Rocket Scientists' Guide to Money and the Economy

For the love of money is the root of all evil 1 Timothy 6:10

Thou shalt not give him thy money upon usury, nor lend him thy victuals for increase.

Leviticus 25:37

Rocket Scientists’ GuideTM to Money and the Economy Accumulation and Debt By Dr. Michael Sharp www.michaelsharp.org

The Lightning Path www.thelightningpath.com

Lightning Path Press St Albert, Alberta. Canada www.lightningpathpress.com

Š2013 Lightning Path Press.

All rights reserved.

Print ISBN 978-1-897455-11-1 eBook ISBN 978-1-897455-18-0

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without written permission.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Sharp, Michael, 1963The rocket scientist's guide to money and the economy : accumulation and debt / by Michael Sharp. p. cm.

ISBN 978-1-897455-11-1 (alk. paper) 1. Money. 2. Saving and investment. 3. Debt. I. Title.

HG221.S537 2009 332.4--dc22

Table of Contents

7

LIFE, THE UNIVERSE AND EVERYTHING Money, money, money, money.

Money makes the world go round.

What’s the problem with money?

Well, money is the root of all evil, or so we are told.

It is the bane of our existence.

It is the source of our despair.

It’s bad, and that’s the bottom line.

Money, money, money.

As a spiritual writer, it’s a tough topic to broach. I like to make the claim that I’m a “spiritual teacher,” you see. I teach about Spirit, God, and consciousness and I make the claim that what I teach is the truth (and that’s with a capital “T”). It’s not that far out. Just about every writer or teacher out there, except maybe the wishy-washy post modernists, will make some claim to truth.

No big deal. But for some reason, as soon as I say “I’m a spiritual teacher,” as soon as I start to teach about God and Spirit, people start to say things like “Oh, you’re a spiritual teacher and you teach about God and Spirit. Well, shouldn’t you make your stuff available for free? After all, you can’t charge for something as basic as spiritual truth right?”

The question always bothers me, and sets up a bit of a conflict.

I agree with the sentiment, to a degree. The information that I provide should be accessible to everyone who wants it.

But, should it be free?

Personally, I don’t think so.

Having spent thousands and thousands of hours writing, it seems kind of disrespectful and insensitive to ask someone something like that. You don’t go up to the baker of your daily bread and say, “hand your stuff over Bub ‘cause I’m entitled,” do ya?

Of course not!

To do that would not only dishonor and disrespect their labor, but it would be insensitive to the fact that in this western world you cannot do anything without money, you can’t even eat. I mean, I live in a nice house, but I can’t grow food on it because I couldn’t afford a yard big enough to 8

grow food. And what’s worse, I can’t even barter1 my services. How am I going to barter my English writings and books for bananas grown by a Latin American worker, or clothes sewn in a Chinese factory?

You see the problem. If I don’t make money from the work I do (which is to write useful spiritual books), my family and I don’t eat. In this day and age, we all need money to survive. Still, like I said, I do agree with the basic sentiment. The bottom line is, everybody who wants to buy my books should have the money they need to do so.

But, the problem is not that the information is not free, and the problem is not money itself. In fact it is exactly the opposite. The problem is not having money. The problem is that despite the fact that we (and by “we” I mean the people of this earth) have amazing technology and amazing productive potential, not everybody on this earth can afford the modest fee I charge for my eBooks — and considering how little I’m asking for my eBooks (basically a couple bucks a piece), that’s a crime, and it’s a crime that goes way beyond the desire to have spiritual information available for free. I mean, it’s not just books we can’t afford. A lot of people on this earth don’t even have the money they need to buy food and decent shelter and because of that, a lot of children on this earth go hungry and starve, and that’s most definitely a crime.

So you see, the problem is not money per se. The problem is not having money. In this context the right question is, “Why do so many people lack the cash they need to buy the things that they need on this earth?”

1

See http://www.thespiritwiki.com/index.php/Barter

9

10

THE NATURE OF MONEY Well, the lack of cash in the pockets of the people is not for reasons that you might think.

However, in order to understand why so many people don’t have the money they need, we first have to understand the nature of money.

And what’s the nature of money?

That’s easy.

Let us start by saying that money is not the paper it’s printed on.

Money is not gold, it is not silver, it is not platinum, and it is not those shiny little rocks that people put on their fingers and attach to their earlobes to make others go all “ooh” and “aah” and stuff like that. Money is not a concrete thing at all. In fact, when you think about it, money is simply an idea, and it’s an idea that, despite what some people might want you to think, is not that hard to understand.

It’s simple really.

When you boil it right down to essence, money represents time.

Time is money, they say, and that’s totally true, though there is a bit more to it than that. Money does represent time, but not all types of time. Money has a very specific reference and that is work time.2 Money represents work time.

It’s obvious, right?

You work an hour you get paid for an hour.

If you stand around and do nothing, money doesn’t fall from the sky.

Money is work time.

But of course, even that’s not wholly specified. While it is true that money does represent work time, it’s also true that money doesn’t just represent work time. Money represents a very specific type of labor. The fact is, I don’t get paid money for working in my back yard. I only get paid money when I’m doing something for somebody else. When I do something or build something or provide a service that somebody else finds useful, then I get money in exchange. Although I might fantasize about it, you are not going to give me a single penny for working in my garden growing flowers for my kitchen table. However, I might be able to convince you to give me a few pennies for a flower I’ve grown for your kitchen table.

2

http://www.thespiritwiki.com/index.php/Labour_Time

11

You see how that works?

Money, money, money.

The definition of money is this: Money represents time spent working for someone else. And if we define “time spent working for someone else” as labor time, then we can say: Money = Labor Time

THE ECONOMY Now, while the whole “money = labor time” thing might not be that obvious to you at this point, it will be in a moment. To get a better idea of what money is all about; all we have to do is take a look at money in an economy.3 And what is an economy?

Well, an economy is basically the formal exchange of money and, since money = labor, an economy is basically the formal exchange of labor (i.e. time spent working for someone else with the expectation of fair exchange).

Simple.

Whenever two or more people get together and do something for each other in exchange for something (usually money), you have an economy. As you can see from this, an economy is a fundamentally social thing. Economies emerge out of human interaction, and are designed to fulfill human needs. When you are engaged in economic activity you are working for, and with, other people. No social activity? No social Exchange? No economy.

Now of course, there are different types of economies and not all economies need money to function. That is, not all economies are monetized. In our modern world, the official economy,4 that is the economy that is recorded, monitored, and fiercely policed by those in power, does use money. However, beneath that official economy there are other economies. There is the underground economy, for example. The underground economy is also a “monetized” economy, but it’s not recorded and taxed like the official economy. Alongside the underground market economy there is also the informal economy.5 When I traded a complete set of my books to a young man who helped to clean the windows in my house, there was an exchange of labor, but it wasn’t monetized. It was barter. The point here though is not to go into detail about the different types of economies but to simply point out that an economy basically involves the exchange of 3

http://www.thespiritwiki.com/index.php/Economy

4

www.thespiritwiki.com/index.php/Official_Economy

5

www.thespiritwiki.com/index.php/Informal_Economy

12

labor power. Whether that labor is represented by money or barter, or is recorded or not, is irrelevant. The point is, an economy involves the exchange of labor.

We can see this quite clearly if we simplify things and look at an economy of, say, one thousand people. In this simple economy, everybody does something useful for somebody else. One person plays guitar, another sings, another builds houses, one runs a farm, another is into computers, another bakes bread, another processes animals, and so on. They all have a skill (or skills), they all have things they love to do, and they all get up every day and apply those skills in their daily life. In our small economy of one thousand people, each individual has some specialized talents and abilities and they bring these talents and abilities to their community, and that’s great because not everybody is the same. Not everybody likes to build things, not everybody likes to sit all day and write, not everybody likes animals, and so on. But that’s OK because in an economy, we can all exchange with each other for things that we can’t otherwise do ourselves.

And how do we do that?

How do we exchange our labor?

Well, as I said above, we can do that with barter or we can do that with money. Barter (i.e. I build you a house, you give me a lifetime supply of hamburgers) is fine as far as it goes, but it’s quite limited because barter is neither efficient nor flexible. Maybe the local carpenter is a vegetarian and if so, how is the meat packer going to get a house built when the only thing he has to exchange is a substance that causes the carpenter to retch uncontrollably?

You see the problem.

Enter money.

Money, money, money.

Money is an improvement over a system of barter because it abstracts labor. When the economy is based at least partly on money (i.e. partly monetized), then your options for exchange are expanded. Money basically creates a more fluid and efficient system of labor exchange. Instead of paying the carpenter in dead meat, the meat packer now pays in cash, which the carpenter can then use to buy wholesome veggies. It’s a win-win situation. The meat packer benefits because now he can exchange with the carpenter even though he has nothing of interest to barter. The carpenter also benefits. For him, money is better since he can take that and buy whatever he wants. He can buy food, he can buy a new car, a tool, or whatever. In this sense, money can be seen as an economic lubricant or like blood in the body. As a measure of labor power, it simply makes economic exchange more efficient and fluid.

Money gives life to the social fabric.

So, there you have it.

13

Money is simply abstracted labor.

Money allows us to exchange labor power with each other in an efficient and fluid way.

Put this way, money hardly seems like the root of all evil as so many people like to think.

THE SOURCE OF MONEY So, if money is labor, and if the economy is nothing more than a way to exchange labor, then where does money come from? Well, it doesn’t appear out of thin air; but it’s also not that hard to understand. Money comes into being in a two-step process. First, somebody makes it. If it is paper money, we put paper through a press with special inks and so on. If it’s metal money, we stamp it with a logo and some numbers. Then we agree on a value. It is as simple as that. It is important to note, whatever you’re using for money, whether it be gold or lead or stone, doesn’t matter. All that’s important is that the people who are involved agree that this piece of paper or that lump of metal represents a certain amount of labor time, i.e. that it has a certain value, and that’s all there is to it. Once you agree that you are going to abstract labor and pour it into some kind of symbol, all you need is a symbol to attach it to, and general agreement about the value of the symbol, and there you have it.

It’s all a question of concordance.

If I hand you a piece of blue paper and tell you it’s worth one thousand labor units (assuming one labor unit is one hour of labor) and you agree, then we have created money.

THE VALUE

OF

MONEY

I suppose the question that arises now is, how do we determine the value of money? That is, how do we determine how much labor power is represented by our instruments of exchange? Well, obviously, whatever it is we are using as an instrument to convey value, the value isn’t intrinsic to the instrument. That is, a piece of paper isn’t automatically worth one thousand labor units. That much is glaringly obvious when it comes to something like paper money. A small piece of offwhite paper, printed in a huge mill, with automated machinery, at economies of scale, is probably worth something in the order of .001 cents. The same can be said of other instruments of exchange, like the gold, silver, and diamonds that have been made to hold value over the centuries. No matter what anybody tells you, gold has no intrinsic value. It has a small labor value, which is the total amount of labor that went into extracting it, but it’s worthless over and above that. It is only when “we” agree that gold, paper, shiny white rocks, or whatever are worth “something more” that these things take on a monetary value over and above the value of the labor that went into processing them.

And how do “we” agree that something has a value?

How do we add value to money?

14

Well, although there are people who would have you believe such, it’s not black magic and it ’s not rocket science. As noted above, the actual labor value of money is derived simply from the amount of labor that we (and by “we” I mean those involved in the exchange) agree it represents.

And interestingly enough, what we agree to is not random. The value of money, or more accurately the value of all money in a given society, is basically determined in relation to the amount of labor being exchanged in an economy. I know it might sound complicated, but it’s not.

It works like this.

Say, for example, you have a small economy of one hundred people and you want to monetize (i.e. add money in a way that displaces barter as a primary form of exchange) that economy. How much money will you introduce? Well, you want to introduce exactly as much money as will represent the total labor output of the one hundred people in the economy. For example, if you measure each hour of labor as one unit of labor (one dollar/unit = one hour of labor), and if most people work four hours a day, seven days a week, then in order to fully monetize our little economy we would have to introduce about one thousand four hundred and sixty (i.e. 4 x 365=1,460) units of money per person per year to represent an entire year’s worth of the labor of our small society. For our small economy of one hundred people, that would amount to about one hundred and forty six thousand units (1,460x100=146,000) of money circulating in the economy.

As for individual pieces of money, their value is determined in relation to the total value of money in the economy. Assuming you’re starting fresh and with no history of “inflation,” how much an individual piece of money is worth would depend on what fraction of the total it represented. You could, if you wanted to, circulate the required 146,000 units of money in our small economy using 146 thousand-dollar bills; in that case, each bill would be worth 1,000 labor units. Or, you could break it up and circulate it as 146,000 one-dollar bills; in that case each bill would be worth a dollar. Or you could do a combination, in which case you’d have to stamp the bills so people would know the value of each. Regardless, the value of the individual bills is only meaningful in relation to the total labor output in an economy. In other words, in order to determine the value of money in an economy, you have to look at the amount of labor in the economy as a whole, and then divide the amount of money into that.

