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Creating a Great Culture -
Part 2 By Richard Kieninger While it is important to
preserve technology, establish a highly cultured Lemurian Civilization, and
preserve those aspects of contemporary and past cultures which are known to
be conducive to civilized relationships it is also important to selectively
eliminat those things that are useless and disintegrative. One of the aspects
critical to a sound culture is its economic system. A culture’s economic
system can allow for great freedom of its citizens or it can quickly lead to
tyranny. The present issue will explore this aspect of culture. We will
include what must be present in order for a society to have a sound economic
system, examples of civilizations which enjoyed prosperity (including the
Lemurian), what our founding fathers endeavored to protect the united States
against, how we currently operate in the US and how the economic system in
the Nation of God will operate. Having a sound economic
system instills a sense of security and allows people to devote more time to
developing themselves and to spend time with their families. For the past
20,000 years, the Brotherhoods have studied and maintained records of the
factors leading to the rise and fall of civilizations. Dr. White explained to
Richard, “All money transactions involve the exchange of karmic credits and
must be handled with great respect and care. Everyone must eventually realize
that all business is divine activity; and because government is business, it
too falls under the same classification and deserves conscientious attention
to moral considerations and economic efficiency” (TUF 9th ed. 142). What is Money? A faulty economic system
can break a culture in less than a generation. To better understand economic systems,
we need first to understand what money is. Money originally meant
coins, especially the coins made by a government-owned mint The word money
included gold, silver and base-metal coins. As time passed, gold and silver
certificates and bank notes were issued and were redeemable in gold or silver
coins. Because the paper certificates and notes were interchangeable with
coins and served the same purpose as coins (money), people began to call them
paper money, and in recent years, just money. Items that serve
as media of exchange can mean any of many documents, such as gold or silver
certificates, Federal Reserve notes, United States notes or other bank notes.
All of these are paper documents, but there is a great deal of difference
between these documents, even though they may all serve as media of exchange. Constitutional Money
Our founding fathers
experienced the tyrannical abuses of international bankers firsthand and
sought to instill in our system safeguards against such abuses. Article I,
sect. 8 of the United States Constitution provides for the Congress to have
the power to coin money and to emit bills of credit (government-issued
unredeemable notes which were intended to be used as currency). Legal Tender and Lawful Money
Just because Congress later
declared United States notes to be lawful money, the notes did not become
lawful money, i.e., they did not become lawfully made coins. Further, the
Constitution did not give Congress the power to declare anything to be a
legal tender as opposed to lawful money. In 1933 Congress, without the
authority from the U.S. Constitution, applied legal tender qualities to
Federal Reserve notes which were not lawful money, although they circulated
as currency. The writers of the
Constitution knew that inflations of the currency occurred because the
Continental Congress and the States had declared the continental currency and
State-issued bills of credit to be legal tender. The changeable and
unpredictable legal-tender laws in the USA by government officials make
people who sign contracts for future payments in legal tender to be unsure of
the exchange value of that future payment. It may or may not be a just
payment. The members of Congress did not receive from the Constitution the
right to pass laws to legalize unjust settlement of debts. The Coinage Act of 1965
made token coins of copper and nickel alloy legal tender. It also made the
United States notes legal tender even after the phrases “at its face value”
and “Will pay to the bearer on demand” were removed. The same act made the
Federal Reserve notes legal tender even after removing the phrases “and is
redeemable in lawful Money at the United States Treasury or at any Federal
Reserve Bank” and “Will pay to the bearer on demand.” Undesirable Media of Exchange
Experience has taught us
that when we use as media of exchange token coins, notes, certificates, bills
and demand deposits with undesirable qualities, the people are burdened at
times with deflations, inflations, general unemployment, poverty, and always
with economic uncertainty and ever-increasing interest-bearing debts. Federal Reserve Notes have
no desirable qualities. They are loaned into circulation. An interest-bearing
debt is incurred to bring them into circulation. They are not redeemable for
anything. They are not bona fide notes since a note is written evidence of a
promise to pay. Federal Reserve Notes give no such evidence. Desirable Media of Exchange
When coins, notes, or
certificates are redeemable for goods or services, no inflation of the media
of exchange will occur and no governmental body is needed to control the
amount issued. When those who issue the media of exchange do so in good
faith, no one will obtain an unearned gain and no one will incur an
undeserved loss from such issues. The following are the desirable qualities
in the items that serve as media of exchange: 1.
They are to be paid into circulation (rather than borrowed); 2.
They are to be redeemable for goods and services or as payment for taxes; 3.
