Sunday, May 3, 2020

The Right To Own Ones Self

The Core of all Natural Rights theory

The core of all basic rights theory is the "right to own one's self."

“Every Man has a Property in his own Person. This nobody has any right to but himself.” [see: Full Quote from John Locke Two Treatises on Government]

Yet many of us are wage slaves, our country still allows people to sell themselves into various kinds of literal and figurative bondage. And all that directly contradicts the principles we claim to base ourselves on.

“there is something important at stake in the choice of terminology when discussions and interpretation of “self-ownership” obscure the political implications of “ownership.”

The Ultimate Inalienable Natural Right

To me this is the ultimate illustration of an inalienable right. We humans can be oppressed, suppressed, enslaved, yet we "cry for freedom" even from the depths of despair. Nothing displays the human spirit more graphically than the soul of the wrongfully imprisoned person, who's inward freedom remains. It fits the definition of a Natural law:

“they cannot be repealed or restrained by human laws”

And it fits the definition of inalienable used by Hegel:

“The right to what is in essence inalienable is imprescriptible, since the act whereby I take possession of my personality, of my substantive essence, and make myself a responsible being, capable of possessing rights and with a moral and religious life, takes away from these characteristics of mine just that externality which alone made them capable of passing into the possession of someone else. When I have thus annulled their externality, I cannot lose them through lapse of time or from any other reason drawn from my prior consent or willingness to alienate them.” [Hegel's Philosophy of Right]

Rights can be alienable or inalienable. Not all rights are inalienable. However, alienable rights, derive from more fundamental inalienable ones. The difference between an alienable right and an inalienable one is that "alienating" an inalienable right damages the person for whom a part of their person is being detached. One can claim that the "right to own ones self" is alienable but the effort to alienate part of the self destroys the self. Can one really sell oneself? What remains if one does? One can gift from ones self. But that only makes the self stronger and the soul stronger. One can share from oneself, but the self remains. No matter how much we give away of ourselves, we remain ourselves. Losing ourselves in love or agony is something figurative. The self remains. Even in death. When we die or lose integrity, it is then that we are alienated from our selves. But that is death. Only when the person perishes does the right even quit. And for some people the ownership of their ideas is nearly eternal.

Misrepresenting Rights

Concepts like rights, can be (and often are) deliberately misrepresented. When rights that ought to be subordinate to even higher priorities (higher rights) get cast as "inalienable", the rights they are subordinate to often get infringed. When rights that are clearly inalienable are cast as alienable and an effort is made to deny, abridge, infringe or simply put, alienate them -- the result is oppression and dysfunction. Because infringing an inalienable right is like cutting off a hand or foot. The person who it is cut off from is harmed. If a right can be separated from its possessor with no real harm to the former possessor, it is an alienable right. If it is subordinate to, necessary to, some other right, then the boundaries of that alienation reflect the boundaries where that parental right applies.

Examples with the Right to Happiness & Others

The Right to happiness might not exist, but the right to pursue happiness is inalienably part of human needs. Alienate that right and a person is simply no longer autonomous. The right to defend one's home, live autonomously, are related to the right to own one's own self. The right to own ones self is the fundamental right. The right to "pursue happiness" may seem too abstract to measure, but attributes of misery are all too measurable. The Right to "own oneself" is not in any way an abstraction for those who have experienced all the myriad ways that people degrade and dehumanize each other. Alienation isn't simply some Marxist term for some historical development in the formation of classes. Alienation is the severing of what makes a person whole. If one cannot own the components of one's own life, then one is not autonomous. One doesn't own oneself. It is possible to alienate people from owning themselves. But it is oppression.

Alienable Rights Versus Inalienable

A lot of confusion starts when alienable rights are treated as inalienable or vice versa. When laws infringe on inalienable rights, without rational cause, they are oppressive and absurd. When people are enabled to "pursue happiness" and live as "Nature's God" intended, they do better.

It is our human task to lay out the outlines of what is actually right and wrong. Whatever may be commanded from God, can be affirmed in His creation. If it is not echoed in the real world, does it really come from God? Alienating a right that is inalienable destroys the connection of that thing to the thing that the right protects, and degrades or destroys the thing protected by that right. Once one sees that a right is inalienable, then one sees that taking that right away is a major wrong except when that infringement serves an even higher principle of right.

Infringement on Inalienable Rights Is Oppression and Violence

Thus Infringing on inalienable rights is by definition oppression and violence. A Person without freedom or liberty is a prisoner. People denied the right to property in oneself finds themselves enslaved and dispossessed. This is analogous to when the guilty are found innocent and the innocent found guilty. These truths are illustrated by their infringement.