15

16

PROBLEMS WITH MONEY GENERAL As noted above, there are a lot of benefits to a monetized economy; however, there are also potential problems. In complex economies it can be hard to determine the exact labor value of something and therefore hard to determine exactly how much to pay for a single item. For example, it’s easy to know how much a loaf of bread costs. Say, for the sake of argument, that a baker with a small oven bakes nine loaves of bread in three hours including clean-up. In that case, and assuming one hour of labor is equivalent to one unit of money, each loaf of bread will be worth about .33 units of money (it works out to about three loaves an hour of labor) plus whatever the flour and yeast and butter and heat cost. However, it’s not so easy to determine how much labor goes into a computer chip. There is design, engineering, manufacture, distribution, sales, and so on. To be totally fair to everyone involved, all the labor that goes into the manufacture of a chip must be factored into the actual cost of the chip. That’s a complex equation the answer to which I would think can only be estimated.

In addition to the problem of estimating the amount of money to be paid for items, there may also be a problem with self-regulation. Maybe people will not work the required hours for the money given to them to represent their labor power. Maybe people will get 10,000 labor units of money for a year of labor, but only work 5,000 hours. This might be especially true of young adults who may be more interested in partying and boinking than working and contributing to society. The problem, however, is likely minor and relatively insignificant in an emotionally and spiritually mature society and could probably be solved simply by revising our socialization process and emphasizing the true meaning of money (i.e. as a container for labor), the need for mutual contribution to the common good, gratitude for what others do for you, etc.

Not rocket science.

ACCUMULATION Now as simple as the problems of determining the price of commodities and motivating people to contribute might be, there is a bigger problem with money that is not so easy to deal with and that causes huge problems and distortions in the general fabric of life in our little global community, and that is accumulation.

And what is accumulation?

Well, accumulation basically refers to the practice of accumulating labor power. In concrete terms, it is the practice of taking somebody’s labor and, for example, putting it on the shelf in your house.

Nothing wrong with that, right?

17

We all do it, right?

When I went to South Africa with my family, we bought a lot of handicrafts from the artisans down there. We exchanged our money for their labor (i.e. the handicraft that they had created), and then we put their labor on the walls of our house. Although the artifacts on our book shelf look like artistic objects, really what we’ve done is accumulate labor.

There is nothing wrong with that, as long as the exchange was fair. It is nice to surround yourself with fine works of art and handicrafts.

Of course, some things are easier to accumulate than others and, by the same token, some things are impossible to accumulate. My wife can’t accumulate the massages she gets, for example, and my house can only contain so many elephant carvings and tribal masks before it starts to look cluttered and messy, or I have to buy shelves and storage. It can be done, but it ’s difficult and this difficulty of accumulating labor generally makes accumulation a non-issue in societies based on barter.6 You work for what you need, accumulate a few things to make your life more pleasant, and it doesn’t go much farther than that. In a barter society, there is a built-in limitation on accumulation. There’s really no point in accumulating bread, or hammers, or computers, or handicrafts beyond a certain point.

Ah, but in a monetized economy it is a different story. In a monetized economy, there is no such built in limit to accumulation. In fact, in a monetized economy, you can accumulate as much labor power as you want. You can print a thousand-dollar bill, a million dollar bill, a billion-dollar bill, it just doesn’t matter. Since the value of money (i.e. the amount of labor it represents) in a monetized economy is symbolic and based on a simple act of agreement rather than a reciprocal exchange of goods, you can accumulate as much labor (i.e. money) as you want. In fact, in a monetized economy you can even make accumulation, rather than the social exchange of goods and services, the economic goal, and even the entire point of existence! As long as somebody believes you that a thousand-dollar bill is worth so many units of labor, and as long as you are willing to worship the idol of exchange and ignore all other considerations, like poverty, inequality, violence, environmental destruction, and so on, you are set to go.

The question now becomes, why would you want to do something as silly as that?

THE FALL Well, in order to understand why you’d want to make the accumulation of money the entire point of your existence, you have to understand something about the nature and possibilities inherent in accumulated labor power, and the best way to understand that is with a little story.

6

This is not quite true of course, but the problems associated with accumulation are not as pronounced in economies that are not monetized, or that are not monetized to the extent that the current global economy is monetized. In fact in barter based economies, accumulation tends to be discouraged. See for example the native practice of Potlatch were the goal is to give away as many things as you can. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potlatch

18

Let us imagine that one day, sometime after the monetization of our small economy, somebody gets the idea to charge just a little bit more for their labor than is strictly fair. For example, instead of charging .33 labor units for a loaf of bread (the actual labor cost of the bread), the baker (let’s call him Joe) now starts to charge .66 units (twice the real cost), or .99 units (three times the real cost), or whatever. Joe surmises that it is not much really, and it doesn’t seem like it’s going to hurt anything, or anyone, so what’s the harm with accumulating a little extra labor?

“What’s the problem with taking a little ‘profit’ for oneself?” he asks himself.

Well as it turns out, it is a big problem. In fact, it is a world-ending problem7; however, that's not immediately apparent when the machine is just starting up. It takes a while to show up, so let ’s skip ahead and take a look at Joe a year later to see what’s happened with his plan to accumulate.

It’s not difficult to imagine.

After a year of charging more than the true labor value of his bread Joe will have accumulated a bunch of extra labor.

How much?

Well, if he charges three times the actual labor cost for his bread, at the end of the year he is going to have accumulated twice as much labor as he actually put into his business. If a typical person expends 1,500 units a year then Joe, having charged everybody triple the cost of the bread will be in the black by some 3,000 labor units, instead of having a balance close to zero at the end of the year as he should.

Wow! That’s very cool for the baker and it’s even cooler when you realize what he can do with all that accumulated labor.

POWER And once again, it is not rocket science.

Take a good look at that dollar bill in your wallet.

Remember the nature of money.

7

By “world ending” I literally mean “world ending.” The dynamic that is set up by the initiation of accumulation leads, if left unchecked and in place, to the inevitable end of human civilization. The pressure on the environment, the anger and desperation that it causes leads, in the long run, to the collapse of human civilization. These might seem like strong words now, but it will become quite obvious to you that accumulation does lead to the end of the human world once you read through to the end of this little pamphlet.

19

Money is a container for labor, and when it’s accumulated, money has the ability to command (i.e. buy) other people’s labor.

Pause and think about it for a moment, because this extra money gives our baker man an incredible amount of real, palpable, and measurable power. Really, the possibilities are endless for our newly wealthy baker man. With the extra 3,000 units of labor he can do whatever he wants. He can take an extended vacation, he can have a bigger house made for himself, he can even employ a house cleaner to clean his home, or an assistant to do his baking for him so he no longer has to work!

Now, how cool is that?!

And, since the money in his pocket represents abstract labor time, as long as he can find someone willing to work for the cash, Joe can do whatever he wants. 8 More importantly, he can do more than anybody else around him. He now has power that others do not have.

“It’s brilliant,” thinks Joe when he pauses at year-end accounting to consider the benefits and ethics of it all. He looks up from his books, he looks around at the world, and he realizes, he is now a bit different from everybody else around him. Because he thought to charge a little extra for his bread, at the end of a year he now has power and capability that no one else has.

“But is that wrong?” he asks himself.

“Nobody seems to have gotten hurt and,” as far as he can see, “nothing seems to have changed in the wider society.”

“So what’s the harm,” he decides.

“Really,” he says to himself, “the only problem that I have now is how to use this extra labor power.” Joe thinks about it and after some consideration he decides to spend the extra labor units 8

Interestingly enough, power doesn’t necessarily enter into monetary relationships. Assuming equality of conditions (i.e. I have all the money I need and you have all the money you need), power cannot enter the equation because if you ask me to do something I do not want to do, I don’t have to do it because I have enough money. However, if for some reason I need your money, if I am unemployed, if I am broke, if my bank account is drained by interest, if I need to feed and protect my kids, or keep a roof over my head, and you control the money, then you have the power. If you ask me to do something then, because I need the money you have, I will often do things I would not even think of doing if I didn’t need the money. You may want to think about prostitution and pornography in these terms, as well as other less than appealing occupations. Even think about the job you are doing now. Do you love what you do? If not, why do you do it? And if you had enough money to do what you wanted to do, what would you do instead? It’s an awesome question to ask because it gives you an indication of what life would be like in a properly monetized economy. If an economy is properly monetized (i.e. if money hasn’t been greedily extracted to the point where there is not enough money to go around), a lot of jobs that people currently do would no longer exist because we wouldn’t be forced to do them. This is something to keep in mind as we wend our way through this short economic treatise.

20

he has accumulated on a beautiful mansion, twice the size of all the other houses around him, on the top of a local hill, overlooking his little community. Of course, it's not something he could have done a year earlier. Before he started his little accumulation experiment, he wouldn’t have had the money to pay for the extra materials, labor time, or extra effort required to haul the materials up the hill.

But now he can!

Now Joe’s got the cash and so now he builds a beautiful house on the top of the hill…and that is when his community starts to notice.

That is when the questions start.

“Hey Mr. Baker Man, what the heck’s going on?” ask his friends.

“How did you manage to build that big house?” they ask him.

The question stops him in his tracks.

Now he’s got a choice.

What’s he going to do?

Is he going to come clean and reveal the (real) secret to his success (i.e. that he is charging more for his bread than it is actually worth) or is he going to hide the truth so that he can keep accumulating labor? He thinks about coming clean but to be honest with himself, he doesn’t like the implications. He figures if he comes clean, the jig is up and his free ride is over. After all, nobody in his community is going to stand by and let him overcharge for his bread. Not only that, but he suspects that his community will be a little pissed at him. Heck, they may even demand restitution and that would suck, thinks Joe the baker. Paying back 3,000 units of labor would mean he’d have to work triple time over the next year.

And besides, he thinks, despite their questions no harm has come from it.

Everything is still working and despite some minor grumbling, everybody is still happy.

“So what if I’ve got a bigger house than everybody else?” he asks.

“Where is the harm in that?”

A PRIVATE PARTY So, what does Joe do?

Well, he can’t do nothing.

21

Everybody in his community is asking questions and he has to respond to them. However, instead of issuing a public announcement like he should, instead of talking to everybody at once and revealing the secret to his success, instead of doing the right thing, he tells his community he’d rather talk to only a few people at first.

“It’s complicated and hard to explain,” he says to his fellow community members, “so, if you don’t mind, it will be easier if I talk to a few people at first and after that they can report to you.”

And of course, nobody sees a problem with this.

Members of the community think that if Joe says it is complicated and he needs some space to explain, then that is OK. Everybody trusts everyone else in this society and so nobody raises any concerns.

And so, that’s what Joe does.

One night he invites a few carefully chosen people over for a very special dinner party. He invites the carpenter (whom he paid extra to build his house) and a few of his closest friends over for a sumptuous and luxurious dinner and he spares no expense. He takes a thousand of those accumulated labor units and he hires an army to throw a party like no party that has ever been thrown before. It’s impressive and magnificent and when it’s over, Joe and his friends sit down to the finest cognac. There is idle chitchat while Joe patiently waits for the warm glow from the cognac to spread through the body and mind of each of his guests and then, after a suitable period has passed, he stands up and offers a toast.

“My dear friends,” he exclaims. “It is an honor and a privilege to share these blessings with you tonight.”

“It has been a wonderful meal, impeccable company, and I am happier than I have ever been in my life,” he says.

Everybody nods in enthusiastic agreement.

“But now we should get down to business,” he exclaims seriously.

“My dear friends,” he says, “if I could tell you how you could have a mansion like mine, and make every night a night like this, would you be interested?”

His friends get excited.

“Of course,” they say, “that's why we are here, to find out how you did this.”

“Yes,” Joe says nodding, “and I will tell you.”

“But you know, this only works if you keep it a secret!”

22

At this statement, a palpable shock goes through the room.

There is a buzz of discussion and puzzled looks. The people sitting in the room have never been asked to keep a secret before, so they are justifiably a little wary about it. They start to raise questions and concerns but Joe raises his hand, smiles, pours more cognac into their glasses, and assures them there is nothing to worry about.

“Nobody gets harmed,” he says.

“Everybody wins!” he exclaims as he nods his head enthusiastically.

“And I can prove it,” he says.

“But it took me a year to figure it out and so it’s going to take you a year as well,” he says.

“Therefore, you will have to try it for a year, and then you will understand.”

“Can everyone do that?” he asks.

He keeps the glasses full as his close friends discuss the issue. They raise some objections, really relatively minor, which Joe counters, and by the end of it none of them can see what the harm would be.

“The baker is right,” they say.

“No bad things seem to have come from this, and who wouldn’t want to have parties like this all the time?”

So, they shake hands, toast themselves, congratulate themselves, and sit down to plan.

They agree.

They won’t say anything and they’ll try it for a year.

After all, everybody trusts Joe. He is their friend and he has assured them it is a win-win situation.

THE TRUTH? The only problem is the people at the bottom of the hill are expecting a report. It was the reason for the party, and so they have to do something.

But what?

“What are we going to tell all the others who were not invited!?” Joe asks.

23

Everybody agrees it’s a problem that they cannot ignore. They consider it for quite some time until finally the carpenter jumps up and says excitedly, “I know, I know, I know!!!”

“We’ll tell them the truth!” he says.

There are puzzled looks.

“We’ll say we need to study the problem!” he says.

“We’ll say we need to wait a year, do some research, and have a closer look.”

“And it’s true, isn’t it?” he says, “That is exactly what we are doing!”

And of course everyone agrees, research is exactly what they are doing and so they jot down some notes, pick their best public speaker, set a date, and call the community together to reveal the results of their private discussion.

It’s very thrilling for the community at the bottom of the hill.

Everybody expects the truth to be revealed.

Everybody expects to learn the great secret to Joe’s wealth and so all the people and all their children congregate in the town square excited by what is about to be announced.

