The Gold Way To Freedom and Prosperity

PREFACE

The Central Issue is Money

"It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so."

- Мark Тwain

Some people make things happen, some watch things happen, while others don’t even know how it happened. These are the three categories of people in life: the achievers, the spectators, and the novices. In spite of their social placing, these three categories are intimately connected in the economic cycle. This discrepancy in the food chain has been present since the dawn of human memory, and to understand why, we need to glimpse at the distant past. Money is a vital aspect of human civilization.

Just like the process of learning to read and count, money is synonymous with basic human development. It has helped to further the course of history, as well as marred certain periods in it. We often wonder why only a few members of society have it at their disposal. Money is critical to the economy, but in spite of this significance, the average person cannot answer simple questions such as:

Where does our money come from?

Who has the authority to issue it?

What gives it value?

How is it regulated to serve the public good?

The reason for this ignorance lies in the exploitive nature of the system because the interest of the rich minority has always been served at the expense of the poor majority: A bourgeoisie vs. Proletariat fight as Karl Marx would describe. The New Deal ideology of taking from the rich to give to the poor remains an ideology at best, as the rich always get richer and the poor get poorer. However, this action would be impossible to pull off without the help of the media through which the privileged disseminate their ideology and enslave the minds of the masses.

To this end, the educational system, religious groups, advertising, and the entertainment industry are introduced to shape the masses’ perception of themselves and their expectations in life. However, through a subtle means, the media has been used throughout history to influence culture, and through it, from an impressionable age to adulthood; the masses are subjected to diverse mental conditionings which determine their social placing through life. Thus, in talking about exploitation, we draw on its significance to politics and not merely figures.

Getting the masses to exercise their voting rights is one thing, but upturning the status quo is another, as most economies subsist on the exploitation of the masses. This appears to make no sense as the majority has the strength of numbers over the minority. History proved this right in 1789, when French paupers took up arms against the aristocracy and succeeded in a matter of days.

In the long haul, the French Revolution also succeeded in altering modern history and triggering a global decline of absolute monarchies among others. Seeing that it was in the ratio of 100 paupers to one aristocrat, one begins to wonder why it took them 1,500 years to fight back. From this critical standpoint, it becomes clear that ideology and exploitation are intimately interwoven. The human mind is a viable resource which has been exploited from the inception of time to sustain culture. Such is its force that when properly harnessed, there is no limit to what can be achieved.

Thus, in stating the means through which the media has been used to propagate ideas like Western Cultural Imperialism, we see how the masses are defeated psychologically. And this is just one among diverse mechanisms of the power structure and the inevitability of exploitation. Studies show that when the educational curriculum is specially designed to train students to be prospective members of the working class, it is impossible to have such students aspire to be entrepreneurs later in life. Therefore, in promoting hard work, diligence, and other attributes of the working class, the media conspires to keep the workers stagnated.

These conditionings are subtle, and without knowing it, individuals live their lives just as it has been scripted by the ruling class. Considering the irrational nature of the human subconscious, experts would say that most, if not all, human actions and inactions are products of the subconscious. Thus, the motivations for human actions are mostly irrational. Having mastered the human subconscious and its predisposition to subtlety, we see ways in which education, the press, advertising, and broadcasting are collaborators in this business of exploitation.

Thus, subtle messages are targeted at the subconscious mind, influencing our perception of ourselves and others in relation to our environment. Hence, without knowing it, diverse forms of mental conditionings and internalizations are going on, down to the excruciating details which we are not aware of. This can also be used to analyze diverse social pathologies, as psychic and social wholeness are products of perceptions, self-assessment, and self-esteem.

Thus, through the dissemination of false ideas, the masses are conditioned to be subservient to the ruling forces. Bear in mind that all power structures employ the services of intellectuals and researchers to evolve these ideas. Hence, equally equipped researchers must be employed in our quest for the emancipation of the masses and the ultimate good.

Having hinted earlier that money is the medium through which the higher power structure exploits weak (or bourgeoisie exploiting the proletariat), we now understand why the ruling class keeps the average man ignorant of the concept of money. Since this is the exclusive reserve of the ruling minority, they keep information – such as the origin of money; the holders of the authority to issue it; the reason it is loses its value; and the predators and preys of the economy - classified.

