Evelyn is correct. Printing money does not inherently lead to anything. Every self-declared (ie, arbitrary) “sovereign” prints money; it’s what is then done about monetary and fiscal policy that determines what happens with the “relative worth” of that money. (It also, of course, matters what the BIS and the other lizard banker asshats do!) I am firmly in the camp of re-figuring out how to trade locally for all the stuff I need - as much as possible - because whatever type of awesome and not lizard-controlled money system is theoretically possible (sans inflation and support for all the really good stuff and all that), here on earth we got a lizard control problem and they be all about the money. Ain’t no money printing happening that they ain’t got their lizard claws into. So, until we get them locked up or buried or off the planet, we gotta get creative on both the money and value fronts.
Was money originally a token of grain? The yen was based on rice and the French slang for monry is ble. Just a hunch.
Now I'd say it's a token of energy. When you pay someone by the hour, you're paying them to do or not do something: the doing is the bit you're paying for.
Fiat currencies are an abstract claim on energy that assumes no limit to that claim. In my opinion if you just print money without it being based on anything of limited amount (like rice) and spend it, you are using imagination to bring into existence physical things, aka magic. If it was based on rice, etc, then printing more would lessen its value.
People who pay millions for a picasso painting are in a power display, showing how they control the energy of millions of other people, who they don't give a shit about. Off with their heads!
I'd also suggest that money, the economy, etc are hyperobjects beyond the ability of anyone to understand, and economists are full of shit. They just say what wetikos want to hear, so they can justify their greed to the scraps of concience they have left. Bit like priests.
You are correct about the grain/money connection. I would suggest reading James C. Scott's Against the Grain and David Graeber's Debt: The First Five Thousand Years together if you want to prove that thesis.
Evelyn, hit the nail on the gangsters head. Why else will the IRS hunt down the last dime from the powerless middle-class, but, allows billion dollar corporations not to pay a penny in taxes.
This is why I like your articles and end up being prolific (feel free to shut me up, btw) - it's because you provoke my brain into working, which is greatly appreciated.
I love this Douglass quote: "Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress."
And of course, the tyrants must've pinned that in big letters to the wall of their dark, smoke-filled Chamber of Conspiring.
This is a real key quote this. And I think since 9-11 they have been pushing this limit consciously further. I have actually thought that this was in fact a hidden part of the reason for 9-11 - see if we can get away with something blatantly obvious without provoking a final revolution. And they did get away with it. In your face obvious controlled demolition, but the big lie worked. No revolution. (in my parallel world story, the divergence in the timeline was because they didn't get away with it - it's a fascinating comparison or what-if question).
Same thinking applies to people in early 2003, when, in London, for example, some 2 million people marched in London against the impending invasion of Iraq - they made some pretty speeches, waved some banners around, but then obediently went back home again, despite having all the numbers necessary to quickly take back control over the entire country, the central bank, city of London and so on. So when they didn't, they essentially told the cabal 'go ahead, go and genocide a million people in Iraq because as you can see, we the people aren't going to stop you. We might go on a march, you know, but you need have no fear of revolution'.
So the cabal took that to heart and have kept pushing that limit. And they are still doing it now. Especially when it comes to almost constant inflation and devaluation of money. Like they do the 'global financial crash' and then convince the people to accept over a decade of restriction of the money supply, which they continue 'because covid' and then 'because Ukraine' (next it will be 'because climate change' or something - they will think of something).
From a certain point of view, perhaps they have exhausted the people both mentally and physically to such a degree that 'all the fight has gone out of them'. I don't know. But it's not good.
I think part of our hope has to be that if we were to form out of the way, self-sufficient, small scale communes they would leave us alone, rather than perceive us as any threat. That way, we could indeed preserve some ancient truth about humanity for the generations which will come after the end of the New World Order phase of human history. Because even if it does last 500 or a thousand years, it will come to an end.
And it will be vitally important for the people who come after to remember the truth about history, and why it happened, and why we did all this and why we resisted. And that we were the good guys. And that we mattered. So they can have an immunity and prevent it from ever happening again.
David Graeber makes the point in different places that the elites live in fear of the people... which makes sense if you think about it... and guess what? We're the people.
Yes - I totally agree and I think I've written about this somewhere from a psychological analysis point of view. It's what I was banging on about when I talked about how 'ostracism' (of that which is a threat to social cohesion) was the norm in ancient human social groups for several hundred thousand years, mainly owing to a reading of Dunbar's number (around 150) which is 'knowing everything there is to know about another person' (maximum 150 people) - then 'to the extent that you know if they are a bad guy or not and should be ostracised' - in other words, the kind of psychological profile that fits the cabal. Meaning that kind of person simply cannot survive in a small social group of 150 people (which has been the size of human communities for all those hundreds of thousands of years - in fact, this is the reason for Dunbar's number being 150 - if humans lived in groups of, say, 300, then Dunbar's number would be 300. Interestingly, I strongly believe this is the real reason for why the Neanderthals went extinct, because their version of this number was so much lower - some estimate only a tenth of what it is for homo sapiens).
So, it was only after the agricultural revolution that bad guys were able to survive without ostracism, because they can hide in larger populations. They use that time wisely, indulging in conspiracies until eventually, around 5,000 years ago, they are able to get into the top positions and stay there. We have been living with the consequences ever since.
So yes - they know what would happen if the people became aware of them - 'the final ostracism' shall we say. So they spend half their time trying to prevent this knowledge. This is a sign of fear and paranoia and explains at least half of everything they ever do.
And this is why it shouldn't be us who are scared of them - once we realise it's they who are scared of us, well, that's not a little psychological empowering, methinks! It's certainly a comfort to cling to, for sure.