The speaker climbs the podium...

He looks out over the gathered crowd and smiles.

“People of our community,” intones the speaker, “Joe has stumbled upon the secret to great prosperity.”

“The baker has found a way to make money.”

The crowd hushes and all faces turn to the speaker at once.

“Unfortunately,” says the speaker, “it is complicated and not well understood.”

“We have been studying it and we believe it is a combination of the relative fluctuation of commodity indexes, plus the increase in constant pricing of goods and services on the market exchange, over and above the cost of the inputs as opposed to the outputs,” intones the speaker in a monotone voice.

The crowd looks confused.

“It is the result of the de-indexing of commodity pricing in relation to the cost of inputs and labor,” he says in an effort to explain.

The crowd looks baffled.

24

The speaker solemnly nods his head.

“Yes,” he says, “it is complicated.”

“But,” he says thumping his chest, “we shall figure it out.”

“We have started an institute that we will call The Institute of Fiduciary Investigation, or just The Institute for short” he proclaims, “and for the good of the community we shall labor day and night until we discover the inner essence of this complicated process and when we understand, we shall share with you so that we will all benefit from this wonderful new way of making money.”

“We shall report to you in exactly one year,” he says quickly, raising his hands to avoid the emerging questions, and turns to step down from the podium.

Now of course, there is a bit of confusion.

Everybody was expecting an answer to the question, “How was the baker able to create a mansion?” but they didn’t get that. All they got was confusion, EPMO, 9 and a promise of future revelations. Still, what the speaker had said seemed reasonable enough. After listening to the speaker try to explain things, it certainly did sound like a complicated process, so why not? And in any case, everybody in the community trusted each other and so the people at the bottom of the hill had no reason to distrust or question what the speaker had said. They accepted the explanation in good faith and they all went home quietly to wait for the report. In the meantime, the boys who had been at Joe’s special party gradually started, at the behest of the baker man, to raise their prices over and above the actual cost of their labor in order so that they too can generate “profit.”

SOCIAL CLASS And of course, as soon as the boys from the top of the hill start to raise their prices, the inevitable happens. After only a year of subtle accumulation, all the boys from the original party have built fancy houses on top of the hill right alongside their baker friend.

“It’s great,” they tell themselves at one of their now weekly special (and increasingly secret) meetings.

“And what’s even better,” they say, “Joe was right.”

“Despite the fact that we have all moved up the hill and are now living in better houses, eating fine food, and drinking fine wine, the economy is still working properly and nothing untoward seems to have happened,” they tell themselves.

Unless, of course, you include the fact that society now seems to be divided into two distinct groups of people with different interests and different lifestyles.

9

http://www.thespiritwiki.com/index.php/EPMO

25

The dividing lines are obvious.

There are the families at the top of the hill with their big houses and their lavish parties, and then there are the families at the bottom.

But that hardly seems significant, at least to the people at the top of the hill.

“What’s the big deal anyway,” they say to themselves.

“Everybody’s still happy” they tell themselves.

But, really, how would they know? By the end of the second year the people at the top of the hill don’t socialize too much with the people at the bottom of the hill any more. They have their own private meetings and their own private functions and the two groups just don’t seem to fit together.

It’s mostly a question of income and comfort.

The people at the bottom of the hill simply can’t keep up with the lavish extravagance of the people at the top of the hill. Compared to their former friends at the top of the hill, they are poor and they feel uncomfortable and inadequate being around the extravagance.

And, if truth be told, they are not altogether happy about that.

Indeed, if the truth be told, they are starting to get a little grumpy.

All those fancy houses and extravagant parties are a constant reminder to them that they didn’t get an answer to their question about the baker’s house. All they got was a promise and, in the midst of that promise, all they are seeing is further social differentiation.

“And that’s not right,” say the people at the bottom of the hill.

And you know, they aren’t shy about showing their displeasure, or asking “difficult” questions whenever they meet up with one of the families from the top of the hill.

“What happened at that first party?” they say and “how come you are up there with the baker now?”

“What’s going on!?” they say as their voices get louder and louder. And it goes without saying that this discontent and displeasure makes the people at the top of the hill a little uncomfortable.

Thank goodness for The Institute though.

Everybody agrees!

The report is almost due.

Surely there will be some satisfaction in that.

26

THE REPORT Sadly however, when the report is finally released, there is no satisfaction to be found. The basic problem is, nobody seems to be able to understand it. The report is so full of jargon and terminology, horse shit and gobbledygook that it is a thousand times more confusing than the original speech was. It is positively obfuscatory and by the tenth page, anybody reading it has become virtually unconscious out of sheer boredom and confusion. This means, I suppose, that those who wrote the report could breathe a sigh of relief, since they would not have to answer any difficult questions from the people. How can you formulate questions on material that is inscrutable?

However, it is not all gobbledygook. Inserted at the beginning of the report is a one-page executive summary, and the writing there is as clear as a bell on Christmas day calling us to awaken to the Christ inside.

“The problem is multifaceted,” says the summary.

“The situations are complex.”

“The variables are indeterminate.”

“More study will be needed,” concludes the executive summary.

INTELLIGENTSIA Now of course, if you are one of those people at the bottom of the hill reading the report and hoping for satisfaction, you would likely find it hard to hide your disappointment, confusion, and anger. After all, a couple of years have passed and the only thing that seems to be happening is that the people at the top of the hill are getting richer, more extravagant, and more lavish all the time.

Frankly, it’s a little hard to stomach.

Still, most people at the bottom of the hill simply bite the bullet and go back to work. After all, they trust the people at The Institute when they say they are working on the problem. What else would they be doing?

Still, a few of the people at the bottom of the hill don’t go calmly back to work.

A few are unhappy about the whole thing and they frown, grumble, complain, and ask questions like “What’s going on?” and “Why is it taking so long?” and “If they don’t know what’s going on, why are so many new mansions being built?” And of course all these questions, and all that anger, make the families at the top of the hill a little nervous.

“It was clearly stated in the report,” say the nervous families “that more study is needed.”

27

“So why are they getting all agitated?” they ask indignantly.

“Why can’t they wait like everyone else?”

For the people at the top of the hill, the agitators are a definite problem and something clearly has to be done.

They can’t just let the agitators keep agitating.

That would be a mistake.

The people at the top of the hill can see that as the agitators agitate, others are becoming agitated as well.

The agitation is growing and if left unchecked…

Well…

Who knows where that might lead and so the boys call a special meeting of their now very exclusive, and very secret, boys’ club to discuss the problem. As usual, after a butler serves a dinner of fine wine and food, the chairman (i.e. Joe) stands and says…

“Most honorable and dignified gentlemen of the innermost circle of Illuminated Back Scratchers, we have a problem.”

“As you know, the report did not provide satisfaction or clarity,” says Joe. “The problem is multifaceted,” he says echoing the conclusions of the report, and believing his own bullshit.

“The situations are complex.”

“The variables indeterminate.”

“Obviously,” he says, “more study is needed, but unfortunately, some people from the bottom of the hill do not seem to understand that.”

“But what can we do?” Joe asks.

“Until The Institute reaches a point of clarity, there are no answers and there can be no satisfaction.”

“Still,” says Joe, “the people at the bottom of the hill are having a hard time understanding and accepting this.”

“They are agitating for immediate answers, and their discontent grows every day,” he says.

“And who knows where that might lead…” his voice trails off.

28

“But I have a proposal,” quips the baker.

“I have a possible solution,” he says nodding his head.

“Those agitators…” he says pausing for effect.

“The ones who aren’t satisfied with the report...” he continues..

“The ones getting everybody else agitated…”

“I believe,” says Joe, “that they are simply a little smarter than everyone else.”

He nods and smiles.

“And you know,” says Joe, as his eyes scan the faces of the gathered dignitaries, “we could use people like that to help out at The Institute!”

“We could use their brain power and hopefully, with a little direction, they can help bring clarity, ” he says, smiling.

And of course, everyone agrees.

It is a brilliant idea.

The agitators want answers, so why not co-opt them and put them into a position where it is their responsibility to provide them.

“It will satisfy the agitators,” says Joe, “and it will remove their influence from the bottom of the hill.”

“The only problem is,” says the baker, “how to get them to The Institute?

“Why would they add their voice to something they already see as problematic?” says the baker.

But Joe has an answer for that.

“We’ll do what we always do,” he says, “We’ll just tell them the truth!”

“We’ll tell them that we need their help.”

“We’ll tell them that we haven’t been able to bring clarity.”

“We’ll tell them we’re just a bunch of dim-witted business people and we need their intellectual prowess to save the day.”

“How can they say no to that?” asks Joe. “And just to sweeten the deal,” he says, “we’ll give them a small bonus.”

29

“We’ll pay them a little more than the people at the bottom.”

“Give them a taste of what it’s like,” said Joe. “Not too much though.”

“We don’t want them as neighbors at the top of the hill,” he said, “after all, it is already too crowded as it is.”

“But there’s lots of space in the middle,” he says cheerfully, “so we’ll help them get set up there.”

“It’s an offer they won’t be able to refuse,” concludes Joe, nodding his head.

And so the letters go out, the bonuses are offered, and the agitators and their families pack up their bags and begin the short trek up to employment at The Institute, and life at the middle of the hill.

INDOCTRINATION Now, when the new intelligentsia arrive at The Institute there is, of course, a magnificent ceremony of welcome. There is fine wine, there is gourmet food, and there is a charismatic keynote speaker, hired to address the newcomers and set the tone for the work they would carry out. When everybody has filled their bellies with fine wine and food, the speaker climbs the podium and says to the assembled guests…

“Honored guests… Thank you for coming.”

“Thank you for accepting our invitation.”

“Thank you for agreeing to help us.”

“For two years we have struggled” says the speaker.

“For two years we have labored into the night,” she says.

“We have collected data…”

“We have pored over charts…”

“We have analyzed patterns…”

“But still we lack clarity.” she says shaking her head.

“But now we are hopeful.” she says, smiling broadly and raising her hands towards the audience.

“Now you are here and now we are confident.”

“With your help, we will bring clarity.”

30

“With your fine minds, and your deep motivation for truth, we will succeed” she declares.

“But first,” says the speaker, “there must be a period of ‘study,'“ “A couple of years at the most,” she says raising her hands to fend off the questions that start to percolate through the assembled guests.

“It is necessary,” nods the speaker.

“We have labored for two years,” she says, “and in that time we have made much progress.”

“We have developed new ideas and discovered new concepts and these ideas and concepts inform our studies and help us communicate our findings.”

“But,” she says, “there are many new concepts and it is a complicated language and therefore you, our honored guests, must learn to speak that language.”

“No sense in reinventing the wheel,” she smiles and shrugs.

And of course, the honored guests agree.

Why would they not?

After all, they might be a little unhappy with the performance of The Institute, but that is what they are here for. They are here to help. Beyond that, they trust the good faith of their colleagues and agree that it will be most efficient if they build on what has gone before. Therefore, they will enter a period of study and learn the language and the concepts used at The Institute. So, with the decision made they finish their meal, drink their wine, and shuffle off to bed in order that they will be bright and fresh for their first day of study in the morning.

EDUCATION When they wake up the next day, they study.

And the day after that, they study.

And the day after that, they study.

And for two years they study and in that time they learn how to think and talk just like The Institute founders. And when the founders of The Institute are satisfied that the agitators will think and talk just like them, they set them to work.

And the new professionals labor into the night.

They collect data…

They pore over charts...

31

They analyze patterns… …but at the end of each day they still lack clarity.

Something is always missing.

Something just doesn’t fit.

Still, they work diligently within the conceptual framework provided by The Institute, and every once in a while they issue a report. And, since the newcomers have learned to think and talk like the founders of The Institute, the report always says basically the same thing. Amid all the specialized jargon, technical concepts, and economic “hoax us poke us” that seem to get more complicated every year, and which nobody at the bottom of the hill can ever understand, the report always says...

It is complicated, and more study is needed.

And of course, every time the people at the bottom of the hill hear that, they are very disappointed.

But that is OK. The people at the bottom of the hill know that the best minds they have to offer are working on the problem and they believe that if anybody can do it, they can do it. So, for the most part, they bury their disappointment, trust their comrades, and go back to work while the people at the top of the hill continue their accumulation experiment.

And of course, it isn’t all wine and roses for the people at the top of the hill. Each year, whenever The Institute report is released, there are always a few people at the bottom who cannot hide their disappointment. But that was OK too because each year the people at the top of the hill scout the people at the bottom, identifying the agitators, and invite them to work at The Institute. It is a perfect system and it works brilliantly until one day The Institute grows too big and the financial strain on the people at the top of the hill becomes too much and on that day, Joe calls a special meeting.

TAXATION “Most illustrious and honored brothers,” he says, “I call you here today because of a problem that is emerging.”

“Up until now we have, as a benefit to the people…”

“And out of the kindness of our hearts…” “…funded The Institute.”

32

“It has all been out of our own pockets,” he says, with voice rising.

“And that has worked!” he says.

“But now The Institute is growing and its costs are increasing and we can no longer afford this kindness on our own,” he says.

“Of course,” he says, laughing, “getting rid of The Institute or scaling back operations is not an option.”

“Not only does The Institute provide us with invaluable yearly reports,” he says, “but it provides a great place to put people who aren’t happy living at the bottom.”

“Still,” says Joe, “something must be done to relieve us of the cost while ensuring The Institute continues to function.”