When demand deposits are used as media of exchange, they are to have 100%
cash reserves on deposit in the bank. Fractional Reserve System
In the USA, we currently
operate under the fractional reserve system. let us suppose that the First
City Bank opens up for business with $50,000 worth of currency in its vault. Now let us have 25
borrowers come in, one at a time, each one borrowing $10,000 in the form of
demand deposits (i.e., checking accounts). The bank now has made $250,000
worth of loans, but it still has the $50,000 in cash in its vault. The
$50,000 is the fraction which the bank holds in cash as the reserve for the
$250,000 loans made in the form of demand deposits. When we divide the
$250,000 into the $50,000, it equals 20%. So this bank would say that it held
20% cash reserves for its demand deposit accounts. By levying more taxes and
passing an ever-greater number of laws which increase manufacturers’ costs,
it takes an increasing number of hours a laborer must work in order to live. All
of the thousands of laws which are passed every year in our country further
serve to hold us hostage. By creating innumerable restrictions and
requirements on manufacturers, they are hard pressed to make a profit; hence,
most of our major companies have gone to other countries, where they can
operate at much lower cost. By piling as many as 50 taxes on every
good we purchase, our lives are consumed with earning wages rather than
learning and growing, being effective parents, focusing on health, or perhaps
donating our skills to society. Spend Money into Circulation
When money is borrowed into
circulation (as is the case in the U.S.) rather than spent into circulation,
the system is losing from the very beginning. When a governmental body
borrows the media of exchange it needs from private citizens and corporations
and banks by way of bonds and Treasury Bills, it incurs interest-bearing
debts whether the media borrowed are coins, notes, certificates, or bank
credit Such a governmental body is not a free, sovereign body. A sovereign
governmental body does not have to borrow from anyone. Also, when private
corporations and individuals who produce and distribute goods and services
depend entirely on governmental bodies for the media of exchange they need, they
are not a free people. Their economic activities are controlled by the
actions or lack of actions of government officials or bankers. Middle Ages
For example, contrary to
what our educational system teaches us about the Middle Ages in Europe, it
was a prosperous, productive period in history. In the Middle Ages (the four
centuries lasting from the 1200s through the 1500s), life was good. A laborer
could provide all the necessities for his family for a year by working 14
weeks. The rest of the time he could do as he pleased. Great cathedrals were
built all over Germany, France and England during that period. People
volunteered their labor to build these massive structures. When they worked,
they were very well paid. Every working man was clothed in good woolen cloth
and had plenty of food. A prime reason for their lasting prosperity was that
people neither took usury nor gave it. There was no pressure of “due bills.”
The municipal banks, the creation of the people, fought usury banks tooth and
nail. It was not until the advent of Napoleon, the hatchet man of the usury
bankers, that municipal banks were shut down permanently. All wealth
ultimately is created by human labor and, as such, labor can be used as a
basis for a currency. For example, during the Great Depression of the 1930s,
the mayor of Worgl, Austria, decided that he would print notes, which he
called “tickets for services rendered,” with which he paid people working on
a bridge and a drainage project The town council then made a decree that the townspeople
could use the same script to pay local taxes. Every note changed hands twenty
or more times in the first month of the new monetary process. So successful was the
scheme that other towns began to use it, and entire areas of Austria were
lifted out of poverty inside of three months and boosted to prosperity in one
year. The prosperity was too much
for bankers since they were being bypassed. When 200 mayors proposed to adopt
the system, the central bank in Austria cracked down by appealing to the
courts, who promptly declared the local currencies unconstitutional. Lemuria and the Nation of God
In Lemuria, prices of goods
remained essentially the same for thousands of years because inflation did
not occur. Savings still had the same purchasing power fifty years after
being deposited. Homes were built to last many generations, and an
automobile, for instance, was made to last at least the lifetime of its
owner. When Philadelphia is declared to be the Nation of God after October AA
2001, a new economic system will begin there. Instead of banks, the nation
will have a central treasury. Money will be backed by all the capital goods
and physical wealth rather than gold. As homes, hard goods, factories and
commodities depreciate with age or are destroyed, then an equivalent amount
in labor credits (money) are removed from circulation. The amount of money vis-à-vis the value of all the
physical items in the commonwealth thus remains equal; so no inflation
occurs. When an automobile is built, the value of human labor to produce the
construction materials and its assembly are paid into the economy by wages.
This is about the same as the money needed to buy it (there is a 12% profit
added). As the car is used up over its projected life or is scrapped, its declining
value is reflected in reduced availability of money in circulation by being
withheld by the treasury. A Commerce Tithe will be
paid by corporations to build and maintain manufacturing plants, buy
machinery, provide transportation equipment, pay distribution costs, and
maintain marts—all of these being owned by the commonwealth. Capital items
are to be owned by the commonwealth to be made available to profit-making
corporations and individual tradesmen and farmers. Two individual tithes
(each 10% of income) will be donated by all Citizens: one tithe to operate
educational facilities in accord with God’s law, the other to pay costs of
municipal services received and for defense. By practicing the law of Tithes
from its inception, the nation will be assured of prosperity. Usury and taxes
will not exist. By having a central mart system of distribution, shoddy goods
will be eliminated due to the absence of competition. “Only companies who
produce superior goods at a reasonable price will be permitted to sell their
goods in the mart. The mart will be operated by a producers’ co-operative
which will sell all items at a markup of 12 percent” (TUF. 9th ed. 145). Peace and Security Are
Essential to Prosperity Criminals, terrorists and
warlords are well aware of the coercive power of violence. Law-abiding
citizens often don’t understand that laws are merely wishes on a piece of
paper unless there is sufficient power to enforce them. Violence can only be
bettered by superior force, not by good intentions. What is yours by man-made
rights and justice is yours only as long as you or someone else can protect
it for you. There are no property rights in Nature. The chief deterrent to
predatory violence is the threat of even greater force. To achieve peace, a
society must find ways to muster enough force to curtail the incentives to
use violence to take whatever one wants from whoever has it. To police
predation effectively, some group must exclusively control the physical means
to overpower anyone. Superior weapons are the primary tools that determine
the effectiveness of civilian police or an army to employ superior violence
for the protection of a populace. If criminals become armed with the superior
weapons, they soon become the government; and you would have to apply to them
for loans or for permission to park your car. This has to a great extent
happened in Columbia, where the drug cartel has more firepower than the
government. In some urban neighborhoods of the USA, the police have lost
control and dare not even enter. Democracy and equality are
primitive, matriarchal realities. They were not ideas thought up by the
ancient Greeks. The Greeks merely codified such concepts in their laws.