I think this is the most succinct, accurate, integrative, clear-eyed assessment of the modern human social predicament I’ve ever read. Evelyn - YOU WIN! I want to meet you or at least chat w you. Can we make that happen? I’m graham btw.
For a while now I’ve been mulling over this whole Dunbar number idea and thinking about how it plays a role in fear-based living for lots of folk (incl me once upon a time). But I’d never integrated this frame w the history of ostracizing of folk for non-normative (“criminal”) behavior and how this type of person who we used to just deal with by kicking them out, they got organized and fucking TOOK OVER! It all fucking makes sense now! You’ve totally blown my mind this morning Evelyn. I mean, that does not happen much anymore for me! I love you!!!
I'm totally flattered! Thank you! And flattery, as they say, will get you everywhere! As for chatting etc. let's start with email. evelyn_brunswick@hotmail.com. I will click the follow button on you as well.
Yeah - Dunbar's number. I think it's really, really telling that the way this number is presented is such an underplaying of its crucial significance for understanding the entirety of human history. It is also (neuro)scientific proof for what we are talking about in terms of anthropology and anarchy. It is, indeed, the 'natural' or 'normal' state for human beings. If bad guys are simply ostracised then there are no bad guys in the social group, so no real need for hierarchies and laws and so on, because everyone just naturally cooperates. It's an evolutionary benefit for a social animal, and quite simple and brilliant.
Notice also they really, really don't want people to understand neuroscience either! (or psychology, obviously - these things should be on the school curriculum - it would give people an immunity to the cabal's deceptions). With ostracism, after all, everyone who remains in the group is by definition a 'good guy' who will happily get along with everyone else. So in a way, we are kind of taking about the Eden story - which is then destroyed by a bad guy pretending to be a god, and ruling through fear. The snake was a symbol of wisdom in the ancient world - wisdom is eating the apple and seeing through the demon's deceptions. So in a way, that story 'begins' around that 5,000 years ago time that I mentioned, and is a kind of allegory.
But yeah - I am really, really happy you got what I was trying to say because I've been trying to encapsulate all of this for a while now - once you get it, everything falls into place and becomes so very easy to understand - not just history, but the present. Now all we need to do is persuade everyone to eat that apple! Easier said than done, though...
I don’t think this bullshit they’re trying to pull off is gonna last more than 20 or 30yrs tops. It’s just not a workable system. They don’t have even the most basic tech needed to pull it off and they don’t have the manpower. It’s gonna be messy; the great unraveling has begun.
I think that civilization is collapsing... whenever I encounter someone's who worried about CBDCs, I ask them if they realize that the success of CBDCs depends upon eliminating money-laundering on a global scale.
Yes. And CBDCs also rely on humans not trading for shit or making face to face deals with each other … and on tech that does not work … and on reliable electricity.
This is a very good point, actually - in order to regulate every single trade, meaning a small community bartering with the neighbour community, they would have to use brute force. That requires a lot of people, and by being so overtly totalitarian, they reveal themselves/their true nature, which motivates a lot more people to resist, because they finally see their 'rulers' for the bad guys they really are - and that can't be unlearned.
So that, in fact, is an amazingly hopeful insight because it means that the more little self-sufficient communes we can create the more likely it is for them to be forced to reveal themselves. And making a small commune is still something we can do. Organising some large scale resistance isn't going to work without the people seeing the rulers for what they really are - at the moment they would rather continue believing they're 'not that bad really and anyone who says they are is a silly conspiracy theorist'.
So yes, this is a really positive thing that we can do and it provides a real sense of purpose, meaning, and empowerment. So I think that's vitally important. And nature will love us for it too!
Exactly. I got your email and will send you a proper note tomorrow. I’m in california - for the moment. We are in the process of relocating. And as we’ve been commenting elsewhere here, it is spring and thus I am so very busy on so very many fronts!
As you are probably aware, I hate Marx. I think he was what we would now call a 'cognitive infiltrator' - i.e. an agent of the very people (bankers and industrialists) responsible for everyone's woes and exploitation and oppression and so on. Marx's intention, then, was two-fold - 1/ take possession of 'genuine socialism' and twist its definition to something else (totalitarian 'communism') whilst destroying the genuine socialist thinkers, and 2/ misdirect workers' anger at the wrong target.
Thus, Marx presented as a 'structuralist' - which removes human agency from consideration. To put it more accurately, Marx's entire argument boils down to 'because capitalism'. This is one of those examples of 'the big lie'. Because this presupposes that 'capitalism' (or any 'system') is some kind of conscious, decision-making, intelligent agent. As if it's some rogue AI or something. I call BS on this one.
Example: if 'capitalism' was responsible for setting 'wages' (as measured per hour of work, say), then there would be zero purpose in people striking for higher pay. It's not 'capitalism' which sets their wages, it's the factory owner. In the same way it's not 'the system' which sets the value of the currency unit (measured against a good or service) it's the people who own the money supply (the banks - which Marx conspicuously avoids mentioning) - again, it's not actually 'the bank' which does this - because a 'bank' is not a conscious entity capable of making a decision. Same goes for 'the commodities market' or 'the stock exchange' or whatever. It's the conscious decision-making people within the bank or the markets.
Marx really, really doesn't want people to realise this - because as soon as people do realise it, the solution becomes blindingly obvious - remove those exploitative people from 'the bank' and replace them with benevolent people. By citing 'capitalism' Marx is misdirecting anger at 'business owners' - but most small business owners are entirely at the mercy of the bankers who set the currency value - a good businessman would pay the workers well and treat them well and produce good quality stuff at an affordable price. It's the machinations of the bankers and the commodities market people who prevent them from doing this.