He looks around at the anxious faces.

“However,” he says, “do not worry.”

“I believe I have a solution.”

“We shall get the people at the bottom of the hill to pay for it,” he says, smiling broadly.

“After all,” he says, “The Institute serves them and not us.”

“We,” he says, spreading his arms to encompass the wealth that surrounds them all, “do not need The Institute.”

“And as always,” smiles the baker, “we’ll just tell them the truth.”

And of course, upon hearing his explanation, everyone agrees, and so they hire the best public speaker money can buy and call an assembly of the people at the bottom of the hill.

The speaker climbs the podium and speaks...

“These are times of great potential,” he intones.

“These are times of great promise.”

“Look,” says the speaker as he points to the mansions at the top of the hill, “at what is possible with industry and fortitude.”

“Look,” he says pointing to The Institute, “at the work that we are doing to bring that potential to you.”

He raises his hands to the audience as if pushing someone away.

33

“But there is no need to thank us,” the speaker says.

“We do this not for gratitude or prestige but because you are our brothers and sisters.”

“But,” he says, “we can no longer do it alone.”

“Each year The Institute has grown and each year the cost becomes more unbearable for us.”

“We need your help,” he says reaching out his palms to the people.

“It won’t be much,” he shakes his head.

“Just a few pennies a week.”

“You’ll barely feel it and if you want,” says the speaker, “you can always make it up by working a little extra hard each week.”

And of course, everybody at the bottom of the hill agrees.

Why would they not?

They trust the people at the top of the hill.

They trust the people at The Institute.

They have eyes.

They can see what is going on.

The people at the top of the hill are paying for The Institute out of their own pockets and the people at The Institute are working hard to bring clarity, prosperity, and progress to all people.

The people at the bottom of the hill agree, the people at the top of the hill should not be made to shoulder the burden themselves.

It is only fair that they contribute.

“And if it means working a few extra hours a week,” say the people at the bottom of the hill, “then surely this is a small price to pay for the benefits that will eventually accrue.”

And so they agree, and with that the people at the top of the hill create a managing body, which they call a government, and this government is charged with taxing the people at the bottom of the hill in order to fund the now “public” institute.

And the people at the top of the hill rejoice, for they understand that now that the funding of The Institute is linked to the labor of the masses, The Institute can now grow without bounds.

Which is exactly what it does.

34

Every year The Institute releases a new report.

Every year there are new agitators.

Every year The Institute expands.

At first it is economics, a discipline designed to help understand the economy.

Then it is engineering, a discipline designed to increase production expertise.

Then it is philosophy, a discipline designed to help understand why the world is divided between those at the top, and those at the bottom.

Then it is history, a discipline designed to tell the story from the perspective of those at the top of the hill.

Then it is religion, a discipline designed to provide justification.

Then it is psychology, to control the workers and keep them docile, and pretty soon The Institute is everywhere, which is great because with The Institute operating to manage discontent and provide obscure explanations, everything is working fantastically. And, with everything working so well, the boys at the top of the hill now have time to deal with other issues besides system maintenance and so, finally, they turn their full attention to the thing they love the most.

35

36

PROGRESS Accumulation!

One day at a meeting, after a particularly lavish dinner, Joe the baker stands and speaks.

“Didn’t I tell you?” he says raising his glass for a toast.

“Didn’t I say?”

“Nobody has been harmed,” he smiles with great satisfaction.

“In fact,” Joe says, “quite the opposite has occurred.”

“Look around you at the changes we have brought!”

“We the people at the top of the hill have created a better world!” he exclaims dramatically.

“Our homes are the pinnacle of architectural innovation,” he says.

“Our gardens are the summit of creativity and beauty.”

“And The Institute,” he says, “is our crowning glory.”

“Congratulations to all of us” Joe says raising his glass and toasting the room.

“Congratulations!” he cries.

“We the people have brought progress to this world.”

He pauses for a moment and then begins to speak slowly.

“But,” says Joe, “we can do more.”

“With enough resources, we can improve everything.”

“With enough resources, we can lead this world to utopia.”

“We could bring a new world order that would bring progress and increase our wealth and prosperity a trillion fold,” he says.

“And all we need is the money to do it,” he concludes.

PRODUCT DIFFERENTIATION “And I know how we can do it,” Joe says.

“I know how we can fund utopia.”

37

“All we have to do is increase the rate of extraction, and I have found a way to do that,” says the baker triumphantly.

“Instead of making only one kind of bread,” he says, “instead of making only the finest bread that I am capable of making, I can make a cheaper bread with cheaper ingredients and less care and attention, and I can sell that to the people at the bottom of the hill.”

“If I do this,” he says, “I will save money on ingredients and labor and therefore I will accumulate more.”

He looks around the room at the attentive, smiling faces.

“There’s more,” he continues.

“I can also make special bread with the finest ingredients and the most care and attention and I can sell that special bread to the people higher up the hill for a premium,” says Joe. “Instead of three times the cost, I could sell it for five.”

“And yes,” he says anticipating their questions, “they will buy it when I tell them it is special.”

“But of course,” says the baker, “there is a slight problem.”

“When the people at the bottom of the hill come into the shop and find they can only afford the cheap bread, they will probably grumble and complain,” says the baker.

“And of course,” says the baker, “we know where that leads.”

“But,” says Joe smiling, “I have learned, that in order to curtail their grumbling, I simply need to tell them the truth.”

“When they complain I will tell them, ‘This is the price that you have to pay for progress,’ and that will quiet them down because nobody can argue against progress.”

“And of course,” says the baker, “I’ll tell them it is all in their hands anyway.”

“If they work a little harder…”

“If they pinch their pennies…”

“If they save their money…”

“Then they too will be able to afford the special bread.”

The baker looks around the room, smiling.

“In the name of progress?” he asks raising his glass.

38

“In the name of progress!” cry his brothers as they toast the baker and quaff their wine.

DISTORTION And so, in the name of progress, the people at the top of the hill begin to look for ways to increase their rate of accumulation. And they don’t stop with product differentiation. After all, the goal is “progress” and the more efficient they can make accumulation, the more progress there is.

So, each week they meet with one another and share their ideas for more efficient accumulation.

One week they come up with planned obsolescence and product lifecycle. Instead of designing products to last, those who can get away with it design products to break, or go out of fashion after a suitable period of time. In this way they ensure that consumers, as the people at the bottom of the hill have come to be known, are tied constantly into product purchase. Of course, planned obsolescence and product lifecycle means the people at the bottom of the hill have to work harder and longer in order to fund The Institute, buy the special bread, replace worn-out products, and afford each year’s new fashions. But at this point, that's life. Unfortunately it also means an expanding strain on the resources of Mother Earth as shoddy consumer goods and broken products saturate the landfills and devour resources. “But these things” says Joe, “are small prices to pay for ‘progress,’” and so they continue.

One week they come up with an idea to lower labor costs by paying people at the bottom of the hill less for the work they do. Of course, this isn’t a very popular idea among the people at the bottom of the hill because it requires them, their spouses, and sometimes even their children to work harder and longer just to get by. However, the people at the top of the hill are persistent and in the name of “progress” they find ways to force the issue. They deskill labor, tie the workers to assembly lines, keep demand for key professions lower by restricting access to education, and even use child labor in countries where they can get away with it. And of course, the people at the top recognize the unpleasant nature of these things, but there is always a price to be paid for progress, they tell themselves, and so they continue.

One week, the people at the top notice that a lot of people at the bottom of the hill are still using the informal economy to exchange labor by barter. They think about this and conclude that this is a bad thing because when people barter it is impossible to accumulate labor, and when they can’t accumulate, there is no progress. So, the people at the top of the hill decide that bartering should be reduced and eventually eliminated. Of course, the people at the bottom resist. In their eyes barter has always been a legitimate form of trade and to give it up would put them at a further disadvantage. But the people at the top of the hill are persistent and, in the name of progress, eventually find a way to reduce barter. With the help of The Institute, they commission a report that says that activity outside of the main economy is detrimental to the progress of the nation.

They then instruct the government to begin counting all forms of economic activity. Finally, they reorganize production. Instead of having small, locally self-sufficient economies where informal exchange and barter is easy and natural, they force a separation of production and make whole countries specialize in single product lines. They grow bananas in one country, build cars in another, get grain from a third, and so on. It is brilliant. In a globally dispersed marketplace where 39

you get your food from farmers who live thousands of miles away, barter becomes impossible, and life becomes precarious.

And so, in the name of progress, on it goes. Each week, the men and women from the top of the hill meet to discuss how to bring progress to the world, and every once in a while someone comes up with a new and better way to make progress. And through all this, the people at the bottom of the hill work harder and harder just trying to keep up. “But that,” say the people at the top of the hill, “is the price we pay for progress.” But then, one day, a problem begins to emerge, and the problem is money. As it turns out, all the effort that the people at the top of the hill are putting into developing efficient ways to create progress is creating an uncomfortably rapid flow of cash.

The problem is, it is collecting in filthy and moldy piles.

It is ridiculous, not to mention ugly, dirty, and unsanitary and initially the people at the top of the hill don’t know what to do with all the money they are accumulating. So, they call a special meeting to discuss the problem and, to make a long story short, they find a better container for their money.

METAL AND ROCK It is the stonemason who figures it out.

One day, at one of their special, private meetings, the stonemason sheepishly raises his hand and says to the assembled brothers and sisters, “I think I might have a solution to our problem with money.”

He calls them into a circle.

He beckons them to look as he reaches into his pocket to pull out a beautiful gold ring with a huge shiny rock in it.

He shows it around the room as he begins to explain, “About six months ago my cash flow was such that I no longer had to work for a living” (pause while the members of the club raise their glasses and congratulate his hard work and good fortune).

“But I was bored,” he says, “and I needed something to fill my time.”

“So, being a stonemason by trade, I started to play with rocks and metals and I discovered that these shiny rocks could be cut into these beautiful sparkly diamond shapes.”

“And,” says the stonemason, “I discovered that I could take this soft metal and bend it and shape it.”

“And,” says the stonemason as he raises the diamond ring in triumph, “I discovered that I could combine the two.”

40

Everybody admires the rock in his fingers.

“It’s not much work,” he says, “but it does take a steady hand.”

“And look how pretty it is,” he says.

“And isn’t this much better than a pile of money?” he asks.

And of course everyone agrees, it is much prettier than a pile of money.

“But how does this solve the problem of money?” somebody asks.

“Well,” says the stonemason with a smile, “it’s like this…”

“We can store as much accumulated labor into one of these little metal-wrapped rocks as we want!”

“Remember, the value of paper money is merely a question of agreement, and so we can store tens, hundreds, even millions of labor units into individual bills.”

“There is no limit!” he says.

“And so it is with this pretty ring!”

“All we have to do is agree on a value...” the stonemason’s voice trails off.

As the stonemason finishes talking, there is silence.

Brows are furrowed and frowns appear on some of the faces.

A buzz of discussion arises and after a few minutes, smiles begin to emerge.

Somebody whispers, “It is brilliant.”

But there are questions.

“What will we do with the money that we store?” asks one.

“And how will we agree on a price?” asks another.

The stonemason smiles and raises his hands.

“I have anticipated these questions and considered a solution,” he says with satisfaction.

“As for what to do with all the cash, we can build a central storehouse or ‘bank’ and we can store the money there.”

“As for determining the value of our gold and diamonds,” he says, “we can appoint our most trusted brothers and sisters to a council and they can determine the price.”

41

“This council, this ‘cartel’ if you wish, will tell us, ‘a carat of weight is equal to one million labor units.’ and we will agree and as long as we agree,” he says with a smile, “we’re in business.”

The group considers this for a moment and they all have to admit, it sounds pretty good. In fact, they cannot see any downside and so they decide to do it. They create a bank, they create a precious stones and metals cartel, and the stonemason gets to work creating beautiful and extravagant ways to store accumulated labor.

Problem solved and back to business!

The people at the top of the hill continue their drive for accumulation, distortions pile up, and the people at the bottom of the hill work harder and harder just to get by. It seems like a perfect arrangement and it works beautifully, according to the people at the top of the hill, until one day, out of the blue, there is a crisis.

42

43

CRISIS And when that crisis hits, it is a doozy!

All of a sudden, for the first time ever, people at the bottom of hill are out of work, and not in the fancy pants leisured way of those at the top of the hill, but in an out of money, can’t buy enough to eat, lose the house and home sort of way.

When this happens, it is a total surprise.

One day the economy is working, the next day it isn’t.

One day people are exchanging goods and services, the next day they aren’t.

And I won’t lie to you here, as this crisis hits it is huge and ugly.

People suffer.

Children starve.

Humans die and sadly, nobody at the bottom of the hill understands why it is happening to them.

But the people at the top of the hill, they understand. They can see the problem as clearly as the diamonds on their fingers. Over the course of their little experiment, the people at the top of the hill have accumulated so much money that they have literally siphoned off all the lifeblood (i.e. cash) from the economy. They have accumulated the dollars and now there is no more cash to lubricate economic exchange. The economy is empty of cash and the consequences are tragic! If nobody has money to buy the things they need because all the money has been sucked out of the economy by the people at the top of the hill, and if overspecialization has made barter impossible, how are people going to be able to sell their goods and services?

The answer is, they cannot.

The bottom line is, if you keep extracting money out of an economy you are gradually taking away people’s ability to exchange their labor.