Alienating an Inalienable right destroys the Person

When an inalienable right is denied or infringed, the result is suffering and failure. The very effort to infringe, deny, or sell inalienable rights just creates "evil", harm and even death. It damages the person, so harmed.

Denial Illustrates inalienability

Thus Denial illustrates why those rights are inalienable. The denial of the right to property in one's own self produced the obvious miseries of slavery. In prior ages denial for the right to property in one's own conscience produced the absurdity of people forced to lie in order to survive. As illustrated in the previous posts (Justice, Injustice and Legal Fraud", and The Fraud of Renting Labor) denying inalienable rights result in legal fraud and absurdities. That is why this is an important subject.

Harmonizing Deontology and Teleology

The Real Core of All Natural rights theory is the epistemology of where practical reality meets moral imperative. It is where deontology meets teleology.*

The Deontological viewpoint

Natural Rights theory sounds deontological; (duty-based), where the moral duties of natural rights are self-evident, having intrinsic value in and of themselves and needing no further justification.

“deontological ethics or deontology (from Greek δέον, deon, "obligation, duty") is the normative ethical position that judges the morality of an action based on rules. It is sometimes described as "duty-" or "obligation-" or "rule-" based ethics, because rules "bind you to your duty".”

Deontology also premises that duties are commanded from above. They don't have to have a logical basis. One has to do them because they are commandments. From a Deontological perspective Rights are inalienable because Natures God commands them to be. However, the deontological perspective requires justification from a teleological perspective, and in the case of inalienable rights, earns it.

The Teleological Perspective

In contrast Teleological perspectives often posit that the ends justify the means they posit theories of morality that:

“derives duty or moral obligation from what is good or desirable as an end to be achieved.”

Teleological morality expresses in "Utilitarianism", "pragmatism" at its best and in Machiavellian and ruthless "moral" systems at worst. From a Teleological perspective, rights are inalienable because damaging them destroys the utility of the person damaged, and by inference of the social and economic systems the person lives in.

Mapping the Abstract to the Practical

The abstract has to map to practical realities, to measurable attributes, or it remains purely abstract. Without a grounding in experimental, experiential, consequential reality idealized beliefs become unhinged. Or worse, as happened with Marxism, they become attached to idealistic and unrealistic objectives.

Ends and Means are inextricably linked

But the reality is that ends and means are inextricably linked. A child is taught Deontological rules, commandments; "Don't touch the fire! You'll get burned" because he/she is not ready yet to perceive the causality of a stove. The argument that the rightness or wrongness (teleological perspective) of actions is based solely on the goodness or badness of their consequences is in some kind of conflict with the deontological view, is a false choice. Likewise, there is a reason for commandments. At worst, one follows rules because rules order ones individual and collective behavior and make it easier to function in a society with other beings, conflicts and limits. Humans need their rituals and routine. The more chaotic the world, the more they pine for them. One might accept such rules on an approach of "this is my duty", but one keeps them when one realizes that those rules enable integrity, set boundaries or link one socially with others. Moral theory has to map back to cause and effect to become something effective. And at some point moral theory has to involve commandments to do something or it is mere abstraction. [Deontological/Teleological]

The Absurdity of Alienation

Professor Ellerman's table illustrates both justice and injustice. wrote some things that really, really impressed me and I want to summarize some of what he's saying that is relative to me. Starting with the Following Table, which expresses the truth table on the subject of justice and injustice:

This post discusses basic principles of human rights, "alienable", "contract" & "inalienable rights." Libertarians and so-called conservatives, are big on some of these arguments but they often misrepresent them and conveniently so.

This post follows on material discussed in:

Justice, Injustice and Legal Fraud"
The Fraud of Renting Labor

Self Ownership vs Right to Property in One's self

Pateman argues against what she calls “contractism” in her paper on "Self ownership" noting that:

“If rights are seen in proprietary terms – the standard view of rights, Ingram argues – then it follows that rights can be alienated. ” [Self-Ownership]

Alienable Versus Inalienable

If a right can be alienated then it is conditional or can be separated from the person enjoying it. “It can be subject to "contract"” exchanges or it's applicability limited in other ways. Rights can be alienable or inalienable. An alienable right is contingent on some related right. One has an alienable right to own arms for self defense. For example Samuel Adams called the right to “have and use arms”

“ Auxiliary and Subordinate to the rights to personal security, liberty and property.”

The right to have and use arms is alienable. A lot of people don't understand this.