Here's the really good quote from the article: "The concept [theory of value] makes much better sense if one bears in mind that Marx’s theory of value was not meant to be a theory of prices. Marx was not particularly interested in coming up with a model that would predict price fluctuations, understand pricing mechanisms, and so on…Therefore, he by no means assumed that price paid for something was an accurate reflection of its worth."
See? He really, really doesn't want you to think about how important 'price' actually is - let alone 'who decides the price?'. Because that, ultimately, is the most crucial point. Marx consistently stops at this stage and doesn't take his argument to its logical conclusion. Instead, his final point is always 'because capitalism'. As if that settles it! Ironically it's like your recent article about science - equivalent example would be 'because the big bang'. Whenever so-called scientists (Einstein, Bohr and so on) run into some difficulty they arbitrarily add some 'constant' or whatever mechanism is necessary to make the equations add up ('renormalisation' it's called). Marx follows the same deceit.
This is why today so-called 'economists' studiously avoid talking about 'human agency' in economics. Instead they have to come up with ever more absurd, and deliberately obscure and complicated 'theories' to explain this or that 'economic mechanism'. Because if the people were ever to realise what a massive scam the whole thing is, designed solely to maintain social control, then sheer weight of numbers would ensure the success of the revolution.
Maybe to help with my scything I should commission someone to make me a thousand little busts of Marx's head*, maybe the size of a golf ball, then position them in a grid all over the garden, so each time I scythe...
*Versions other than Marx also available; contents may not match the description on the outer packaging. No refunds.
Love you more and more! I myself have 10 acres, about 1 to 2 of which with I’m doing anything productive. And yes indeed for all of us working in the dirt this time of year is insanely busy. In the best way! I’m so happy it’s not winter anymore! I’m weed-whacking and pulling out endless brush and digging and fixing irrigation and fence-mending and creating hugel permaculture piles and turning my dirt piles. And then taking breaks to check substack.
We are delighted it's not winter - this year was really difficult because we nearly ran out of wood. But nature always supplies (if you love her) - storm happened, tree falls down, I came, I sawed, I warmed up a bit!
At this time of year pretty much as soon as I've scythed once, it's time to go back to the beginning again. It's like the Forth Bridge!
But yes, I love it, really. Because it's real. Good exercise too. And it all tastes delicious at the end of it...
I'm not sure we could cope with 10 acres though. Maybe 1-2 like you say before we'd need extra help. Half an acre is ok for the two of us though. And we've also discovered half a dozen new hazels sprung up - I always wanted nuts!
Also - Yes yes yes. With all of what I’ve taken to calling “spigot systems” (utilities, water, money, and even increasingly just basic access to information), he who controls the spigots (or points of ingress/egress for some of these systems - like transportation or education or the internet) controls the “price” (or what they pretend is “value”). It’s like everything that should or could be a public good has been privatized. The lizard banker class have externalized nearly all primary costs and internalized maximum profit for themselves.
Totally agree about privatization - it's about control over resources of course. And then artificially restricting their availability. I forgot to mention that I call it the 'musical chairs' version of economics. They do it with money (private banks) as well as with privatised control over commodities. In other words they control the chair manufacturing company, and they always make sure there aren't enough chairs for everybody, with predictable social and psychological consequences. Plus it gives them an excuse to put the price up because of their fraudulent supply-demand-price curve. It's why they do their other lie 'increased demand leads to inflation' - only if there aren't enough chairs! They calculate the price of one chair according to how many people need chairs - but it still costs exactly the same to make the chair regardless of how many people want chairs!
Everyone should be taught this kind of basic economics - then it would be much more difficult for them to pull off this scam. A basic socialist system would, of course, simply solve the problem by making sure everyone has a chair to sit on. They could then let private companies compete to make 'nicer' chairs, so people have a choice. But make sure people have enough money to make that choice.
This is a great post with an accurate summation of Marx's labor theory of value. Takes some time and thought to be able to really understand it, but it's held up for over 160 years in spite of all of the capitalist attacks on it and misinformation about it.
I am no economist, but fiat currency only works so long as that currency is backed by faith and stability. If people don't believe currency has value, then it doesn't, simple as that. The German government printed money out the yazoo in the 1920s, but the mark wasn't the global reserve currency, Germany had nothing to back it, and they got hyperinflation.
The dollar is the global reserve currency now, but that's changing swiftly because the criminals who run the US Empire used the dollar's status as a weapon, and seized foreign assets which had been entrusted to it in good faith. That faith is now breached, and over the next few years a new global reserve currency will arise.
But modern monetary theory will save us, some cry. I don't think so, mainly because it sounds WAY too good to be true, and partly by not knowing exactly whom would be in charge of applying the untested theory.
I think money has to have some intrinsic value, something substantial to back it up, like gold or oil or wheat or, in Haiti's case, iridium. Otherwise, it's faith-based and dependent on the bubbles of the financial markets, which do have a tendency to burst.
We just moved back into our house from a hotel yesterday because our basement flooded last week, and I completely missed your mention, so thanks in advance!
This bit I think I do agree with: "Ricardo argued that the value of a commodity in a market system can be calculated in terms of the “man-hours” that went into making it, and therefore it should be theoretically possible to calculate precisely how many people worked how long in the process of making it (and, presumably, making the raw materials, shipping them from place to place, and so on.)"
Especially the 'theoretically possible' - because it does come down to a kind of mathematical equation, because we are dealing with a real-world physical/biological linear time system which can be described by numbers. E.g. We can calculate the number of calories, say, required to perform a given task, then we calculate how many calories in this or that unit of food. Obviously, this ends up with an almost dystopian technocracy, so on second thoughts let's ditch that. Besides, if the value of everything becomes permanently fixed according to some number, then there is no longer a need for 'money' as a token of value, but only as a 'token of exchange'.