This system was set up in a series of political conflicts between December 1913 and August 1971, and constitutes the moral fiber of the institution called Paper Money. Just like the medieval serfs, it is important that you, the working class or pensioner remain ignorant. If you understand these things, you would speak out, rebel, and destroy the existing system from 100 to 1. Learning from antecedents, it is necessary for freedom fighters in the 21st century to spread the knowledge of money in order to upturn the modern power structure. This brings to mind the story of a young man in a world enslaved to superstitious beliefs.

At a certain time in his life, this young man dared to challenge the mythical beliefs and ended up being at loggerheads with the authorities. When his life was threatened, he crossed over the boundary where monsters were believed to exist. However, instead of monsters, thick black darkness, and certain death, he actually found sunshine, beauty, and people who had overcame imaginary fears and slavery. He found out that his chains were not real after all, as they are figments of the imagination.

Freedom, therefore, is for the brave, but it comes at a cost. To debunk these myths, we are made to believe certain things about money, and it is incumbent on us to be educated about it. Thus, the first task of this book is to give you the knowledge of money and to protect your freedom and assets from the power structure of today.

INTRODUCTION

In the middle Ages, usury was unethical. Thus, lending money at any interest rate was frowned upon. In the 18th century however, the Industrial Revolution revived the concept. With the development of the science of economics, any transaction between consenting adults was regarded as ethical; lending at an interest inclusive. Thus, if a person consents to an offer, it is believed to be in his interest, and if it was not, he was the best person to safeguard his own interests. Hence, the liberal economists defended usury, with the conclusion that if it was between two consenting adults, then it was most likely in the interest of both parties. Today, no one wants to delay gratification; we want it, and we want it now. Giving a loan means you have to delay gratification, sacrifice your time preference, and it is only right that you should be compensated for it.

The man who borrows, on the other hand, indulges his time preference. He consumes a value which he usually would not earn until later, and it is for this reason he pays back with interest. Interest has become quite important in the exchange of capital, and legalizing it has aided industrial civilization. In the last century however, a system was set up to get rid of interest and take us back to the Middle Ages. Studies show that in the past 84 years, the real interest rate (nominal interest rate - inflation) on safe investments like bills of the United States Treasury has been 0%, yet some economists insist that there is nothing wrong with the present state of affairs. This book is as much a manual as it is a manifesto for those who choose to go with the 19th century American practice of retiring in their old age, and then living off their pent-up savings. It is dedicated to the rebirth of the ‘Rentier’, a term which will be explained later in the book.

Fundamental definitions and facts

This book is pro-liberal in nature that is, in favor of the working class. It is classical because it is pro-gold standard, which guarantees higher wages for the working class and good retirement funds for the elderly. Secondly, paper money was a cause for war, while the gold standard, a force for peace. A gold standard would then advance liberal causes, thus anyone who is for the gold standard has to choose between their conservative alliance and pro-gold conviction, as it was simply impossible to have both. Real American liberalism was in support of hard money and had men like Andrew Jackson, who stated in his message vetoing the central bank that, It is to be regretted that the rich and powerful too often bend the acts of the government to their selfish purposes… Every man is equally entitled to protection by law, but when the laws undertake to add artificial distinction, to grant titles, gratuities, and exclusive privileges to make the rich richer and the potent more powerful, the humble members of society - the farmers, mechanics, arid laborers - who have neither the time nor the means of securing like favors to themselves, have a right to complain of the injustice of their government.

Conversely, the Locofocos insist that ‘the true remedy for the people, which will reduce the price of all the necessaries of life, is that every workingman refuse paper money as payment for his services, or demand specie of the banks for all notes paid to him. By specie, they meant gold or silver.