One has an inalienable right to pursue happiness. One doesn't have an right to use those arms to rob a bank to achieve happiness. The right to pursue happiness is inalienable. The right to keep and use arms to defend oneself is inalienable. The right to keep and use arms to carry out a robbery is not. But even more as she explains: She explains:

“ ” [Pateman]

http://www.ellerman.org/the-case-against-the-employment-system-based-on-the-norms-of-ordinary-jurisprudence/

The Law is only just when the person who is held responsible is actually in fact responsible. That ought to be tautological, but in our corrupted times, both type one and type two injustice are common, sometimes due to failures in the discovery process for seeking the truth, but also because modern governments employ oppressive and/or Fruadulent legal theories. David explains the table as:

“analogous to Type I and Type II error in statistics”

Those advocating Inequality claimed it was Consensual

And notes that:

"Historically, the sophisticated arguments for slavery and autocratic government were consent-based in terms of implicit or explicit contracts. And the legalized oppression of married women was based on the coverture marriage contract."

Modern Liberalism fought:

“sophisticated arguments for slavery and for non-democratic forms of government based on consent. The advances in anti-slavery arguments and democratic arguments based on the inalienable rights arguments of the Reformation and Enlightenment were made against those liberal defenses of slavery and autocracy based on consent.”

John Locke Stated very plainly:

“Every Man has a Property in his own Person. This nobody has any right to but himself.” [Pateman]

However, Locke also treated this "property in one's own person" as alienable;

“The grass my horse has bit; the turf my servant has cut; become my property. The labour that was mine ... hath fixed my property in them.” [Pateman]

The property in their labor is the masters property. Because he owns the servant and the horse. He owns their labor. The notion of the inalienability of labor from the person would require further delineation. Locke was making a political argument. Regardless of who morally owns the fruit of his or her labor, that property belonged to the owner of the labor.

Language, and interpretation of language has been a tool in this fight from the beginning. Historians misrepresent the difficulty of advancing rights for all people when they downplay this. Carole Patemen notes that:

“there is something important at stake in the choice of terminology when discussions and interpretation of “self-ownership” obscure the political implications of “ownership.”

Inalienable Rights Versus Oppressive Consent

David explains that:

“the critiques developed in the abolitionist, democratic, and feminist movements were not simply arguments for consent as opposed to coercion, but arguments against certain voluntary contracts, e.g., in the form of inalienable rights arguments.”

These inalienable rights arguments focused on the fact that labor cannot be divorced from either personhood or capital. The abolitionists argued successfully that labor cannot be alienated from personhood but is inseparable from it. Thus Alienating a persons labor from his personhood degrades the person and is oppression, infringing on the very basic rights of the persons enslaved. Moreover, this is true even if the person agreed to the sale.

Legal Fiction of Consent = Fraud

Unfortunately:

“under the intellectual hegemony of classical liberalism, the historical arguments tend to be simplified”

The doctrine of the inalienability of a person and his labor was replaced with the “legal fiction” of selling (or renting) labor, replacing the rights argument with the patently fraudulent argument that a voluntary sale of a persons labor to the master, is a voluntary "sale" with "consent. Reducing the rights argument to an argument about:

“consent versus coercion.”

This argument, being slippery justifies alienating labor from capital and labor from personhood. Just so long as a contract exist and the infringing party ("the employer") has a contract that presumably is voluntary. The result is that:

“The older arguments against certain contracts, even if perfectly voluntary, have been largely overlooked, ignored, or lost—perhaps for an obvious reason. When these older arguments are recovered and restated in terms of the underlying norms of ordinary jurisprudence, then the arguments clearly apply against the human rental or employment contract that is the basis for our present economic system.”

Historical Illustration

The history of abolition and post abolition forms of wage slavery, company store oppression, share-cropping and virtual slavery of wage laborers illustrates that the "legal fiction" of renting labor is a fraud.

The Tory thinker, Lord Eustace Percy, put the fundamental task as follows:

“Here is the most urgent challenge to political invention ever offered to the jurist and the statesman. The human association which in fact produces and distributes wealth, the association of workmen, managers, technicians and directors, is not an association recognized by the law.”[Ellerman]
“The association which the law does recognise—the association of shareholders, creditors and directors—is incapable of production and is not expected by the law to perform these functions. We have to give law to the real association, and to withdraw meaningless privilege from the imaginary one. [1944]”[Ellerman]
“With the renting of persons abolished, each firm would be “the association of workmen, managers, technicians and directors”. Labor would be hiring capital, instead of the owners of capital renting the people working in “their” firm to appropriate the (positive and negative) fruits of their labor.”[Ellerman]
“Each firm would be democratic community of work, an industrial republic, with the industrial cooperatives in the Mondragon system in the Spanish Basque country being an existing example.”[Ellerman]
“The vision of abolishing the wage system in favor of a commonwealth of cooperatives was a goal of the 19th century Labor Movement.”[Ellerman]

There is a lot more to this argument. But I wanted to cover this particular topic as well as I could.