Of course, we then have Graeber: "As a first approximation then, one might say that the value a given product—or, for that matter, institution—has is the proportion of a society’s creative energy it sinks into producing and maintaining it. If an objective measure is possible, it would have to be something like this. But obviously this can never be a precise measure. “Creative energies,” however they’re defined, are not the sort of thing that can be quantified."
I think Graeber is wrong here - but only on a scientific level;- I sense a kind of emotional, or aesthetic sensibility in his objection about creative energies not being able to be quantified. One could, for example, ask Picasso how many man-hours it took him to paint the picture and pay him according to the standard rate for labour. Graeber's objection is a very human one - because humans 'aesthetically value' some things above and beyond what their intrinsic physical value is (e.g. a piece of canvas with some paint on it) - and different people have different tastes, shall we say, the possibility of arbitrarily fixing value does, indeed, break down at a level beyond that of simple necessities.
However - I would then argue that if we set a kind of maximum to the number of currency units someone can have such that the richest person can have no more than 1000 times the poorest (with that poorest person at least having the necessary minimum for survival, say), then the price of your Picasso can never exceed 1000 times the cost of living, because if you priced it at 1001 then no one would have enough credits to buy it. So the seller has to reduce the price.
This is, in a way, the principle of supply and demand, as related to 'currency'. So in this sense it's not necessarily the lowest amount of credits people have that determines 'inflation' but the lack of an upper limit. In an ideal society you would have this upper limit, but at the same time you would provide every single person with the opportunity to reach that upper limit, if they have the talent, effort and so on - that way we can value 'the aesthetic' in an arbitrary and very human way, whilst at the same time the necessities of life are mathematically fixed and affordable for everyone. I think this is what I mean by 'liberal socialism'.
So yeah, I think I can agree with both Ricardo and Graeber there - but cleverly, we have 'one system for the necessities' and 'a second system for the luxuries'.
First - sorry for not replying earlier - this time of year is a constant gardening exercise!
Which is ironically relevant to the discussion. I am suspecting we may kind of be on the same page here, Crow. And you have definitely focussed on the ideas I was trying to get across, specifically with regards to a hypothetical system in which we can 'arbitrarily fix the value of a currency unit' - by setting it against a given amount of 'stuff'.
So it's the 'choice' of that 'stuff' which is key here.
I've read in some of the comments about using not necessarily 'labour' but 'energy' as the marker of value. This also makes sense to me - it is plainly evident, after all, that a human being (let's take some arbitrary average for the sake of argument) has a 'finite capacity' per 'unit of time'. My gardening example is a good one. We have about half an acre here, which especially at this time of year requires a fair amount of work. I use a scythe (highly recommended) to keep the grass down - I could definitely scythe the entire half acre in a single day (with rest breaks!) and cook meals and such like. Let's call that my capacity. What happens next however, in terms of the mathematical calculation from which the currency unit will be derived is entirely arbitrary. Are we setting the number of currency units for my day's work at 1? 10? 100? 1000? The reason the number is arbitrary is because the value of absolutely everything else is a corresponding match, mathematically speaking. So if we were to suddenly reset the value of my hourly work from, say 10 currency units, to 100 currency units, then the price of everything else would have to be increased accordingly by adding a zero on to the end. So, for example, if a car is valued at 20,000 today, it would have to be 200,000 tomorrow.
When we go down this route of thinking, the key point is that the 'numbers' we assign to 'currency unit' are arbitrary - and this means the most important consideration is simply 'who decides what that number is'? At the moment, this number is set by the cabal (I think someone mentioned the BIS - that's what I'm talking about here) - what if we hypothesised a society in which that number was set by people like us? I mean decent people who believe in, say, on the most basic level, fairness and egalitarianism and 'freedom from being controlled or ripped off by parasite bankers and the like'. Or employers too, for that matter.
If we're getting into what might loosely be called 'socialism', here, then perhaps we could arbitrarily set the value of the currency as equivalent to say '10 currency units per hour of work' - but here's the thing - whatever kind of work that might be. So it's the same for a gardener as it is for a high-powered lawyer or CEO. We could then maybe increase this according to a fixed system of increases (e.g. annual pay rises). Alternatively, we could all agree on the value of 'labour per hour' for each different kind of activity. I mean, I would argue that my gardening has more intrinsic value than some banker making people poor every day. Mind you that goes without saying. But why does, say, an actor or a magistrate or whatever get more than an anarchist philosopher with a scythe? It's entirely arbitrary.
And it all depends on the character of the ones with the power to decide the value of the currency. Bad people use it for subjugation. Good people would use it for liberation.
There is so much more to take from your great article - there are lots of great quotes in there, so bear with me and I'll be back a bit later. Like I said - gardening...
We meant to say, thanks Crow for this post, but ran off to have some tucker. We cannot believe economic forms are not more widely discussed today, esp in anarchist circles. Graeber said something like, 'Money is the economy for strangers and enemies,' in his book Debt. We get it, use it when there's no trust between people. But why live our whole economic realm within this economic form when we can live mostly within ta flow of gifts economy? Yes to Bitcoin over fiat, but gifts are wilder!
Evelyn is correct. Printing money does not inherently lead to anything. Every self-declared (ie, arbitrary) “sovereign” prints money; it’s what is then done about monetary and fiscal policy that determines what happens with the “relative worth” of that money. (It also, of course, matters what the BIS and the other lizard banker asshats do!) I am firmly in the camp of re-figuring out how to trade locally for all the stuff I need - as much as possible - because whatever type of awesome and not lizard-controlled money system is theoretically possible (sans inflation and support for all the really good stuff and all that), here on earth we got a lizard control problem and they be all about the money. Ain’t no money printing happening that they ain’t got their lizard claws into. So, until we get them locked up or buried or off the planet, we gotta get creative on both the money and value fronts.