If you do that for long enough… …or aggressively enough… …and if you don’t put back what you’ve taken out…

Then mass unemployment, recession, and eventually economic depression sets in.

It is logical, inevitable, and because the ability to barter has been taken away from their economy, potentially catastrophic. Millions, even billions, could starve and there is simply nothing, short of ending the little accumulation experiment and giving it all back, that anybody can do to stop it.

44

Don’t believe me?

Let’s try a little thought experiment.

Imagine for a moment a small economy of ten people.

Now, imagine that each of these ten people has one hundred dollars and that they use those one hundred dollars to exchange their labor with. Now imagine, that one day, one of them, let’s call him Fred, starts to extract money out of the economy a little bit at a time.

Maybe he does it by taxation.

Maybe he does it by profit.

Maybe he just muscles people into it.

How the extraction happens doesn’t matter, because the end result is always the same. Sooner or later, depending on how aggressively the money is extracted, people will no longer be able to exchange their labor because nobody will have any money left to use for exchange because Fred will have it all. All other things being equal, (i.e. if Fred does nothing to put the money back into the economy) at some point Fred is going to have all the money, and everybody else is going to be unemployed (i.e. unable to exchange their labor), unless they are lucky enough to work for Fred. And the only one with the power to solve the crises will be Fred.

And what does Fred do at that point to solve the economic crisis?

Well really, the only thing Fred can do at that point is give the money back. The pure and undiluted truth is, if Fred wants to avoid all the nasty human suffering that attends unemployment and recession in an economy that he’s sucked dry of its very lifeblood, he puts all the money that he extracted back into circulation so that people have the money they need to exchange their labor.

It is the right thing to do, and besides, nothing else will solve the problem.

Now of course, he doesn’t have to do this. If he wants, he can convince himself that the money he extracted belongs to him, or that he has worked hard for it, or that he deserves it because he is superior, or “clear,” or genetically gifted, or chosen by God, or whatever. However, if Fred decides to keep the money and maintain his privilege, then the best thing he can do is provide band-aid solutions. But the band aids never work and ultimately, unless he starts to do the right thing, unless he stops sucking the lifeblood out of the economy, unless he gives it all back, nothing he does is going to prevent general systemic failure and death.

Of course, as you can probably expect, Fred doesn't want to just give all the money back because he does in fact convince himself he deserves it.

So what does Fred do?

45

Well, one option that Fred has is to do nothing. After all, Fred has lots of money and can buy whatever he needs to survive, so unemployment is no big deal for him. Not only that, but after a while people will be so desperate for cash that they will work for peanuts (thereby extending Fred’s “buying power”) just to have enough to feed their families. But really, that approach can only be taken so far. Fred can't employ everybody and the peanuts that people eventually end up making don't pay the bills or buy enough food. Food banks proliferate, but slow death by starvation is the inevitable result for the people at the very bottom of the hill. And slow starvation doesn’t go over well with large groups of heavily armed people.

Just ask the French Aristocracy.

If Fred keeps all the money for himself to the point where the only thing that’s left to eat is cake, and Fred does nothing to solve the problem, the people are going to eventually be so hard up, and their families are going to be in such distress, that they will build a guillotine in his honor.

Chop chop!

And of course, that’s a mistake that Fred won’t make twice.

So, what does he do?

Well, if you can imagine that you’re Fred, and you want to avoid losing your head over the whole thing, you’d have to put some money back.

At a certain point it can’t be avoided.

Of course, giving it back has to be done cautiously.

I mean, Fred can’t just “give” it back.

Fred can’t just go up to the people in the economy and say “here’s your money back, let’s start again.” If Fred did that, people would immediately start to wonder why they gave up their money to Fred in the first place, and maybe after thinking about that they'd learn to refuse to go along with Fred's extraction activities, thereby putting an end to Fred's privilege. Therefore, if Fred wants to maintain his little “secret,” he has to find a sneaky way to put the money he’s stolen back into the economy, without it looking like he’s giving it back. Thankfully, there’s a few ways he can do that that won’t “tip off” the population as to the nature of the beast. One is war, the other is money lending. We’ll look at lending first and pick up on war towards the end of this book.

Now, one great way to put money back into the economy, thereby reducing unemployment, without giving the real secret away, is to lend it. If you lend it, while saying “This is mine and you have to pay it back,” then the illusion that the money is yours is maintained, and you still get to insert a much-needed transfusion into the system. But it is not a permanent solution, especially when you’re really greedy about it and charge interest on top.

46

Consider: After extracting all the money from the economy, and putting the economy into cardiac arrest, Fred goes up to all the people in his country and says “Hey everybody, I can help. I’ll lend each of you a hundred dollars so you can get your businesses going again” (general cheers and applause) “…as long as you pay me back with interest,” he says.

“I’ll give you a hundred bucks, and you’ll pay me back one hundred and ten.” [puzzled looks].

“But why interest?” the people ask.

“Well,” says Fred, “I figure that since I’m letting you use ‘my’ money, I’m making a huge sacrifice because while you are using my money to put yourselves back to work, I won’t be able to enjoy it myself.”

“So it’s only fair,” he says, “that I get something in return.”

And so, because they have no other choice, the people agree.

And it does seem to make sense.

And it does seem to work.

Fred lends out his money, blood is back in the veins of the economy, and everybody is back to work again.

Unfortunately, however, the new-found circulatory health doesn’t last very long at all. In fact, money gets sucked out of the economy, people don’t have the cash to exchange their labor, and economic ruin happens once again in about half as much time as it did before.

The problem?

Fred has his fangs in the economic jugular in two ways now.

On the one hand he is still engaged in his regular extractive activities, thereby slowly draining the fluid out of the body, while on the other hand he’s getting loan and interest payments as well. You can see the problem, and the predictable outcome. Fred is now extracting money from the economy in two ways, and the blood is being drained twice as fast as before so now, collapse occurs in half the time, but with one critical difference. Even after Fred has extracted all the money from the economy, the balance sheet is not zero! That is, even when all the money is back in Fred’s hands, because Fred lent money at interest, the people now owe him money. It is not just that they have nothing, now the people have less than nothing thanks to Fred and the perversity of usury and the absurdity of debt.

47

48

49

DEBT Debt, debt, debt.

And what’s the problem with debt?

It is the bane of our existence.

It is the source of our despair.

It is bad, and that’s the bottom line.

Debt is a problem for all people not at the top of the hill because now everyone who isn’t part of the private party is faced, for the first time ever, with the grinding absurdity and perversity of debt. With debt people end up with less than nothing even though they work their entire lives to build something up.

It is horrible, perverse, absurd, and ridiculous. Even more so than you might think because the problem with debt goes beyond the grinding and crushing “nothing” that accompanies the vast majority of people into their graves. Debt, you see, is also a problem for Fred because debt enhances the crises. It does this because debt makes Fred afraid.

Afraid of what?

Afraid of lending.

You see, in the economy that Fred has spawned, debt never goes away.

In the economy Fred created, debt grows and grows and that’s a problem for Fred because at a certain point Fred just gets too scared to lend money.

The problem is simple.

Because of debt, when the economy collapses, people have less than nothing to pay Fred back. In fact, once Fred starts lending money at interest, people always have a negative balance sheet and this negative balance tends to grow. As a result, Fred always inevitably comes out short on the loans he gives. And it just gets worse. As each economic cycle grinds to its inevitable point of crisis, debt grows, and Fred gets less and less of his initial investment back. At a certain point Fred gets scared. He’s not stupid. He can see the negative balance sheet and he knows a lot of people will never be able to extract themselves out of debt. At this point Fred “loses confidence” in peoples’ ability to pay him back and when Fred loses confidence, he won’t lend anymore.

When Fred loses confidence he twirls the spigot closed and lets everybody crash and burn.

50

Of course, this isn't a permanent solution and Fred knows it. Even though Fred doesn’t want to lend any more money because he knows for certain he’ll never get it (and the interest) back, he also knows he’s got to do something otherwise the people will get hungry, desperate, and maybe even violent. And that would ruin his breakfast.

So what does he do?

Well, when the economy is in crisis and Fred has lost confidence, there are basically two things he can do. He can either ignore the problem and let the people suffer, or he can jump start the economy by putting money back into it.

In order to see this more clearly, let us expand this thought experiment a bit so that we imagine Fred to be in control of a national, or even global, economy.

If he ignores the problem, he’s going to need to use force and indoctrination to keep the people down otherwise they’ll do what starving people do everywhere, they will rise up and take what they need to survive. Of course, he’s not going to call it “force” and “indoctrination.” That would just leave people bitter and unwilling to work. Instead, he’ll probably call it keeping the peace, security, education, and cinematic entertainment. And of course, he’ll give them all sorts of reasons why they have to put up with it. Maybe he’ll blow up one of his own buildings, or put a dozen police dramas on television convincing them of the need for security. Or maybe he’ll scare them with tales of horror in the night. However he does it, the outcome will be the same. When the people start looking at him with hungry eyes, all the surveillance, police, armies and technology he’s gathered under his control can be easily used to suppress the anxious and agitated population.

And this approach will work, but only to a point.

After all, as those Frenchmen with guillotines demonstrated, Fred can callously disregard the suffering of the masses for only so long before it all ends in tragedy. So, no matter how much he might want to keep everything for himself, at some point he’s going to be forced to initiate a transfusion, and possibly a defibrillation, of the donor.

And how does he do that?

Well, since Fred won’t even consider the right thing and just give the money back, and since Fred is the only one with money to lend, Fred has to lend.

The problem?

Fred has no confidence.

The solution?

Fred basically has to restore Fred’s confidence in the people’s ability to pay Fred back, so that Fred will feel comfortable enough with his “return on investment” to lend again.

51

And how is Fred going to restore his own confidence and, ergo, his willingness to lend?

Well, there are a number of tried and tested things that Fred can do to help restore his confidence in the economy, thereby giving himself the freedom to lend again. One of the first things that Fred will do is “reset” the economy. He does this simply by letting the economy collapse, and then “repossessing” all the things that are “his.” Fred reasons it out like this. When people borrowed money from him, they went ahead and bought some things (houses for shelter, cars to get to work, food for their families, etc.) that they needed to survive and thrive. Since they didn’t pay him all his money back, Fred reasons that all the things they bought with his money now belong to him. So, he takes “what’s his” and clears as much of the debt this way as he can. Getting his money back, through the re-possession of goods bought with his money, basically restores Fred’s willingness to lend. It’s ugly though, especially when children are involved, since it leaves the people in the horrible position of having to start all over from the bottom again but “C’est la vie,” right?

The second thing that Fred can do is impose austerity measures. Austerity measures are basically reductions in government transfer payments to the people at the bottom. Austerity measures are imposed typically because money from taxation is too low, and Government debt is so bad, that Fred doesn’t even want to give money to governments anymore. Unfortunately however, Fred just can’t cut governments off completely, like he might do to the people at the bottom of the hill.

This is because cutting governments off from the money supply that Fred controls would mean that governments wouldn’t have the funds to function. And if governments didn’t have the funds to function, they wouldn’t be able to perform important services (like controlling the military, road maintenance, disciplining commercial transactions, prisons, etc.). And if governments couldn’t perform important services, the political, economic, and social order would collapse very quickly. And if the political, economic, and social order collapsed, masses of people would be thrown out of work. And if masses of people were thrown out of work, masses of people would suffer. And if masses of people suffered, discontent and anger would rise. And if the anger and discontent got bad enough, then Fred would spend his time worrying about revolution and guillotines and who to target next with the drone technology, and he wouldn’t be able to enjoy his dinner in peace. So it is important for Fred to restore confidence, and austerity measures do that by helping governments reduce their debt [to Fred]. True, they cause suffering, but the suffering caused by austerity is small in comparison to the suffering caused if Fred didn’t do anything and just let the “market” take its course.

The third thing that Fred might try to stave off economic collapse is to print money and let it enter the economy. Printing more money is a great way to stave off economic collapse because it basically makes the essential (in an economy subject to constant accumulation of labor) process of transfusion (i.e. putting back that which has been drained away) a permanent thing. 10 Not only that, but when Fred prints money he doesn’t have to risk his “own” money. He can keep that safe, 10

It is quite perverse when you think about it. This is like Dracula giving blood transfusions to his victims just so he can continually re-victimize them.

52

which would be totally great for Fred if it wasn’t for the ongoing problem of debt, and the emergent problem of inflation (see below) that arises when the printing presses gear up. Of course, just as Fred is not going to give away his own money (he will lend it), when he starts the printing presses he’s not going to just give away the fresh mint either, 11 he’s going to charge interest because a) that allows him to accumulate even more 12 and b) he wouldn’t want to give people at the bottom of the hill the wrong idea.

And so, he fires up the presses.

And it does work, sort of.

Connecting the economic body up to a permanent, interest-bearing cash intravenous (IV) 13 does stave off the inevitable economic collapse caused by the extractive activities of Fred, but it also gradually deepens the crises. This is because lending money at interest causes, as we have seen, debt; but it also causes inflation, and inflation is a real problem for Fred because inflation devalues Fred’s money! And Fred hates that. 14 Couple inflation with the growing problem of debt and you have a perverse economic system that cycles in and out of recession with increasing rapidity, and that sinks deeper and deeper into crises over time.

And is this a bad thing?

11

Unless maybe he’s trying to “bail out” his buddies, who are also feeling the pinch from default on debt caused by a drained economy. In that case printing out a few billion and handing it over to some already rich bankers. As G.W. Bush did, might seem like a terribly good thing for Fred to do.