Further Reading

To Read Professor David Ellerman's draft papers:

http://www.ellerman.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/case-based-on-ordinary-norms.pdf
https://cosmosandtaxis.files.wordpress.com/2018/03/ellerman_ct_vol5_iss3_4.pdf
Neoabolitionism: http://www.ellerman.org/neo-abolitionism-and-marxism/
Property & Contract in Economics: The case for economic democracy. Basil-Blackwell, 1992. Downloadable
Carole Patemen:
http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/polisci/faculty/pateman/Self-Ownership.pdf
Full quote:

Samuel Adams maintained that

“the right of having and using arms for self-preservation and defence.” is an “auxiliary subordinate right” whose purpose is to “protect and maintain inviolate the three great and primary rights of personal security, personal liberty and private property”

He continues:

“having arms for their defense is a public allowance, under due restrictions, of the natural right of resistance and self preservation, when the sanctions of society and laws are found insufficient to restrain the violence of oppression.”

Sources: http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/v1ch3s4.html

Samuel Adams quote: http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/v1ch3s4.html
Deontology meets Teleology was inspired by a throw away line of "the riddler" in one of the recent episodes of "Gotham."
http://rhchp.regis.edu/hce/ethicsataglance/DeontologicalTeleological/DeontologicalTeleological_01.html

John Locke

For more information on John Locke and his relationship to other people read any of these posts:
Spencer Versus Locke and Henry George
Edmund Burke Versus John Locke
Locke Talked of the Importance of the Collective
The Concept of Commonwealth as Antidote to Tyranny
Commonwealth According to Locke
The Real Right to Property is Contingent on Reason
Common Property and the Commons
Rights Come from Below
Ayn Rand Argues against the Enlightenment
John Locke on the Virtues of Liberty
Tyranny Definition - John Locke
Hegel:
"George W. F. Hegel, Hegel's Philosophy of Right, T.M. Knox, trans., New York: Oxford University Press, 1967 (1821), section 66"
http://www.inp.uw.edu.pl/mdsie/Political_Thought/Hegel%20Phil%20of%20Right.pdf
₽
Written in January 2019. For some reason not posted then. Sorry

things I missed before

I drafted this in february. But before I published he suspended his campaign. So I put this on hold. The good news is that Bernie himself is behaving himself. The bad news is his fans & trolls aren't.
As usual his campaign appears to be being underwritten as much by Brad Parscale & Russians as by progressives.
https://time.com/4155185/bernie-sanders-hillary-clinton-data/?amp=true&__twitter_impression=true

Thomas Paine's life and it's lessons for modern Journalism


Thomas Paine, can be thought of as America's first Whistleblower,  a model for journalism, and his life presents some lessons and suggestions for enabling Journalism.  That this should be obvious, is made visible in modern rewrites of his biography. I just read a bio on the  US History webpage (https://www.ushistory.org/paine/index.htm), in which they nearly accuse him of abandoning the American Revolution. The authors write of him as leaving for Europe, “instead of continuing to help the Revolutionary cause...” But that is not what actually happened to him. When he left the United Colonies in 1791, the treaty of Paris, which ended the revolutionary war, had been ratified in 1784. So the US had won independence by the time he left the United States.  Moreover, by 1791, Thomas Paine wasn't IN the government, but he was advancing an ideology. That ideology is Republicanism. No not the garbage pedaled by modern Tories that styles itself republicanism, but the real thing.  He expresses the ideals of Republican thought best in his writings.

One of the best examples of the use of these principles is from Gutenberg:

“I consider the war of America against Britain as the country's war, the public's war, or the war of the people in their own behalf, for the security of their natural rights, and the protection of their own property. It is not the war of Congress, the war of the assemblies, or the war of government in any line whatever. The country first, by mutual compact, resolved to defend their rights and maintain their independence, at the hazard of their lives and fortunes; they elected their representatives, by whom they appointed their members of Congress, and said, act you for us, and we will support you. This is the true ground and principle of the war on the part of America, and, consequently, there remains nothing to do, but for every one to fulfil his obligation.” [https://www.ushistory.org/paine/crisis/c-06.htm]

To Paine, all nations, whatever officials claim to govern them, are a country with a “mutual compact” with the people of that country. In a democratic republican government officials don't rule “over” the people, their representatives rule in their name and ultimately at their direction. This is true of all governments, even dictatorships. The only difference is that dictators and oligarchs rule at the direction and oversight of a shrinking pool of people and with usurped powers and often by conning the people they claim to represent. The best government is good government and good government works with all the people, even ones who represent different factions.  War is not supposed to be in pursuit of “private, separate advantage” I'm sure that Paine, like John Locke saw that as corruption and the basis of oppression and tyranny.