Was money originally a token of grain? The yen was based on rice and the French slang for monry is ble. Just a hunch.
Now I'd say it's a token of energy. When you pay someone by the hour, you're paying them to do or not do something: the doing is the bit you're paying for.
Fiat currencies are an abstract claim on energy that assumes no limit to that claim. In my opinion if you just print money without it being based on anything of limited amount (like rice) and spend it, you are using imagination to bring into existence physical things, aka magic. If it was based on rice, etc, then printing more would lessen its value.
People who pay millions for a picasso painting are in a power display, showing how they control the energy of millions of other people, who they don't give a shit about. Off with their heads!
I'd also suggest that money, the economy, etc are hyperobjects beyond the ability of anyone to understand, and economists are full of shit. They just say what wetikos want to hear, so they can justify their greed to the scraps of concience they have left. Bit like priests.
You are correct about the grain/money connection. I would suggest reading James C. Scott's Against the Grain and David Graeber's Debt: The First Five Thousand Years together if you want to prove that thesis.
Money was invented so that people could pay tax.
https://nevermoremedia.substack.com/p/who-makes-a-better-villain-the-farmer
I think you are right about all of the above. Love the term "hyperobjects." Excellent description.
I don't think time is money.
I think that energy is money.
You expend energy when you work, so they are paying you for your energy.
Those who expend energy wisely get pay raises.
Socialists/Marxists/Communists don't want your time, they want your energy.
They want to make you slaves.
money is certainly one form of directing energy, but it is no means the only one.
Could I ask you to define money in a more specific way?
Evelyn, hit the nail on the gangsters head. Why else will the IRS hunt down the last dime from the powerless middle-class, but, allows billion dollar corporations not to pay a penny in taxes.
https://www.americanprogress.org/article/these-19-fortune-100-companies-paid-next-to-nothing-or-nothing-at-all-in-taxes-in-2021/
This is why I like your articles and end up being prolific (feel free to shut me up, btw) - it's because you provoke my brain into working, which is greatly appreciated.
I love this Douglass quote: "Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress."
And of course, the tyrants must've pinned that in big letters to the wall of their dark, smoke-filled Chamber of Conspiring.
This is a real key quote this. And I think since 9-11 they have been pushing this limit consciously further. I have actually thought that this was in fact a hidden part of the reason for 9-11 - see if we can get away with something blatantly obvious without provoking a final revolution. And they did get away with it. In your face obvious controlled demolition, but the big lie worked. No revolution. (in my parallel world story, the divergence in the timeline was because they didn't get away with it - it's a fascinating comparison or what-if question).
Same thinking applies to people in early 2003, when, in London, for example, some 2 million people marched in London against the impending invasion of Iraq - they made some pretty speeches, waved some banners around, but then obediently went back home again, despite having all the numbers necessary to quickly take back control over the entire country, the central bank, city of London and so on. So when they didn't, they essentially told the cabal 'go ahead, go and genocide a million people in Iraq because as you can see, we the people aren't going to stop you. We might go on a march, you know, but you need have no fear of revolution'.
So the cabal took that to heart and have kept pushing that limit. And they are still doing it now. Especially when it comes to almost constant inflation and devaluation of money. Like they do the 'global financial crash' and then convince the people to accept over a decade of restriction of the money supply, which they continue 'because covid' and then 'because Ukraine' (next it will be 'because climate change' or something - they will think of something).
From a certain point of view, perhaps they have exhausted the people both mentally and physically to such a degree that 'all the fight has gone out of them'. I don't know. But it's not good.
I think part of our hope has to be that if we were to form out of the way, self-sufficient, small scale communes they would leave us alone, rather than perceive us as any threat. That way, we could indeed preserve some ancient truth about humanity for the generations which will come after the end of the New World Order phase of human history. Because even if it does last 500 or a thousand years, it will come to an end.
And it will be vitally important for the people who come after to remember the truth about history, and why it happened, and why we did all this and why we resisted. And that we were the good guys. And that we mattered. So they can have an immunity and prevent it from ever happening again.
David Graeber makes the point in different places that the elites live in fear of the people... which makes sense if you think about it... and guess what? We're the people.
Yes - I totally agree and I think I've written about this somewhere from a psychological analysis point of view. It's what I was banging on about when I talked about how 'ostracism' (of that which is a threat to social cohesion) was the norm in ancient human social groups for several hundred thousand years, mainly owing to a reading of Dunbar's number (around 150) which is 'knowing everything there is to know about another person' (maximum 150 people) - then 'to the extent that you know if they are a bad guy or not and should be ostracised' - in other words, the kind of psychological profile that fits the cabal. Meaning that kind of person simply cannot survive in a small social group of 150 people (which has been the size of human communities for all those hundreds of thousands of years - in fact, this is the reason for Dunbar's number being 150 - if humans lived in groups of, say, 300, then Dunbar's number would be 300. Interestingly, I strongly believe this is the real reason for why the Neanderthals went extinct, because their version of this number was so much lower - some estimate only a tenth of what it is for homo sapiens).
So, it was only after the agricultural revolution that bad guys were able to survive without ostracism, because they can hide in larger populations. They use that time wisely, indulging in conspiracies until eventually, around 5,000 years ago, they are able to get into the top positions and stay there. We have been living with the consequences ever since.
So yes - they know what would happen if the people became aware of them - 'the final ostracism' shall we say. So they spend half their time trying to prevent this knowledge. This is a sign of fear and paranoia and explains at least half of everything they ever do.
And this is why it shouldn't be us who are scared of them - once we realise it's they who are scared of us, well, that's not a little psychological empowering, methinks! It's certainly a comfort to cling to, for sure.