American liberalism possessed one of the greatest political leaders of all time, Thomas Jefferson, who stated The sum of what has been said is . . . that specie is the most perfect medium, because it will preserve its own level; because by having intrinsic and universal value, it can never die in our hands, and it is the surest resource of reliance in the time of war; that the trifling economy of paper, as a cheaper medium, or its convenience for transmission, weighs nothing in opposition to the advantages of the precious metals that it is liable to be abused, has been, is, and forever will be abused, in every country in which it is permitted. Instead of yielding to the cries of scarcity of medium set up by speculators, projectors, and commercial gamblers, no endeavors should be spared to begin the work of reducing it by such gradual means as it may give time to private fortunes to preserve their poise, and settle down with the subsiding medium.

Unfortunately, the modern Democratic Party has deviated from this noble cause.

HOW REPUBLICANS BECAME PRO-GOLD STANDARD

It's really a strange world where the Republican Party with their initial origin from Northeast with their support of major corporations and banks, would also become the supporter of the gold standard. How was it possible to connect in one party interests of big banks and largest corporations on one side (beneficiaries of the paper money) and average workers (beneficiaries of the gold standard) on another side?

In his book "History of Money and Banking in the United States: The Colonial Era to World II" Murray N. Rothbard wrote:

"The presidential election of 1896 was a great national referendum on the gold standard. The Democratic Party had been captured at its 1896 convention, by the Populist, ultra-inflationist, anti-gold forces, headed by William Jennings Bryan.

The older Democrats, who had been fiercely devoted to hard money and the gold standard, either stayed home on Election Day or voted, for the first time in their lives, for the hated Republicans.

The Republicans had long been the party of prohibition and of greenback inflation and opposition to gold. But since the early 1890s, the Rockefeller forces, dominant in their home state of Ohio and nationally in the Republican Party, had decided to quietly ditch prohibition as a political embarrassment and as a grave deterrent to obtaining votes from the increasingly powerful bloc of German-American voters. In the summer of 1896, anticipating the defeat of the gold forces at the Democratic convention, the Morgans, previously dominant in the Democratic Party, approached the McKinley-Mark Hanna-Rockefeller forces through their rising young satrap, Congressman Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts. Lodge offered the Rockefeller forces a deal:

The Morgans would support McKinley for president and neither sit home nor back a third, Gold Democrat party, provided that McKinley pledged himself to a gold standard. The deal was struck, and many previously hard-money Democrats shifted to the Republicans. The nature of the American political party system was now drastically changed: previously a tightly fought struggle between hard-money, free-trade, laissez-faire Democrats on the one hand, and protectionist, inflationist, and statist Republicans on the other, with the Democrats slowly but surely gaining ascendancy by the early 1890s, was now a party system that would be dominated by the Republicans until the depression election of 1932."

HOW THE MOVEMENT BEGAN

In the year 1933, the gold standard had been abandoned and hard money advocates were reassured by the requirement of a 40% gold backing for the Federal Reserve note, which was later reduced to 25% when this backing requirement got in the way of further expansion. In 1968, however, the 25% requirement was later eliminated when it got in the way of further expansion. Also, after the Bretton Woods System of international gold convertibility interfered with the paper money expansion of 1971-1972, it was abandoned altogether with all the means to pacify the sound money advocates - that in the long haul, the creation of new paper money would be ended just when it was about to take effect.

For a long time, the supporters of sound money were deceived by these long-range measures, and no effective political action was launched. But in 1972, after the abandonment of the Bretton Woods System on August 15, 1971, several movements to restore hard money jump-started. Most prominent among these, were the Committee for Monetary Reform and Education, the National Committee to Legalize Gold and the Committee to Reestablish the Gold Standard.

From its inception in the early 1970’s, the gold standard movement was plagued by the Keynesian belief that the gold standard was a conservative (republican) position. So deep was its impact that some individuals with conservative persuasions about money believed they ought to be pro-gold. This was a grave discredit to the movement, as many of these conservatives actively opposed the gold standard because it conflicted with the interests of their Wall Street and banker friends. Their opposition was more effective coming from within. Events began to climax when a sound money supporter was taken in by this Keynesian myth and believed that he, being a gold advocate, ought to be conservative.

In addition to Henry Hazlitt, a good example of this type was Ludwig von Mises, one of the