible to prevent delaying satisfaction, for that implies interest. However, as they demand zero interest, they seem to want to convert everyone to an extremely future-oriented person, who consumes nothing in the present.
    Everything, and every action, carries an interest rate whether noticed or not. Interest guides people in their consumption. Even the farmer uses interest when he decides how much of his crop to consume now and how much to save for planting next season.
    Likewise, when a shipwrecked sailor rations his water consumption, he is employing time preference, interest. By weighing immediately quenching his thirst against quenching his thirst in the future, he is employing time preference, which interest represents.
    Today, many opponents of usury oppose charging interest on loans for immoral reasons rather than moral reasons. They merely want to use other people’s capital, money, to satisfy immediately their consumptive desires without any cost to themselves. With a forced zero-interest loan, the borrower is taking something, the use of another’s capital to save time, from another, the lender, for nothing, which the moralists consider extortion.
    Morally, one may be obliged to lend to a destitute Christian in dire need of the necessities of life at no interest (Exodus 22:25) and perhaps without the thought of repayment. (Actually, today with governments stealing the wealth of the productive and giving it to the poor to provide not only the necessities of life but also many luxuries, no need really exists to lend to the poor and needy.) However, he should ensure that money lent goes for necessities and not for frivolous consumption or pleasure. (Perhaps a better solution is to give the person in need the necessities needed and allow the recipient to pay for them later when he can. [One should never lend any more money to any friend, relative, or acquaintance than he is willing to give them as a gift because he is not likely to be repaid.]) Nevertheless, no one is morally obliged to lend money interest-free to invest in a business, to speculate, or to satisfy consumptive desires.
    Likewise, loans to Christian churches, Christian schools, and Christian charities should be interest-free. But, then, why not just donate the funds?
    In a highly Christianized society, interest rates will be low, but not zero. They are low because Christians are, or should be, future-oriented. As noted above, future orientation causes interest rates to be low.
    Anti-usurers need to decide if they want a future-oriented society in which the wealth of mankind will continue to climb or a present-oriented society in which wealth declines toward the hunter-gatherer level. If they want a future-oriented society with increasing wealth, they need to cease insisting on zero interest, outlawing usury. If they insist on zero interest, outlawing usury, they will create a present-oriented society with declining wealth for all. As Christianity is future-oriented and outlawing usury is present-oriented, the anti-usurers are promoting an unchristian society.
    As the above discussion shows, usury, the payment for time, is essential to life. Without usury, civilization would not and could not exist. Without usury, mankind would only exist in a hunter-gatherer society. Moreover, anti-usurers promote a highly contradictory and impossible society: They want people to be extremely present-oriented, have a high time preference, and extremely future-oriented, have a low time preference, simultaneously. Anti-usurers are nothing more than promoters of “something for nothing.” In short, anti-usurers prefer lower-class living, present orientation, to higher-class living, future orientation.

References
Alchian, Armen A. and William R. Allen. University Economics: Elements of Inquiry. 3rd edition. Belmont, California: Wadsworth Publishing Co., Inc., 1972.

Allen, Thomas. “Questions for the Anti-Usurers.” Franklinton, North Carolina: TC Allen Company, 2010.

Dabney, R.L. The Practical Philosophy. Harrisonburg, Virginia: Sprinkle Publications, 1897.

Elliott, Calvin. Usury: A Scriptural, Ethical and Economic View. Frankston, Texas: TGS Publishers, 1902, 2008.

Ely, Richard T. An Introduction to Political Economy. New and revised edition. New York, New York: Eaton & Mains, 1901.

Jordan, James B. The Law of the Covenant: An Exposition of Exodus 21-23. Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1984.

Laughlin, J. Laurence. The Elements of Political Economy. New York, New York: American Book Co., 1882.

Menger, Carl. Principles of Economics. Translators James Dingwall and Bert F. Hoselitz. New York, New York: New York University Press, 1976.

Meyers, Albert L. Elements of Modern Economics. 4th edition. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1956.

Mises, Ludwig von. Human Action: A Treatise on Economics. 3rd revised edition. Chicago, Illinois: Henry Regnery Co., 1963.

Mund, Earl E. “Interest.” In Economic Principles and Problems. Editor Walter E. Spahr. Fourth edition. Vol. II. New York, New York: Rinehart & Co., Inc.: 1940.

Nicholson, J. Shield. “Usury.” Encyclopedia Britannica. 9th edition. The R. S. Peale Reprint. Chicago, Illinois: R.S. Peale & Co. XXIV, 17-19.

North, Gary. The Dominion Covenant: Genesis. An Economic Commentary on the Bible. Volume 1. Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1982.

North, Gary. Moses and Pharaoh: Dominion Religion Versus Power Religion. Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1985.

North, Gary. Tools of Dominion: The Case Laws of Exodus. Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1990.

Polleit, Thorsten. “The ‘Natural Interest Rate’ Is Always Positive and Cannot Be Negative.” March 21, 2015. https://mises.org/library/natural-interest-rate-always-positive-and-cannot-be-negative. May 14, 2017,

Poor, Henry Varnum. Money and Its Laws: Embracing a History of Monetary Theories, and a History of the Currencies of the United States. Reprint. New York, New York: H.V. and H.W. Poor, 1877.

Rothbard, Murray N. Man, Economy and State: A Treatise on Economic Principles. 2 volumes. Los Angeles, California: Nash Publishing, 1970.

Tenebrarum, Pater. “The Consequences of Imposing Negative Interest Rates.” November 21, 2014. http://www.acting-man.com/?p=34365. May 14, 2017.

Copyright © 2017 by Thomas Coley Allen.

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Usury

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