I think this is the most succinct, accurate, integrative, clear-eyed assessment of the modern human social predicament I’ve ever read. Evelyn - YOU WIN! I want to meet you or at least chat w you. Can we make that happen? I’m graham btw.
For a while now I’ve been mulling over this whole Dunbar number idea and thinking about how it plays a role in fear-based living for lots of folk (incl me once upon a time). But I’d never integrated this frame w the history of ostracizing of folk for non-normative (“criminal”) behavior and how this type of person who we used to just deal with by kicking them out, they got organized and fucking TOOK OVER! It all fucking makes sense now! You’ve totally blown my mind this morning Evelyn. I mean, that does not happen much anymore for me! I love you!!!
I'm totally flattered! Thank you! And flattery, as they say, will get you everywhere! As for chatting etc. let's start with email. evelyn_brunswick@hotmail.com. I will click the follow button on you as well.
Yeah - Dunbar's number. I think it's really, really telling that the way this number is presented is such an underplaying of its crucial significance for understanding the entirety of human history. It is also (neuro)scientific proof for what we are talking about in terms of anthropology and anarchy. It is, indeed, the 'natural' or 'normal' state for human beings. If bad guys are simply ostracised then there are no bad guys in the social group, so no real need for hierarchies and laws and so on, because everyone just naturally cooperates. It's an evolutionary benefit for a social animal, and quite simple and brilliant.
Notice also they really, really don't want people to understand neuroscience either! (or psychology, obviously - these things should be on the school curriculum - it would give people an immunity to the cabal's deceptions). With ostracism, after all, everyone who remains in the group is by definition a 'good guy' who will happily get along with everyone else. So in a way, we are kind of taking about the Eden story - which is then destroyed by a bad guy pretending to be a god, and ruling through fear. The snake was a symbol of wisdom in the ancient world - wisdom is eating the apple and seeing through the demon's deceptions. So in a way, that story 'begins' around that 5,000 years ago time that I mentioned, and is a kind of allegory.
But yeah - I am really, really happy you got what I was trying to say because I've been trying to encapsulate all of this for a while now - once you get it, everything falls into place and becomes so very easy to understand - not just history, but the present. Now all we need to do is persuade everyone to eat that apple! Easier said than done, though...
They live IN FEAR. Period. Full stop.
They live in a fear-based mind
I don’t think this bullshit they’re trying to pull off is gonna last more than 20 or 30yrs tops. It’s just not a workable system. They don’t have even the most basic tech needed to pull it off and they don’t have the manpower. It’s gonna be messy; the great unraveling has begun.
I think that civilization is collapsing... whenever I encounter someone's who worried about CBDCs, I ask them if they realize that the success of CBDCs depends upon eliminating money-laundering on a global scale.
Give criminals some credit, please.
Yes. And CBDCs also rely on humans not trading for shit or making face to face deals with each other … and on tech that does not work … and on reliable electricity.
This is a very good point, actually - in order to regulate every single trade, meaning a small community bartering with the neighbour community, they would have to use brute force. That requires a lot of people, and by being so overtly totalitarian, they reveal themselves/their true nature, which motivates a lot more people to resist, because they finally see their 'rulers' for the bad guys they really are - and that can't be unlearned.
So that, in fact, is an amazingly hopeful insight because it means that the more little self-sufficient communes we can create the more likely it is for them to be forced to reveal themselves. And making a small commune is still something we can do. Organising some large scale resistance isn't going to work without the people seeing the rulers for what they really are - at the moment they would rather continue believing they're 'not that bad really and anyone who says they are is a silly conspiracy theorist'.
So yes, this is a really positive thing that we can do and it provides a real sense of purpose, meaning, and empowerment. So I think that's vitally important. And nature will love us for it too!
Great little comment that one!
Exactly. I got your email and will send you a proper note tomorrow. I’m in california - for the moment. We are in the process of relocating. And as we’ve been commenting elsewhere here, it is spring and thus I am so very busy on so very many fronts!
Gardening break!
As you are probably aware, I hate Marx. I think he was what we would now call a 'cognitive infiltrator' - i.e. an agent of the very people (bankers and industrialists) responsible for everyone's woes and exploitation and oppression and so on. Marx's intention, then, was two-fold - 1/ take possession of 'genuine socialism' and twist its definition to something else (totalitarian 'communism') whilst destroying the genuine socialist thinkers, and 2/ misdirect workers' anger at the wrong target.
Thus, Marx presented as a 'structuralist' - which removes human agency from consideration. To put it more accurately, Marx's entire argument boils down to 'because capitalism'. This is one of those examples of 'the big lie'. Because this presupposes that 'capitalism' (or any 'system') is some kind of conscious, decision-making, intelligent agent. As if it's some rogue AI or something. I call BS on this one.
Example: if 'capitalism' was responsible for setting 'wages' (as measured per hour of work, say), then there would be zero purpose in people striking for higher pay. It's not 'capitalism' which sets their wages, it's the factory owner. In the same way it's not 'the system' which sets the value of the currency unit (measured against a good or service) it's the people who own the money supply (the banks - which Marx conspicuously avoids mentioning) - again, it's not actually 'the bank' which does this - because a 'bank' is not a conscious entity capable of making a decision. Same goes for 'the commodities market' or 'the stock exchange' or whatever. It's the conscious decision-making people within the bank or the markets.
Marx really, really doesn't want people to realise this - because as soon as people do realise it, the solution becomes blindingly obvious - remove those exploitative people from 'the bank' and replace them with benevolent people. By citing 'capitalism' Marx is misdirecting anger at 'business owners' - but most small business owners are entirely at the mercy of the bankers who set the currency value - a good businessman would pay the workers well and treat them well and produce good quality stuff at an affordable price. It's the machinations of the bankers and the commodities market people who prevent them from doing this.