12

In fact, at the point that Fred charges interest on money he just prints at his leisure, Fred is “making money” appear out of thin air. This is “black magic” by any estimation.

13

Perhaps through a privately owned central bank with the authority to print money.

14

How does lending money at interest cause inflation and devalue Fred’s money? Well, imagine our little economy of ten people, each with a hundred dollars. After Fred has managed to extract all the money out of the hands of his nine buddies, they can’t work. Fred, being the good guy that he is, lends them some of “his” money at interest. Work goes on, Fred extracts, and the economy is drained again. However, since money was lent at interest, the second time around Fred has to lend $120.00 to each. When the economy fails again his buddies owe him $150.00. Pretty soon he has to lend $200.00, $400.00, and even more, just to kick start the economy. The problem is, this devalues Fred’s money. It has to do with the ratio of money in the economy to the available labor. Let us simplify. Let us imagine that in Fred’s economy people work a total of one hundred hours a year. Let us say that economy needs a total of 1,000 x 10 or $10,000 dollars in the economy to be fully monetized (ten people working a total of 1,000 hours a year is 10,000 labor units and hence $10,000). With $10,000 dollars in the economy it costs one dollar to buy one hour of labor. If, at the point of reset, Fred has ten thousand dollars in the bank, that gives him the ability to control ten thousand hours of labor. But now imagine that after a few rounds of crises and reset, Fred has to print $40,000 dollars into the economy just to cover available labor With $40,000 representing the 10,000 hours of labor, it will now cost four dollars per hour of labor (inflation). At that point Fred is going to be able to command only twenty-five hundred hours of labor with his $10,000 dollars, a significant reduction. This is inflation.

53

Well if you are one of the ones who lose everything as a result of the “reset,” then yes it is a bad thing and it doesn’t take much imagination to figure out why. You lose your house, your children go hungry, your self-esteem takes a hit, your family falls apart, and life becomes a grind house of pain and stress. On the other hand, Fred benefits. From his perspective, recession (i.e. the “reset” caused by Fred’s extractive activity) brings a necessary financial correction that allows him to recoup his investment, return himself to confidence, and lend money again. It is all good for Fred who probably thinks that if the worst thing he has to deal with is cyclical recessions, 15 he’s golden. Unfortunately, cyclical recession is not the worst thing that Fred has to deal with. While he is celebrating his good fortune, recessive crises happen with more and more frequency, grow deeper and deeper, and become harder and harder to get out of. Deepening crises means more repossession, more austerity, and more money injected through the intravenous, and it just gets worse and worse over time. In a small economy, the process is totally obvious. However in a huge economy, in a national, or global economy, it is less obvious. In a huge economy typically what would happen is that debt would pile up in one or two areas of the economy, a “correction” would come (i.e. debt would pile up to the point where people couldn’t pay back the money), Fred would panic, the economic intravenous (IV) would be shut off, businesses in that sector would collapse, people would be thrown out of work, and so on. At that point, Fred would “reset” that sector of the economy by repossessing assets and imposing austerity measures until he was comfortable to lend again at which point he’d spin the spigot and the whole thing would happen again, only worse. However, since the intravenous injection is always at interest, debt always expands and the crises always deepens; and if this goes on long enough pretty soon debt is so widespread and the crises so deep that it becomes almost impossible to restore Fred’s confidence.

We might call the point where the crises is so deep that it is impossible to restore Fred’s confidence the über-crises. When the über-crises finally hits, the world ends.

And the funny thing is, Fred knows this. Because of his privileged vantage point, he can see it coming better than anybody and he knows that when it happens, people are going to experience incredible hardship, unemployment, long-term deprivation, starvation, and slow, grinding death.

Perhaps this is what explains Fred’s affinity for military technology, security, armed forces, surveillance, drones, RFID, and things like that. Of course, he’s not going to use that stuff if he doesn’t have to. Fred’s not a bad guy, after all. But it does make him sleep better knowing it’s there if he needs it.

So, when the time comes and the economy goes into complete cardiac arrest, what is Fred going to do?

Well, as always, Fred has a choice.

On the one hand, Fred can wake up and see the twisted nature of the system he’s been living with, give back the money, cap accumulation, outlaw interest, and allow the world to live happily ever 15

A “recession” may be defined as a small scale economic collapse that arises due to the unavailability of currency, usually caused by a restriction of credit brought about by the devaluation of money, the catastrophic buildup of debt, and collapse of investor confidence.

54

after. If he does this, then we can all sing, “For he’s a jolly good fellow” and go dance in the streets because if Fred makes that choice, it will mean a permanent end to poverty and suffering and the global emergence of shambhala and utopia. Just imagine what kind of world we could all live in if a) we didn’t have to struggle with debt, b) all the money that Fred extracted was returned into the economy, and c) we suddenly had all the money we needed to exchange our labor. With modern technological wizardry our labor goes a long, long way. With modern technology such as it is we could easily build utopia in a single generation. 16 On the other hand, Fred could continue in the old ways and try to hang onto his money. If he does that, things will just get worse. As I already said, it will be like a domino chain. When it finally comes, the collapse will be rapid and dramatic and there will be nothing Fred can do to stop it. It will start in a single sector of the consumer economy with a “normal” recession. However, because the rest of the economy is so mired in debt, the recession will not stay confined to a single sector. Even a little drop off in sales will trigger bankruptcy and default in other sectors. As defaults occurs, Fred panics and spins the spigot shut. A couple of three sectors aren’t a problem, but with debt so deep the dominoes will fall and the global economy goes into cardiac arrest, with predictable and disastrous consequences for the majority of people in Fred’s economy. It will be so bad that no amount of surveillance and indoctrination will calm the agitated masses and at that point Fred is, once again, only going to have two choices. He’ll either have to come clean and do the right thing, or he’ll have to take the world to war for the third time.

Why war?

Well, as people like Fred discovered a long time ago, war is a great way to channel the agitated aggression of the people at the bottom of the hill, and pull an economy out of catastrophic depression. War allows Fred to inject mucho $$$ into the economy in a way that doesn’t give his precious secret away, and it handles the anger and discontent by channeling it at some innocents abroad.

And of course, we’re not talking about a little war here.

At the point of total economic collapse, Fred is going to need a real war, a global war, with gadjillions of dollars in military spending leading to bajillions of dollars in economic offshoots into the economy to solve the problem and that means, of course, that a lot of innocent people are going to die. Of course, Fred needs an enemy to fight. But that’s easy. After centuries of indoctrination the world is so divided up by religion, by skin color, by nation, by gender, by 16

Of course, and despite what the Fred’s behind the Zeitgeist might suggest, we’d need a lot more than just technology to create utopia. Fred’s economy has caused a lot of negativity, a lot of pain and anger, a lot of hurt and oppression, and a lot of damage and psychosis and so for the first little while a lot of the available money would have to go to healing the human body, and restoration of the global landscape. But that would be fun, especially if coupled with full awareness of the nature of that work, and it wouldn’t have to go on forever. The body, whether it is the body of Gaia, or the body of humans, is remarkably resilient. Change its toxic environment, give it the truth about things, and offer it a helping hand and it heals quickly and naturally.

55

culture, and by region that starting a global war is as simple as toppling a couple of symbolically charged buildings, or dropping a single nuclear bomb. Do that and *bam*, trillions of dollars are surreptitiously injected into the economy.

Problem solved.

Of course, you can see the problem here. Getting to the point where global war 17 is the only solution to cyclic crises means permanent anguish and suffering for the majority of people on this earth. And while Fred might want to say “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger,” and while he might want to tell himself (and others) that all this suffering and anguish is just part of the “divine ‘lesson’ plan,” really none of the anguish and suffering is necessary. It is all avoidable and everybody could live happily ever after if Fred would just quit.

So, what are we going to do?

Well, I personally don’t recommend you sit around and do nothing. Even if the next world war (which looks these days as if it will start somewhere in the Middle East) does manage to solve our global economic crisis by re-monetizing the global economy, we’re rapidly reaching a planetary wall. If we don’t fix the numerous ecological, psychological, political, and social distortions that are caused by the lunatic fringe leading this lunatic economic system we live in, humanity won’t survive to do it again. You have to remember, we’re not fighting with sticks and stones any more. With the type of technology that can be deployed to kill with these days, and the global interconnectedness that threatens to unify the planet, billions could die before Fred regains his confidence in the economy.

I also don’t recommend guillotines and violence. That never really worked anyway because, as we have seen, if you kill one Fred, a new Fred comes along to take his place. And besides, the old saying is true: “violence begets violence.” You can’t repair a broken world by using repressive strategies.

I also don’t recommend standing around waiting for a big alien ship to take you away into the sky, or your “Sirian brothers” to come fix the problems on this earth. I know some people out there are thinking that some kind of advanced alien race is going to come down from the sky but I’m telling you now, that ain’t gonna happen. Trust me on this one. If the alien high commander of the Annunaki fleet was speaking to you right now, he’d be saying exactly what I’m saying to you which is, “This is your problem and you have to fix it before we can help you. So get to it.”

Finally, I do not recommend you stand around waiting for “the savior” to come and save your butt either. I have no doubt at all that if the savior was standing in front of you and speaking to you right now, he’d be telling you exactly what I am telling you which is, “You are a powerful cocreator and brilliant spark of the divine creator God, and you have the power within you to change this world. All you have to do is wake up, take your power back, and learn how to use it.”

17

Or perpetual global war as George Orwell suggested would be the outcome in 1984.

56

I suppose, though, in the end, it’s your choice.

You can either choose choice number one, make up some excuse, and sit around waiting for Fred to do the right thing, or you can realize that after so much indoctrination, war, fighting, division, depression, and suffering you have got to take matters into your own hands. If your choice is number one, then the best you can do is hope that what I’ve told you today is not true, or that your kids won't die in the war. However, if your choice is number two then I have some suggestions for you.

If you’re Fred, you know what you have to do. You can continue to benefit from the obscenity that is the global economic system, while the planet suffers around you, or not. If you make it business as usual really there’s nothing anybody can do to stop you because at this point you have all the power, and might right in the old view. Of course, if you do make it business as usual then you’ll have to deal with the rising guilt and shame, and the only way you’ll be able to do that is to medicate yourself to the point of stupor. It is your choice I suppose though. Join the ascending chorus of awakened and empowered humanity, or roll yourself off into a little corner somewhere and let the guilt and shame eat you up from the inside out. If it helps, consider the fact that other Freds are starting to wake up and call for the change. Warren Buffet has admitted to the class war and has even called for tax reform to begin redressing the rather stark (and growing) imbalances between the Freds of this world and everybody else. Personally, I think the changes have to go beyond simple tax reform, but Buffet’s admissions are at least a start in the right direction. He’s standing alone right now but I’m sure that others will willingly get on board before too long.

And when I say willingly, I mean willingly.

There can be no threats, duress, or force involved.

Not only is that kind of thing “old energy” and therefore fundamentally antagonistic to any new economic arrangements we might wish to develop, but the reality is Fred has way too much economic, political, media, and military power for anybody to do anything about it now. So, if Fred doesn’t want to change things, Fred doesn’t have to change things, and that is my final word.

Nevertheless, there is hope and I am confident that before too long all the Freds of this world will wake up, “see the light” and get on board. Of course, a reasonable question now might be, why would Fred willingly take action to reduce his own privilege and power? That’s a good question and there are two answers to it, one a material, and the other a spiritual.

The material reason is that even now, Fred can see “what’s coming.” The environmental costs of unfettered accumulation are profound (global warming, ecological collapse, crises in the food supply) and uncontrollable diminishment of the species (i.e. mass extinction) is a definite possibility. Just ask the declining population of bees. Things will continue to get worse and all the money in the world isn’t going to save Fred and his family. The obvious question becomes, what good is a private jet going to be when nobody is around to fly it, and nobody is around to share it with?

57

The other answer to the question is spiritual. There is, I believe, a global spiritual awakening going on and Fred is going to participate in this awakening along with everyone else, whether he likes it or not. This awakening will lead, in a very short time, to planetary “alignment.” As this alignment occurs, “old energy” economies, institutions, and life ways will begin to transform/disappear along an exponential curve. These old energy institutions will be replaced with economies, institutions, and life ways “in alignment” with the divinity within. As this happens Fred himself is going to be “pushed” forward into awareness and action by Fred himself.

He’ll either have to “make the change” and come aboard with everyone else, or suffer with debilitating levels of guilt and shame. Scoff if you like but these sorts of global transformations have happened in the past (i.e. industrial revolution, information revolution, and now spiritual revolution). Don’t take it on faith, but keep your mind open and your eyes peeled. If what I say is true, you will be able to see it with your own eyes. You’ll see growing anguish and chaos caused

by Fred’s refusal to wake up and make the changes, accompanied by expanding enlightenment and gentle (but total) transformation in institutions, politics, and finally economics.

Now if you’re not Fred, then there are a few things you can do to encourage Fred to wake up and do the right thing. One, don’t judge Fred, threaten to punish Fred, wave sticks in his face, or otherwise give Fred a reason to maintain control. If Fred thinks that “letting go” is going to lead to emotional, psychological, or physical pain and suffering, he’s not going to let go. In fact, quite the opposite is true. If Fred thinks relinquishing power is going to get him hurt, he’ll hang on for dear life (and so would you). So you cannot threaten and judge, as much as you might want to.