Paine wasn't a politician. He knew he was no good at politics. He was more prophet and gadfly than natural politician. He was the original whistleblower, a journalist and he struggled his whole life to work with publishers. He found them because well written truth is desired by people who also have honor and integrity.

Ultimately honor, integrity and principle were more important to him than even fame and fortune. Not that he didn't seek either, but the principle was more important than self aggrandizement for him. Modern Journalists, Activists and Patriots not entering government would be wise to study his example and follow it. Some bad Politicians are good prophets. It takes a particular skillset to run for office and be popular. The job of journalists is to oversee that process and ensure that promises made are documented and kept.

Lesson One: The law on Whistle-blowing and classification should privilege journalism as part of democracy.

Thomas Paine played a role as a whistleblower in the early 1780s.  He worked as  He was involved in exposing corruption around the secret money being given to support the Revolution, in contravention of French Treaty agreements,  When his role in this was exposed, the congressional committee involved forced him to resign. They wanted to try to have him charged with Treason. But he had the evidence. This alone makes him our Countries First Whistleblower.

As usual I have a lot more to say...

[https://www.ushistory.org/paine/crisis/c-06.htm]

Who has the Power; “Creditors” or “Debtors?”

Donald Trump Grifter, losing money by stealing it

Trump lost a gargantuan $1.17 billion over that period. Avoiding paying any taxes for 8 of the ten years! He would call himself the 'debt king' because of things like that. He knew he could make money by borrowing money and then not paying it back.

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/05/trump-new-york-state-tax-returns

Trump Admits he lost that money:

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1126078422797602816

Trump thinks that making a billion dollars by unloading debts and losses onto marks is just good business.

But where it gets dicey is that, despite our country setting itself up as a responsible. It is not. Trump is typical in this.

General Principles of debt

I started this post nearly 3 years ago, to answer the question via thought experiment. I am exploring broader questions than whether Trump is a crook. It just happens that his criminality illustrates some points I've been making about our Piratical Privateering traditions in commerce and colonialization.

Who has the power? “Creditors” or “Debtors?”

Nothing illustrates this question like our corrupt President. Trump has built his business by bankrupting clients, customers, contractors, workers and those who trusted him. He is called “the debt king” for a reason. Like a King he has managed to avoid paying debts he owed, converted debt to his own hands, and built a reputation based on borrowed money. He illustrates a principle that used to apply to Kings during the pre-modern period.

It is a truism, axiom, maybe a principle that:
“If a commoner owes more money than he can pay, the King will lock him away.”
“If the King owes more than he can pay, then the State will make the debt go away.”
“We need fear the King, whether we owe him or he owe us.”

Trump is adept at making others pay for his mistakes. Like a Medieval King Trump can punish those he owes as easily as he punishes those who owe him.

The reality is that:
Money is not the root of all evil, debt is.http://www.minyanville.com/businessmarkets/articles/occupy-wall-street-demands-how-occupy/11/3/2011/id/37707?page=full

Countries have power over their coinage, debt. The sovereign power regulates markets in countries that are sovereign over their own affairs. Feudal Societies operated an exchange of promises between lords and their vassals, creating a hierarchy of mutual obligations of service. Modern societies exchange promises in the form of contracts. At one time money was coined gold or silver, copper or bronze. Societies with sovereign power could fix the value of coins in terms of the commodities they bought or sold. But sovereign or not, the issue in most countries is not treasure, loot or coins, but debt. Debt is the original sin of a banker based system. Capitalism professes to be about actual capital, but it is actually about debt and ownership.

The Original Sin in Central Banking

Thus where economics get dicey is that, what drives the business cycle is borrowing. What really drives recessions and depressions is whether people can borrow or attract investment without losing their property. In a sovereign country, if debt got to be so onerous that wealth was being concentrated and the people enslaved, the government would declare a Jubilee and cancel or zero out all debts. This like modern bankruptcy, would free up debt based businesses to borrow again. A society based on debt creates a lot of virtual wealth. When that wealth falls into few hands, so does the power of that country. People think that Republics exist to protect everyone from abuses of power, but aristocratic people want republics to protect the wealthy from being held to account.

despite our country setting itself up as a responsible. It is not. Our US Treasury is technically sovereign over money. But thanks to the influence of Alexander Hamilton and J. P. Morgan we privatized our banking system and put the pirates in charge of it.

“The UK government took banker debt and made it our debt while letting bankers off. Then told us: You're living beyond your means.” ― Fuad Alakbarov https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/debt?page=3

The Exercise of Power by Oligarchs

“If you or I owe, say 100,000$, the people we owe own us. ”

Economics is Testable

But economics is testable theory.