Here's the really good quote from the article: "The concept [theory of value] makes much better sense if one bears in mind that Marx’s theory of value was not meant to be a theory of prices. Marx was not particularly interested in coming up with a model that would predict price fluctuations, understand pricing mechanisms, and so on…Therefore, he by no means assumed that price paid for something was an accurate reflection of its worth."
See? He really, really doesn't want you to think about how important 'price' actually is - let alone 'who decides the price?'. Because that, ultimately, is the most crucial point. Marx consistently stops at this stage and doesn't take his argument to its logical conclusion. Instead, his final point is always 'because capitalism'. As if that settles it! Ironically it's like your recent article about science - equivalent example would be 'because the big bang'. Whenever so-called scientists (Einstein, Bohr and so on) run into some difficulty they arbitrarily add some 'constant' or whatever mechanism is necessary to make the equations add up ('renormalisation' it's called). Marx follows the same deceit.
This is why today so-called 'economists' studiously avoid talking about 'human agency' in economics. Instead they have to come up with ever more absurd, and deliberately obscure and complicated 'theories' to explain this or that 'economic mechanism'. Because if the people were ever to realise what a massive scam the whole thing is, designed solely to maintain social control, then sheer weight of numbers would ensure the success of the revolution.
Maybe to help with my scything I should commission someone to make me a thousand little busts of Marx's head*, maybe the size of a golf ball, then position them in a grid all over the garden, so each time I scythe...
*Versions other than Marx also available; contents may not match the description on the outer packaging. No refunds.
Love you more and more! I myself have 10 acres, about 1 to 2 of which with I’m doing anything productive. And yes indeed for all of us working in the dirt this time of year is insanely busy. In the best way! I’m so happy it’s not winter anymore! I’m weed-whacking and pulling out endless brush and digging and fixing irrigation and fence-mending and creating hugel permaculture piles and turning my dirt piles. And then taking breaks to check substack.
We are delighted it's not winter - this year was really difficult because we nearly ran out of wood. But nature always supplies (if you love her) - storm happened, tree falls down, I came, I sawed, I warmed up a bit!
At this time of year pretty much as soon as I've scythed once, it's time to go back to the beginning again. It's like the Forth Bridge!
But yes, I love it, really. Because it's real. Good exercise too. And it all tastes delicious at the end of it...
I'm not sure we could cope with 10 acres though. Maybe 1-2 like you say before we'd need extra help. Half an acre is ok for the two of us though. And we've also discovered half a dozen new hazels sprung up - I always wanted nuts!
Also - Yes yes yes. With all of what I’ve taken to calling “spigot systems” (utilities, water, money, and even increasingly just basic access to information), he who controls the spigots (or points of ingress/egress for some of these systems - like transportation or education or the internet) controls the “price” (or what they pretend is “value”). It’s like everything that should or could be a public good has been privatized. The lizard banker class have externalized nearly all primary costs and internalized maximum profit for themselves.
Totally agree about privatization - it's about control over resources of course. And then artificially restricting their availability. I forgot to mention that I call it the 'musical chairs' version of economics. They do it with money (private banks) as well as with privatised control over commodities. In other words they control the chair manufacturing company, and they always make sure there aren't enough chairs for everybody, with predictable social and psychological consequences. Plus it gives them an excuse to put the price up because of their fraudulent supply-demand-price curve. It's why they do their other lie 'increased demand leads to inflation' - only if there aren't enough chairs! They calculate the price of one chair according to how many people need chairs - but it still costs exactly the same to make the chair regardless of how many people want chairs!
Everyone should be taught this kind of basic economics - then it would be much more difficult for them to pull off this scam. A basic socialist system would, of course, simply solve the problem by making sure everyone has a chair to sit on. They could then let private companies compete to make 'nicer' chairs, so people have a choice. But make sure people have enough money to make that choice.
This is a great post with an accurate summation of Marx's labor theory of value. Takes some time and thought to be able to really understand it, but it's held up for over 160 years in spite of all of the capitalist attacks on it and misinformation about it.
I am no economist, but fiat currency only works so long as that currency is backed by faith and stability. If people don't believe currency has value, then it doesn't, simple as that. The German government printed money out the yazoo in the 1920s, but the mark wasn't the global reserve currency, Germany had nothing to back it, and they got hyperinflation.
The dollar is the global reserve currency now, but that's changing swiftly because the criminals who run the US Empire used the dollar's status as a weapon, and seized foreign assets which had been entrusted to it in good faith. That faith is now breached, and over the next few years a new global reserve currency will arise.
But modern monetary theory will save us, some cry. I don't think so, mainly because it sounds WAY too good to be true, and partly by not knowing exactly whom would be in charge of applying the untested theory.
I think money has to have some intrinsic value, something substantial to back it up, like gold or oil or wheat or, in Haiti's case, iridium. Otherwise, it's faith-based and dependent on the bubbles of the financial markets, which do have a tendency to burst.
I'm glad you approve! When you didn't respond to my Reader Appreciation Post about you I thought I might have offended you.
We just moved back into our house from a hotel yesterday because our basement flooded last week, and I completely missed your mention, so thanks in advance!
Check it out here: https://nevermoremedia.substack.com/p/mafia-capitalism-101
Can you explain what you refer to as "modern monetary theory"?
This bit I think I do agree with: "Ricardo argued that the value of a commodity in a market system can be calculated in terms of the “man-hours” that went into making it, and therefore it should be theoretically possible to calculate precisely how many people worked how long in the process of making it (and, presumably, making the raw materials, shipping them from place to place, and so on.)"