And besides, for all the pain and suffering that Fred has caused we still have to admit, things are [technologically] better now than they were a thousand years ago. We should thank Fred for the work he has done in building the technological marvel that is our modern world, but gently point out that the old systems are crumbling and the toxic climate it has created is ruinous to all. It may take a while for Fred to wake up and listen, but in the end we should all expect Fred to do the right thing, and thank him for doing it when he finally gets around to acting.

Two, talk about this. Spread the word far and wide. Help dispel the economic delusion and illusion that keeps us all (Fred included) on this insane treadmill. But, and this is important, do this in a way that encourages unity and oneness. If you play the old energy games and invoke devils, demons, and evil invisible lizards, you’re not part of the solution. If you do that you are only creating enemies, and only perpetuating old energy patterns. It is OK to be pissed off, and OK to expect accountability, but transformation will not come on the heels of hatred and violence, and that is my final word on the topic. If your reality is filled with anger, hatred, and violence, you are part of the problem.

Three, recognize you have a multi-faceted role to play in the transformation, especially if you live in the West. One of the rewards given to “the peasants” in the West is material wealth. We go along with The System because The System provides us with things; and since we love these things, we never pay any mind that the shirts we wear are made by exploited female labor in China, or that the food we eat is harvested by underpaid migrant workers. That is going to have to change. We’re going to have to reduce our reliance on material things, buy less commodities, and 58

redirect our wealth and energy in more “aligned” ways. It’s not that hard and besides, if there is one “lesson” that people in the West should have learned by now, it is that rampant materialism does not buy happiness. Of course, everybody has a right to healthy food, beautiful shelter, and glorious natural environments, but despite all the “things” in the West, psychological and emotional dysfunction (i.e. depression, obesity, OCD, etc.) is rampant and growing. If we don’t change, and fast, we are simply going to implode under the weight of the toxic shit hole we have created for ourselves. I don’t want to sound preachy here. In my opinion there are a lot of good reasons why we need to change, and a lot of good resources on how to change your life so I’ll leave it up to you to do the research if you so choose.

Speaking of consumerism, the most important thing you can do to support economic transformation is to support and develop a new energy economy. A new energy economy is a cash economy where the amount of money in an economy is linked to a reasonable estimation of the total amount of labor, and where the emphasis is not on product purchase, but on authentic service purchase. And by “authentic service” I don’t mean purchasing service at a restaurant from an underpaid service worker where you are really buying products (i.e. burger), or purchasing service at a car lot where you are also really buying products. By this I mean authentic service devoted to enhancing the human life experience. Services here include things like contractor services, design services, psychological services, educational services (learn how to cook, learn yoga, learn sociology), spiritual services, and so on. My wife and I are psychological counselors, for example, and we are constantly amazed at how difficult people find it to spend even small amounts of money on therapy designed to heal dysfunction and enhance well-being, but have no problem buying Cadillacs, fur coats, alcohol, cigarettes, fast food burgers, two-thousand dollar purses, and any number of other “things” unlikely to make a bobble of difference to their wellbeing. It seems people would rather spend tens of thousands on product purchase, and spend their lives in emotional and psychological misery, than invest a few hundred dollars in therapy. As therapists, we understand why. We in the West have been trained to associate happiness with product purchase. Commercials associate “happiness” with consumption, 18 and the happiest time of the year (Xmas) is a consumer frenzy of product purchase. Christmas is all about getting “things” or eating “things” or otherwise surrounding ourselves with “things.” However, if rates of psychological and emotional distress in the West are any indication, products don’t buy happiness. So give up and change your focus. Quit spending your dollars on toxic products and start directing them toward “new energy” services and things designed to enhance your life and increase your well-being, not take from it.

Finally, I just want to end this little treatise on the economy with these final words – use your discernment! There’s a lot of people offering advice, guidance, and analysis out there these days and a lot of them are pretty clueless when it comes to workable, aligned alternatives. My advice to you is, do your research, but be critical. Keep in mind this truth, any authentic alternatives that 18

Take a look at the average fast food commercial. What are they selling with their kid's meals? They are selling “happy family time.” Happiness through product purchase is nothing more than an extension of Fred's strategy for enhancing accumulation.

59

are offered must include awareness of the nature of money (i.e. a container for labor), the value of money (i.e. the amount of labor contained in the money), and the extractive functions of the system. Ungrounded discussions of “attraction” or “zeitgeist” ramblings about the technological salvation of this world through resource based economies don’t amount to a sniff of snot unless these “alternatives” display an authentic understanding of value, money, its relation to labor, and the extractive nature of The System. I mean, when you boil it right down to essence, our major problem isn't technology, ignorance, hatred, zealotry, war, sheeple, superstition, evolutionary selection, or anything like that. Our problem is that we don't understand the nature of money, we don't understand the value of money, and we have allowed ourselves to be fooled into thinking the whole thing is a complicated, esoteric, difficult to understand, and impossible to sort out ball of elastic. Our ignorance about the true nature of money is what keeps us all, Fred included, on this downward psychological, emotional, spiritual, and ecological spiral. If we want to change the world then we first have to educate people about the nature of money. Once we’ve done that then, and only then, can we all get together and come up with peaceful, inclusive, and permanent solutions to the increasingly deadly problems associated with unfettered extraction and accumulation.

Sept 10, 2013 ...

60

61

On reaching Jerusalem, Jesus entered the temple area and began driving out those who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves, and would not allow anyone to carry merchandise through the temple courts. And as he taught them, he said, "Is it not written: My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations? But you have made it a den of robbers."

The chief priests and the teachers of the law heard this and began looking for a way to kill him, for they feared him, because the whole crowd was amazed at his teaching.

Mark 11: 15-18.

62

AFTERWORD – A TURN TO HEGEL To be grateful…to Marx for his inversion of the Hegelian dialectic in the interest of an empirical understanding of human affairs does not preclude the possibility that… one might once more stand Marx on his head….Put simply, this would imply that man projects ultimate meanings into reality because that reality is, indeed, ultimately meaningful. Peter Berger, 1969: 180).

This book is about money. More to the point, this book is a revelation about the nature and purpose of money. This might sound like a big deal but really it is not. As we will see in the body of this work, there is nothing particularly esoteric or complicated about money. Despite the fact that economics texts usually do a horrible job of trying to define money, if they even bother at all, money is a simple thing. Money, as we shall see, is abstracted labor pure and simple.

Being about money, this book is also, necessarily, a criticism, not of money per say, but of the general misuse and exploitation of money. Money is a potent means of economic exchange; but it is also easy to accumulate, and the easy way you can pile money in a mattress, lock it away in a vault, or represent it as a series of numbers, makes it a peculiar and pernicious ally of greed, graft, and corruption. As we shall see, the accumulation of money is the root of the world’s evil. It is the easy way that money can be accumulated that has brought us to the brink of ecological and social disaster.

Having made this book a criticism of money is not to suggest that we need to replace money. I do not propose, as some others, that we should eliminate money, replace it with “free everything,” or develop gold or resource standards of value. None of the typical solutions would work anyway because not only are they based on a profound misunderstanding of the nature of money, a misplaced sense of the root of the problems, but they are hopelessly naïve as well. On the contrary, this book is written in honour of money, and recognizes money as the motor of modern economic development, and the foundation of an advanced modern society. Unless we are content to be a world of takers, we must always exchange our labor in a fair and equitable fashion, and for that there is nothing better than money. Indeed it is my belief that money, properly regulated, is the foundation of a future utopia. Therefore this book argues that we should embrace money for the wonderful gift that it is, but fix the problems that money has caused.

And as we will see, money has caused some problems. Money is powerful, but it is also dangerous. Money, or rather love of money leading to its accumulation, has been the root of centuries of suffering, violence, greed, graft, distortion, and corruption. In our day and age we are rapidly reaching an environmental and social wall. Global warming, high rates of psychological distress in the West, obscene levels of economic inequality, suffering, global violence, and a cyclic and deepening economic crises lead me to conclude that we either change the way we do things, or we go down with the proverbial ship. And I don’t think having a lot of money in the bank is going to help very much when the ship goes down. If the food supply collapses because 63

of a toxic meltdown in the environmental balance, the world as we know it goes away and all the money in the world won’t bring it back because, as you will understand by the end of this book, all the money in the world is useless unless you have somebody to give it to.

Important to note, because this book is short I cannot do more than point to the problems, but I don’t feel there is a need to lay out a preachy and laborious tome detailing the long list of problems we face. In this age of Internet connectivity, anybody with eyes, and a modicum of sensibility, can see the problems. The main purpose of this book is simply to link awareness of the problems with awareness of the true root of the problem, which is not human genetics, internalized pathology, essential evil, Darwinian violence, or failed evolution, but money. As we will see money, money, money (or rather the love of money) is the root of all evil.

Now of course, I am not the first one to do something like this. Karl Marx wrote a multivolume treatise on money entitled Das Capital. In that book Marx pointed out the nature of money and all the distortions to which it was given. He saw the suffering and he understood the root. Marx completed a profound exposure of money. It was an exposure that must have disturbed and upset him deeply because after writing it he felt the only solution to the problem of money was a bloody proletarian revolution (Marx & Engels, 2008). The history of the world is the history of class exploitation, he said, and the worker must rise up and put down the ruling elites! Of course, as we know, the proletarian revolution failed. The proletarian revolution, like the French revolution, didn’t solve the problem of money, it only changed the people who were accumulating it, and perpetuated the violence of elite against working class. Instead of rich Russian monarchs oppressing peasants we had rich Russian bureaucrats oppressing workers (and now, with the transition to Capitalism, rich Russian capitalists oppressing workers). Despite calls for change, the song has remained the same.

It is not surprising to me that Marx’s call for revolution failed. You can’t make new friends while riding a spitting camel and you can’t teach and instruct the masses with an obtuse three volume tome. You also can’t beget a new system with violence, because when you found a new society on violence, violent people move in and take over, and that is no good for anybody. This is the lesson of the Communist Revolution in Russia. It created a society founded on violence, rooted it in violence, and it became violent at all levels. Of course Capitalism is no better in this regard. The point here is not to point fingers, but to simply say there are no violent solutions to the problem of money, ever.

Still, consideration of solutions is necessary. By the end of this book you will hopefully clearly see the problem. When you do, questions about solutions are naturally invoked. What are we going to do about the problem, because it is a problem? If we leave it unattended we get George Orwell’s surveillance and control nightmare, 1984, in the interim, and an economic train wreck in the foreseeable future. Let the train run its course, the damage will be extensive, and the rich and poor will suffer alike. Even those sitting in first class die when the train hits the wall.

64

So what is the way forward? Personally I feel the solution is to be found in the breaking of barriers and the elimination of separation. We can’t move forward while we are at each other’s throats. We all have to realize we are all in this together and as such we have to work together to find the solution. But how is that going to happen? How do you convince the rich person to change the rules in a way that ultimately undermine their wealth, and how do you convince the working class, once they clue in to the truth, to put down their sticks and stones and let bygones be bygones.

Well, you can’t do that within current spiritual or scientific narratives. Current spiritual narratives are hierarchical, exclusionary, elitist, and violent. Current spiritual narratives are actually part of the problem, part of The System, that keeps the train running on the same “old energy” track. You can’t refer to them for solutions because they either encourage separation and duality, or encourage an “us versus them mentality” that does nothing but reinforce the duality and underwrite the situation. You can’t go to science either. There are ideological components to science and these components, rooted as they are in the strong foundation of an empirically based biology, are difficult to shake. Science may be total wrong about human nature (Sosteric, 2012), but science’s view sticks and it will take a long time to change it. Not only that, but its view of humanity as evolving ape doesn’t lend itself to hopeful utopian reverie. At the most it lends itself towards subtle ideological justification of the strong dominate the weak. Like traditional spiritual narratives it supports the world we currently live in, and since the world we currently live in seems to be in increasingly dire straits, it is of no practical help at all.

So what do we do?

The long answer is that we have to develop new narratives and new ways of conceiving humanity. We need a new spirituality, a new science. Here I would turn back to Hegel for some clues to an appropriate narrative. Hegel, an absolutely brilliant German historian, and mentor of Karl Marx believed that humans were part of a bigger picture and that despite all our greed, graft, violence, and corruption we all worked on a bigger “plan.” Hegel, not a stupid man, saw rhyme and reason in history. Hegel did not feel that history was a random collection of events. At the risk of invoking knee-jerk rejection here, Hegel saw God unfolding in history (Hegel, 2004), but not what most people might think of as God. For Hegel God’s essence was FREEDOM. The purpose of history, the purpose of humanity, was the gradual understanding of the nature and essence of this freedom, and the gradual manifestation of this freedom in the polity of the people, a manifestation that would occur as a dialectical swing of history brought humanity to ever more precise realization of the underlying historical Geist. Hegel saw human history as a gradual and inexorable movement from bondage toward freedom. He rejected the noble savage view of things (i.e. the view that we had a utopian past) and pointed out bondage to the environment and to subsistence as the anti-thesis of freedom. We are not free to do what we please while we are bound to subsistence labor twenty-four seven. At the risk of putting words into Hegel’s mouth, if we want freedom we need an environment, a technological infrastructure, a polity, and an economy devoted to this ideal.