Those claiming it is untestable, like Von Mises and his praxeology crowd (see Faulty Assumptions Post), turn economics into a side show at best, or a collection of faulty dogma's at worse. The current "tax reform" will lead to disaster, will have to be reformed, and is not reform.

But it does represent an exercise in power by our wealthiest incipient Oligarchs. Our side-show discussion, never made it into the national debate, but they gave me grist to analyze our system. I wish the money discussions were national. Because I learned something. And that was:

Money does not belong to the Money Men

Money is not the property of "the money men". They've had that conceit off and on through history. The "Capitalist" era, wasn't really solely a time when investment in factories and actual capital made the world prosperous, it was also a time when the concept of property was enforced by armies and police worldwide, through piracy and privateering, expressed in colonialism, neocolonialism, dictatorships and even in socialism. But the place of the money men has always been fragile. Their origins as pirates meant that they could be robbed as easily as they robbed others. Their dependence on debt and interest.

Was reading today about the but had it done so, might have helped allay the anxiety people have about the costs of governing in the public interest. That subject is our money Power. The debate we had then continued among economists I know and in my own thought experiments.

The Necessity of Sovereignty over money

The importance of sovereignty over the money supply is illustrated by the lessons of colonialism and neo-colonialism. Most people don't understand the subject. Most wealthy people have a different view of even what money should be from the rest of us.

Money as Promises to Pay

Almost all money that can be exchanged in modern societies takes the form of "promises to pay", notes, tokens or accounting entries. The result is that those who are owed a lot can lend even more. Those who owe a lot have trouble borrowing.

Intrinsic Value Money

The wealthy claim to prefer that money either be coins with intrinsic value. But when that happens, Gresham's law operates and the coins with intrinsic value are withdrawn from circulation. Only the desperate or the acquisitive spend their intrinsically valuable coin. They prefer to hoard it for difficult times. The wealthy create a kind of currency in order to put at least some of their money to loose. They loan it or invest it as capital.

There is never enough currency to fuel an economy, so it is really in the best interest of the wealthy that token, note and accounting money be available. Their gold and silver is lost when they have to spend it or when desperate people break into their treasure vaults. When the official money is gold or silver, the wealthy wind up creating accounting money anyway. When the wealthy back their notes with gold, they have a tradition of absconding with the gold and leaving note holders holding worthless paper.

Treasure and Loot

The reason the monied prefer tokens with intrinsic value is that they need "treasure." They need valuables that are portable, valuable and can be sold in an emergency. Hence they prefer gold, jewels, valuables both as a display of wealth, prowess, virility and as a substitute for money while travelling or running from the law. Many of the wealthy, especially nouveau wealth, but also old money, never have enough wealth. They know people won't always be able to pay back their debts in a timely fashion, so treasure is also kept as something to either back their own borrowing or barter efforts.

Indeed, treasure is what usually backs "private money", at least nominally.

Pirates and Loot

Thus the difference between a pirate and a nobleman, is that a pirate has to use violence to acquire loot. Nobility own property that they can extract rents from, borrow against and lend at interest, or invest with an expectation of earning income from. The wealthy can acquire loot either through charging economic rent on the use of property they control, or by taking property that borrowers pledge as surety when they can't pay. The wealthy earn unearned income during good times, and acquire property and treasure from desperate people in hard times.

The United States has had paper currency for most of it's history. Much of it printed by private banks and unreliable. Promises to pay are only as good as their promises. Token money, accounting money & notes can be rendered worthless with the stroke of a pen or the fall of a government.

But that doesn't mean that modern privateers don't know that The writer/economist John T. Harvey, in an article, "Can America Afford Bernie Sanders' Agenda?" talks about Sovereign Money:

Privateering with the Money Power

From Hamilton to the present, who controls the money power has been vital to the survival and union of our country. To the extent it has operated in the common interest and funded communications and commerce it has been beneficial. To the extent it is operated for the benefit of the few it has created large fortunes, while dispossessing and enslaving masses. The Money power has been a source of both liberty and tyranny. It's been a key fight from before the constitution and was one of the fights that wracked the administration of our first President; George Washington, as one faction of our founders reacted suspiciously to Alexander Hamilton's proposed policies, another decided to take them over and use them for corrupt purposes, and a third faction went to war with the very idea of a central bank.

Who has the Money Power Keeps the Money

The surface issue then was whether the Federal Government should possess the money power fully or in tandem with the states. But the real issue was which private cabal -- one dominated by money men in the Northeast of the Country (Boston and Manhattan) -- or one dominated by diverse private banks dispersed around the country would control the money supply. And both factions, operated under the illusion that "hard money" (gold or Silver Commodity money) was real money and despised and abused paper money. Banks would print paper money and issue it with debt, establishing a win/win situation for themselves as long as no one caught on to their conversion of the reserves backing the paper. If the customer couldn't pay they'd take the property of the customer. If the customer paid back the debt they'd get interest from the customer. As my friend John Turmel pointed out, that interest constitutes a rent on money that leads to the bank acquiring much of the value of the economic activity leant money creates. Accounting money disappears when the debt is paid. It also disappears when the bubble created by its use, collapses.