Especially the 'theoretically possible' - because it does come down to a kind of mathematical equation, because we are dealing with a real-world physical/biological linear time system which can be described by numbers. E.g. We can calculate the number of calories, say, required to perform a given task, then we calculate how many calories in this or that unit of food. Obviously, this ends up with an almost dystopian technocracy, so on second thoughts let's ditch that. Besides, if the value of everything becomes permanently fixed according to some number, then there is no longer a need for 'money' as a token of value, but only as a 'token of exchange'.
Of course, we then have Graeber: "As a first approximation then, one might say that the value a given product—or, for that matter, institution—has is the proportion of a society’s creative energy it sinks into producing and maintaining it. If an objective measure is possible, it would have to be something like this. But obviously this can never be a precise measure. “Creative energies,” however they’re defined, are not the sort of thing that can be quantified."
I think Graeber is wrong here - but only on a scientific level;- I sense a kind of emotional, or aesthetic sensibility in his objection about creative energies not being able to be quantified. One could, for example, ask Picasso how many man-hours it took him to paint the picture and pay him according to the standard rate for labour. Graeber's objection is a very human one - because humans 'aesthetically value' some things above and beyond what their intrinsic physical value is (e.g. a piece of canvas with some paint on it) - and different people have different tastes, shall we say, the possibility of arbitrarily fixing value does, indeed, break down at a level beyond that of simple necessities.
However - I would then argue that if we set a kind of maximum to the number of currency units someone can have such that the richest person can have no more than 1000 times the poorest (with that poorest person at least having the necessary minimum for survival, say), then the price of your Picasso can never exceed 1000 times the cost of living, because if you priced it at 1001 then no one would have enough credits to buy it. So the seller has to reduce the price.
This is, in a way, the principle of supply and demand, as related to 'currency'. So in this sense it's not necessarily the lowest amount of credits people have that determines 'inflation' but the lack of an upper limit. In an ideal society you would have this upper limit, but at the same time you would provide every single person with the opportunity to reach that upper limit, if they have the talent, effort and so on - that way we can value 'the aesthetic' in an arbitrary and very human way, whilst at the same time the necessities of life are mathematically fixed and affordable for everyone. I think this is what I mean by 'liberal socialism'.
So yeah, I think I can agree with both Ricardo and Graeber there - but cleverly, we have 'one system for the necessities' and 'a second system for the luxuries'.
Hmm... I think I'm getting somewhere here.
First - sorry for not replying earlier - this time of year is a constant gardening exercise!
Which is ironically relevant to the discussion. I am suspecting we may kind of be on the same page here, Crow. And you have definitely focussed on the ideas I was trying to get across, specifically with regards to a hypothetical system in which we can 'arbitrarily fix the value of a currency unit' - by setting it against a given amount of 'stuff'.
So it's the 'choice' of that 'stuff' which is key here.
I've read in some of the comments about using not necessarily 'labour' but 'energy' as the marker of value. This also makes sense to me - it is plainly evident, after all, that a human being (let's take some arbitrary average for the sake of argument) has a 'finite capacity' per 'unit of time'. My gardening example is a good one. We have about half an acre here, which especially at this time of year requires a fair amount of work. I use a scythe (highly recommended) to keep the grass down - I could definitely scythe the entire half acre in a single day (with rest breaks!) and cook meals and such like. Let's call that my capacity. What happens next however, in terms of the mathematical calculation from which the currency unit will be derived is entirely arbitrary. Are we setting the number of currency units for my day's work at 1? 10? 100? 1000? The reason the number is arbitrary is because the value of absolutely everything else is a corresponding match, mathematically speaking. So if we were to suddenly reset the value of my hourly work from, say 10 currency units, to 100 currency units, then the price of everything else would have to be increased accordingly by adding a zero on to the end. So, for example, if a car is valued at 20,000 today, it would have to be 200,000 tomorrow.
When we go down this route of thinking, the key point is that the 'numbers' we assign to 'currency unit' are arbitrary - and this means the most important consideration is simply 'who decides what that number is'? At the moment, this number is set by the cabal (I think someone mentioned the BIS - that's what I'm talking about here) - what if we hypothesised a society in which that number was set by people like us? I mean decent people who believe in, say, on the most basic level, fairness and egalitarianism and 'freedom from being controlled or ripped off by parasite bankers and the like'. Or employers too, for that matter.
If we're getting into what might loosely be called 'socialism', here, then perhaps we could arbitrarily set the value of the currency as equivalent to say '10 currency units per hour of work' - but here's the thing - whatever kind of work that might be. So it's the same for a gardener as it is for a high-powered lawyer or CEO. We could then maybe increase this according to a fixed system of increases (e.g. annual pay rises). Alternatively, we could all agree on the value of 'labour per hour' for each different kind of activity. I mean, I would argue that my gardening has more intrinsic value than some banker making people poor every day. Mind you that goes without saying. But why does, say, an actor or a magistrate or whatever get more than an anarchist philosopher with a scythe? It's entirely arbitrary.
And it all depends on the character of the ones with the power to decide the value of the currency. Bad people use it for subjugation. Good people would use it for liberation.
There is so much more to take from your great article - there are lots of great quotes in there, so bear with me and I'll be back a bit later. Like I said - gardening...
100% ditto and amen
We meant to say, thanks Crow for this post, but ran off to have some tucker. We cannot believe economic forms are not more widely discussed today, esp in anarchist circles. Graeber said something like, 'Money is the economy for strangers and enemies,' in his book Debt. We get it, use it when there's no trust between people. But why live our whole economic realm within this economic form when we can live mostly within ta flow of gifts economy? Yes to Bitcoin over fiat, but gifts are wilder!
1000% agree with all of this.