65

For Hegel it was the realization in thought, and the manifestation in reality, of the reality of freedom, the reality of God, that was the telos of human history. According to Hegel humans struggled to realize this lofty goal. Humans struggled not only to understand freedom, to make it a part of their thinking, but also to actuate it. This gave history a trajectory and, more importantly, and end point. At some point freedom would be actuated and history, as the working out of God’s Idea, would end in full realization of the Idea in reality. It is a utopian perspective yes, but is it far more common, even in the hallowed hallways of science, then you might at first think(Noble, 1999) Of course, looking at history, and even looking at our current situation, we can see there is a problem. How do you square the rampant inequality, global crises, and psychologically and emotionally oppressive strategies of today’s governments with a grand and glorious telos? Hegel did that in a simple and elegant way by making the content of human history, a content filled with greed, graft, corruption, inequality, self-interested passion, and instinctual gratification the motor that drives us forward. According to Hegel we needed to be motivated to work. More to the point, humans didn’t do anything unless it was motivated by selfish interest and passion. As Hegel (2004) says, “We assert … that nothing has been accomplished without an interest on the part of those who brought it about. And if ‘interest’ be called ‘passion’ – because the whole individuality is concentrating all its desires and powers, with every fibre of volition, to the neglect of all other actual or possible interests and aims, on one object – we may then affirm without qualification that nothing great in the world has been accomplished without passion.”

For Hegel human self-interest and passion was what drove the history of this world. Hegel would say that yes, it appears, on the surface, that we are just these violent apes, these unwashed masses, the greedy and powerful “great men” and women, but underneath all we are really working on the same thing, the realization of Freedom. The history of the world, says Hegel, is the history of a growing global Freedom.

Now Hegel had some interesting things to say about the conditions of Freedom, and I want to add some things to Hegel. Most important was that Hegel saw a strong state as the essential prerequisite of Freedom. People would always be engaged in self-interested behaviours thought Hegel, it was the nature of the beast, but a state could manage those interests and harmonize those interests and create conditions whereby the freedom of one person did not overrule the freedom of another. The goal of Freedom, contrary to the neo-con view, was a strong state. It was an essential feature. It is worth letting Hegel speak for himself here.

From this comment on the second essential element in the historical embodiment of an aim, we infer – considering for a moment the institution of the state – that a state is then well constituted and internally vigorous when the private interest of its citizens is one with the common interest of the state, and the one finds gratification and realization in the other – a most important proposition. But in a state many institutions are necessary – inventions, appropriate arrangements, accompanied by long intellectual struggles in order to find out what is really appropriate, as well as struggles with private interests and passions, which must be harmonized in difficult 66

and tedious discipline. When a state reaches this harmony, it has reached the period of its bloom, its excellence, its power and prosperity. But world history does not begin with any conscious aim, as do the particular circles of men. Already the simple instinct of living together contains the conscious purpose of securing life and property; once this primal society has been established, the purpose expands. But world history begins its general aim – to realize the idea of Spirit – only in an implicit form (an sich), namely, as Nature – as an innermost, unconscious instinct.

And the whole business of history, as already observed, is to bring it into consciousness.

I have to agree with Hegel here that a strong state is necessary; not the kind of state they had in Russia, but the kind of pluralistic and democratic state that ensures the interests of all groups are met. We need a pluralistic democracy, and a participatory state. It’s not something we have now, of course. Now we have a state controlled by a single group of people (the rich and powerful). We have a situation where the power of the state is used not to further the interests of God and Freedom, but a state used in the service of private interests. This is not necessarily a bad thing.

According to Hegel history moves like a swinging pendulum, from thesis to anti-thesis and back again, always leading to greater understanding, and always moving us towards the lofty telos of Freedom. If Hegel is right at some point we’ll all wake up to the truth, realize the situation, and use our experiences and insight to build the state that we need, that we are driven, to build.

Beyond the state I think there are other requirements of Freedom. Education is one. We need to educate each new generation to high standards of wisdom and insight. Educating the masses has always been a problem of course. It costs money to educate and so education has always been something that only people with a certain amount of money can enjoy. That’s changing though.

Technology has reached a point where mass education of the planet is possible. As an educator myself I can see the global potential of Moodles, Moocs, and Soocs to smash the barriers and bring education to the masses thereby elevating the planet like never before. We live at the cusp of a profound revolution, but not a violent one.

Technology is another requirement of Freedom. Hegel noted that bondage to subsistence did not a freeman make, but neither did bondage to factories, or offices, or boardrooms. If humanity wants to be free to pursue its passions, the basic tasks of survival, the basic foundation of prosperity, has to be technological. Technology has to be developed to a point where the human race as a totality can be freed from the bondage of substance. That point has been reached. We live in a world where our technological prowess is enough to free the world from the bitter bondage of production. Factories and farms would still exist, but the need for long hours, sweatshop conditions, and economic bondage no longer hold. The work week can be reduced, unnecessary activities can be dropped, and the world can be brought forward into a realm where work no longer serves the interest of accumulation, and labor is no longer alien and alienating.

State, education, and productive technology, it is the development of these to the point of perfection that brings us to the bloom of Spirit and the end of history. The only problem? Well, that’s identified in this book, the Rocket Scientists’ Guide to Money and the Economy. The 67

problem is that money is easy to accumulate and this accumulation of money, which is also the accumulation of labor as we shall see, has led us into temptation. Not that accumulation per se is a bad thing. Big fat bank accounts allow capitalists to invoke massive capital projects, and these capital projects are an essential feature of a free and modern world. But accumulation is out of control. In the swing of the pendulum to the right we can see the benefits of being able to abstract and control labor, but the arc and anti-thesis has been reached and we either swing back to the middle, or crash the train against the wall.

So how do we move forward from this point? Well I think at this point we have reached the end of history and so now the only thing for us to do is wake up, understand the Idea, actuate the full potential, and finally and forever stop the pendulum swing. And I have to say that we all have a part to play, and a decision to make. Rich or poor, black or white, male or female, we need to make a choice. We can either stay on the pendulum swing of history, moving back and forth between thesis and anti-thesis, struggling in that way we do to live the best life we can, and staying somnambulistic and unconscious cogs in the, now redundant, dialectic of history, or we can step of the wheel and actuate utopia. If we choose to stay on the Wheel then I fear the denouement is close at hand. Humanity will continue on, but the progress we have made will be figuratively (and in some cases literally) submerged by the ecological, emotional, and psychological disasters that loom just ahead. On the other hand if we choose to move forward, to admit the telos and see “the plan” then we can step off the Wheel, focus our attention on the problem (i.e. accumulation and debt) and, with a wave of the magical legislative wand, fix it and usher in utopia for all.

Ridiculous?

Balderdash?

Hopelessly naïve?

Foolishly utopian?

Certainly if one believes the propaganda, it is. If history is the random result of evolutionary chance, if we are apes emerging out of a violent and competitive past, if we are hopelessly dashing ourselves against a natural world devoid of reason and rationality, if we are ejected sinners, unworthy peons of a totalitarian cosmic order, there is no hope. If this is the case, then the best we can do is hope that our “leaders” are able to mitigate the growing damage, and continue to be able to functionally support global economies despite the growing weight of debt and disaster. On the other hand if history is more than mere random chance, if we aren’t savage apes engage in empty evolution, if we aren’t mere ejected sinners, or karmic rejects, if there is something more that we are working towards, if there is an end to history, then maybe we can point to the world as it is now, where the technological and economic infrastructure of society is capable of delivering global satisfaction and utopia, and say this is that point if we but make the right choice. The bottom line is this. We are at the end of history and we need to wake up and recognize we’re all in the same boat, working towards the same goal, or we’re sunk plain and 68

simple. Returning to the idealism of Hegel is a move in the right direction. Extending Hegel’s narrative, and the narrative of others, in an inclusive, democratic, egalitarian, and free direction, is the work ahead.

Of course, there will be objections. When Marx stripped Hegel’s dialectical process of the geist and made the dialectic a vacuous technical process, his criticisms were valid. For all his brilliance, Hegel was a bit short sighted in some areas. He viewed religion and the state as quintessential expressions of the Plan (Hegel, 2004), but conveniently ignored the fact that religion and the state can be made to function like weapons against the poor (Marx, 1970, 1978).

Religion is the opiate of the masses, the state is an agent of class oppression, and the history of the world is the history of class struggle. Similarly some views of Spirit miss the mark, and by a long shot. Hegel was blind to the abuses of religion and power and many people are blind to the immaturity and silliness of their own spiritual faiths. But does this mean there is nothing there, or that science cannot investigate, or that the verdict is conclusively in favour of an empty physical ‘verse? Not by a long shot. Spirituality, religion, philosophical thought about the essence of our reality may often miss the mark and be about everything but what they profess to be about (Sosteric, 2013a, 2013b, Work in Progress), but there is something there worth investigating, and I’m not the first academic to say it (Castaneda, 1996; James, 1982; Maslow, 1959). Hegel said there was something “behind history” and it may very well be that proper apprehension and expression, followed by cooperative manifestation and actuation of whatever it is behind history, is the only way off the sinking ship.

Of course, proper apprehension and expression of the Geist is way beyond the scope of this work.

This work is about money and the goal of the book is simply to reveal the nature of money, the root of our collective troubles, and the simple solution. And really our problem here isn’t the solution, because that’s easy, the problem is convincing everybody that we need to put aside our differences and work together to implement the solution and bring history to its inevitable end.

And please understand, there is no violent solution here. Forcing ourselves upon people and taking things from them violently only leads to more violence, the anti-thesis of Freedom and happiness. Violence means another tortuous and century long swing of the pendulum, and personally I don’t think we’ll survive that swing, at least not in a way that any of us would find enjoyable. Therefore it comes down to a question of voluntary choice. Having been presented with the issues clearly, having seen “the light” and understood the geist, what are you going to do? Do you continue on in the old ways hoping that random evolutionary advance, or divine salvation from above, is going to save this sinking ship, or do you, rich or poor, black or white, male or female, embrace the solution, embrace your power, and make the changes you need to make. There’s no point in shooting the messenger! Personally I don’t care what choice you make, because it is your conscious you have to deal with. But I will say this, if Hegel was right if there is an underlying movement to history, and if this movement is as powerful and inexorable as it must be to have brought us to this point, than I can say with a certain degree of confidence that resistance is probably futile. If the time has come to end history, the Geist will find a way and you 69

can either swim over to the new ship and get on board with the program or, rich or poor, sink beneath the violent waves of a reality slowly crumbling.

Sept. 17, 2013.

70

71

References Castaneda, C. (1996). The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge, 40th Anniversary Edition. New York: Washington Square Press.

Hegel, G. W. F. (2004). The Philosophy of History. New York: Dover Publications.

James, W. (1982). The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study of Human Nature . New York: Penguin.

Marx, K. (1970). A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Marx, K. (1978). The German Ideology. In R. Tucker (Ed.), The Marx-Engels Reader. New York: Norton.

Marx, K., & Engels, F. (2008). The Communist Manifesto. Oxford: Oxford Paperbacks.

Maslow, A. H. (1959). Cognition of being in the peak experiences. The Journal of Genetic Psychology, 94, 43.

Noble, D. (1999). The Religion of Technology: The Divinity of Man and the Spirit of Invention. New York: Penguin.

Sosteric, M. (2012). Ding Dong the Alpha Male is Dead. The Socjourn.

Sosteric, M. (2013a). The Sociology of Religion - An Introduction. St. Albert, Alberta: Socjourn.

Sosteric, M. (2013b). Sociology or Religion: Athabasca University Course. Athabasca, Alberta: Athabasca University.

Sosteric, M. (Work in Progress). The Sociology of Religion: A Mystical and Scientific Approach.

72

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Michael Sharp is a Sociologist with a specialization in psychology, religion, occult studies, social inequality, scholarly communication, and critical theory. After a dramatic crown chakra opening caused him to question the materialist foundation of modern science, he began exploring the spiritual and mystical side of life. Recognizing early the presence of elitism and patriarchy in the world's religious and “secret” traditions, he began creating a new, open system of mysticism free of the opportunistic bias in “old energy” systems. The Lightning Path TM is the culmination of his research and work.

Visit Michael at www.michaelsharp.org .

73

74

ABOUT THE LIGHTNING PATH The Lightning Path (or simply LP for short) is an intellectual, emotional, psychological, and spiritual system of awakening and empowerment (a “mystery school” if you like, but without all the useless mystery) designed to help you get off the sinking ship of the old world and make “the shift” into an awakened, activated, and ascended state of existence. It is sophisticated, powerful, logical, grounded, metaphorically rigorous, rational, intellectually, politically sophisticated, empirically verifiable, authentic, effective, and accessible to everyone regardless of race, class, or gender. No requirements are set for entry and no judgments are made in passage.

The Lightning Path is organized into various levels or “grades.” LP teachings start at the Core level and move through Intermediate, Advanced, Mentor, and Post-secondary levels of study.

•

For more information please visit http://www.thelightningpath.com/shop/

•

To become a student of the LP and get access to all study packages, books, supporting materials, articles, audio, and so forth, visit http://www.thelightningpath.com/register/

•

To download the Lightning Path introductory booklet for free, visit http://www.thelightningpath.com/gifts/

75

OTHER BOOKS IN THE ROCKET SCIENCE SERIES RSG to Authentic Spirituality • Print ISBN 978-1-897455-12-8 • eBook ISBN 978-1-897455-13-5 RSG to Spiritual Discernment • Print ISBN 978-1-897455-16-6 • eBook ISBN 978-1-897455-17-3

76