He who has the money power winds up with unearned wealth and rental income.

The Original Alternative Schema

British privateers, operating through their Tory and Whig agents in Parliament first made the States subject to external money power by forbidding them to coin currency or issue their own credit money (paper money). Benjamin Franklin defended the States power to produce its own money. They ignored him, and that is one reason for the Rebellion.

“This is so because, unlike in Greece, every single penny of it is denominated in our currency. We don’t need to raise dollars from taxation, exports, or bake sales–we make them.” Harvey
“Don’t take my word for it. Here are just a few folks from across the political spectrum and in different walks of life saying the exact same thing:” Harvey
“In the case of United States, default is absolutely impossible. All U.S. government debt is denominated in U.S. dollar assets.” Peter Zeihan, Vice President of Analysis for STRATFOR” Harvey
“In the case of governments boasting monetary sovereignty and debt denominated in its own currency, like the United States (but also Japan and the UK), it is technically impossible to fall into debt default.” Erwan Mahe, European asset allocation and options strategies adviser” Harvey
“There is never a risk of default for a sovereign nation that issues its own free-floating currency and where its debts are denominated in that currency.” Mike Norman, Chief Economist for John Thomas Financial” Harvey
“Central banks can issue currency, a non-interest-bearing claim on the government, effectively without limit.” Alan Greenspan, Chair of the Federal Reserve (1987-2006)” Harvey
“There is no inherent limit on federal expenses and therefore on federal spending…When the U.S. government decides to spend fiat money, it adds to its banking reserve system and when it taxes or borrows (issues Treasury securities) it drains reserves from its banking system. These reserve operations are done solely to maintain the target Federal Funds rate.” Monty Agarwal , managing partner and chief investment officer of MA Managed Futures Fund” Harvey
“As the sole manufacturer of dollars, whose debt is denominated in dollars, the U.S. government can never become insolvent, i.e., unable to pay its bills. In this sense, the government is not dependent on credit markets to remain operational.” Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis” Harvey
“The necessity for a government to tax in order to maintain both its independence and its solvency is true for state and local governments, but it is not true for a national government.” Beardsley Ruml, Chair Federal Reserve Bank of New York (1937-1947)” Harvey
“I am not worried about the deficit. It is big enough to take care of itself.” Ronald Reagan, President of the United States (1981-1989)” Harvey
“Reagan proved that deficits don’t matter.” Dick Cheney, Vice President of the United States (2001-2009)” Harvey
“A sovereign government can always make payments as they come due by crediting bank accounts — something recognized by Chairman Ben Bernanke when he said the Fed spends by marking up the size of the reserve accounts of banks.” L. Randall Wray, Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, Senior Scholar at the Levy Economics Institute, and Co- Editor of the Journal of Post Keynesian Economics” Harvey
“Mind you, that doesn’t mean there cannot be other consequences. Inflation, for example, is a possibility. Also from Dr. Wray:” Harvey
“Government needs to be concerned about pressures on inflation and the exchange rate should its spending become excessive. However, with high unemployment and idle plant and equipment, no one can reasonably argue that these dangers are imminent.” Harvey
“In other words, if all of our resources are fully employed–which is our real budget constraint, not dollars–then this can cause the demand for goods and services to outstrip supply and thereby drive up prices. This was precisely the situation during World War Two. Of course, that period was hardly one of economic malaise because that kind of inflation is a problem in the same way that having six people ask you for a date on Saturday night is a problem–you are so popular you can’t keep up with demand. Things could be worse.” Harvey
“That’s not our problem today, however, when the standard measure of unemployment is 5.1% and the broad one is 10.3% (the latter includes discouraged workers and those who have taken part-time employment but wanted full-time). And this is why we have seen neither hide nor hair of even moderately high inflation during the current run up of the debt.” Harvey
“But returning to the main point, anyone who says the federal government doesn’t have the budget to manage Sanders’ (or anyone else’s) programs doesn’t understand how modern macroeconomies work. The federal government’s budget is not analogous to your own and it cannot run out of money (for a longer explanation of this, see The Big Danger In Cutting The Deficit). If they want to say instead that his agenda (Bernie Sanders: Agenda for America) will push us to the point that our resources will be fully employed, that’s possible.” Harvey
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/v/voodooeconomics.asp

Thursday, April 9, 2020

My old blog page

My old blog is here:
https://web.archive.org/web/20181218231607/fraughtwithperil.com/cholte
I get all kinds of error messages when I try to go there, so I'm going to download the pages and maybe upload them again.

Monday, March 23, 2020

Killing US stupidly

For some reason the Song "Killing me Softly" is playing in my head as I write this. Only as my mind does, the words are "killing me stupidly." I won't inflict the doggerral (yet), but what is going on with this Corona Virus 2019 pandemic, is so incredibly insane that I'm not only sheltering in place in my own home, but the other tune that keeps playing in my head is the Twilight Zone theme song. Trump's handling of the issue, before we knew of the pandemic, has been incredibly crazy!

Back before my wife died, one of the groups I worked with were the medical logistics people. I forget the term for their group (the documents were all company sensitive so I don't think I have any left) but what they were doing was Epidemiological Situation awareness. One of the areas we were looking at was Pandemic readiness. I'm no expert, but some of the people I worked with were. My software friends were developing software to track outbreaks, ID, track and treat patients and exposures. What we should be doing is treating this like a war. But one where the enemy is the disease, not each other.

We should be mobilizing:

  1. Providers and training people to help them.
  2. Isolation tents, ventilators, respirators.
  3. Personal Protective Equipment for medical providers and anyone who might interact with the sick.
  4. That includes gloves, masks, encounter suits, etc...
  5. We need all the supplies now.

Instead

We have (or had) the people needed to deal with a global pandemic. John Bolton disbanded the Pandemic unit and pretended to move its function to the counter-terrorism unit. The military has experts in military logistics who use health intelligence to plan out exactly what is needed. The experts were ignored for talk of using quinine and snake oil, blow driers, and quack medicine to treat the disease, and efforts to protect the wealthy and keep businesses open despite the workers in them getting sick.

Results

Without contract testing and tracing

  • The people with early signs of the disease spread it before they ever know they are ill
  • Instead of quarantining the ill, we have to shut down everything.
  • The people we need to fight the virus, will die themselves.

Without protective gear

  • our doctors will get sick and be unable to treat the ill.
  • Warehouse workers and truck drivers will get sick and be unable to deliver food and supplies
  • The economy is collapsing.

All this was avoidable.

Friday, February 21, 2020

Some Contrarian Etymology

Off Topic

Often I see a word in English, Latin or other languages that is similar to words in Hebrew or Arabic. Since both are founded on even older languages, the notion that they weren't borrowed from the older languages is absurd. We don't know what languages were spoken everywhere throughout history, because not all languages were written down. But when you see words that have similar meanings across language families that have been connected in some way their entire history, it is entirely possible that the words were shared, even if the grammar and other history of the languages wasn't. People share words with other people. It's not accident that words like Genius and Jinn share a common sound. There are lots of similar words like that. Languages can converge by sharing vocabulary, or diverge by contact with other neighbors or isolation.

English as Pidgin

I also believe that many major languages started as pidgin languages spoken by people brought into commerce with one another. A "Synthetic" language is taught in schools (or by tutors) and serves the purposes of Governments and courts, but a pidgin language starts in markets as people try to understand one another. I believe that the Atlantic languages simplification of grammar reflects "pidgin" influences. In Britain, when Welsh, Angles, Saxons, Jutes and later Norse, Gaelic and French speakers, tried to do business with one another, their languages were so close they had to use short cuts to avoid misunderstanding each other. So they replaced complex Verb forms with simplified ones and used syntax and auxiliary words to convey parts of speech; past tense, future tense, intentionality, etc... Later, efforts to turn them into synthetic languages tried to freeze this dynamic pidgin as it was on the way to becoming English. English was also influenced by Welsh, Irish and other language speakers, who found it easier to use a pidgin than try to teach folks their own divergent languages. That is also why pidgins are so popular, and often similar, worldwide.

Recently I was reading a book on Mediterranean pirates and it devoted part of a Chapter to a language spoken by sailors on the Mediterranean. I believe he referred to it as "Ladino", which was strikingly like the Ladino my wife had studied as spoken by Sephardi Jews, but was a pidgin, not a form of Castilian Spanish.

Scholars like to develop hard and fast principles. I'll never forget a book on Wolves that differentiated wolves of different parts of the world by how they hold their tails. Anyone who has studied dogs or wolves knows that for those that have functional tails, how tails are held depends on mood, not race or subspecies. I suppose the scholars got all their information from somewhere. But that is why science lives by validation and experimentation. We all get it wrong many times before we get it right, at least on some subjects. Reality is messy and pure-breeds get genetic diseases. We can under-estimate risks, or over-estimate them. We can claim family resemblances where it is pure accident, or ignore family resemblances because of prejudices.