Hunting-gathering societies are made up of individuals who are equally armed
with primitive hunting weapons and so have equal power. That was also the
case among the Greek hoplites—the soldiers who were independent land owners
that could afford to buy their own weapons, which were very expensive.
Because he was heavily armed, and because defense of the nation depended on
close cooperation with his equals, he could not be ignored. Greek notions of
liberty and a democratic vote were not extended to everybody. Women, slaves
and the poor had no voice in politics. Power was held only by the men who had
the military means to enforce their claim to it. They all stood in defense of
fair property rights since that was the source of their individual political
and military strength. Even in the USA, liberty depends on the citizens
having modem arms in their homes. The stability of democratic systems has
always rested on an underlying military equality of the citizen electorate. In most of the world’s
history, only a king or warlord had soldiers and weapons. Everyone else was a
serf or slave owned by the man who controlled the army. As agriculture became
established around the world, people abandoned the nomadic way of life and
grew grain in plots of land that took much effort to prepare for crops.
People settled permanently in one place; and since it took half a year of
hard work to sow, cultivate and harvest their crop, they wanted to protect
the fruits of their labor from those who preferred to steal food rather than
work for it. The stores of grain were always a temptation to pillage—not only
by locals but also by outside raiders. The solution to their problem was
either to mount a cooperative defense among all the local farmers when there
was a raid or else to feed and equip a permanent armed force that better
guaranteed full-time protection. The latter option proved
more effective, but it usually didn’t take long for the leader of the armed
force to realize that the army could rule the unarmed farmers and that he
could levy taxes and obtain personal privileges for himself and become king.
In a generation or two, this became so institutionalized that the king owned
everything and everybody. This eventually became the case in almost the whole
world. The temptation was always there
for a warlord to use his army to expand the territory he ruled by making war
on weaker neighbors and smaller armies, for it was self-evident that more
serfs meant more riches to support a larger, more powerful army. Thus empires
in the Middle East and Far East and then Europe came about. A side benefit of
this trend was that the larger the empire, the more secure the public safety.
The resources for large public works like irrigation in Mesopotamia and Egypt
benefited the farmer, and cities became feasible. However, there was no
freedom for anyone and no democratic or republican forms of government. The
ruler could do anything he wanted with anyone. These empires could last
for centuries, but innovations of superior weaponry in the hands of other kings
could bring empires down. If an empire disintegrated simply because of
internal corruption and dissention, a number of smaller sovereign governments
would follow. But then trade would suffer because the confusion of many
different rules and imposts in crossing many borders makes a snarl of
everything. The more and smaller the units that exercise sovereign power, the
greater the number of transactions that will be hung up, stifling economic
growth. Historically, the breakdown
of a large political entity has led to criminal violence and economic decline
in its smaller successors. Generally speaking, the larger the scale over
which order can be exercised, the more conducive it is to progress. This is
not to say that small systems can’t outperform large ones, but they need to
have safe avenues for outside trade in order to obtain internally unavailable
raw materials and to have markets for their products to earn the money to buy
those raw materials. Prosperity can occur
only where the negative effects of violence can be minimized. An important
element in the growth of prosperity in Western Civilization since the 15th
Century was the evolution of institutions that reduced the risks of trade:
among which are a legal system designed to give predictable rather than
arbitrary decisions, bills of exchange which facilitate the transfer of money
and credit for commercial transactions, an insurance market, and the change
of governmental revenue systems from discretionary expropriation to
systematic taxation. These institutions all depend on internal and
international legal and court systems to enforce them and also upon the
threat of force of arms or embargo against a nation that doesn’t keep its
traders in line. The principal reason poor countries are poor is because they
lack a crucial element required for economic development—a stable government
that reliably provides law and order, impartially protects private property,
and enforces contracts. But this is not to say that the poor countries don’t
have laws to accomplish these things; it’s that they can’t or don’t enforce
them. Another major factor in a
nation’s prosperity is partly cultural and partly economic. A people who have
come to eschew violence makes them more fit for commerce, and the long
success of commerce tends to reinforce this taboo on violence. When a
person’s life is secure by having sufficient wealth to provide all his needs,
he is prone to protect the system that provides it. The more stable a
society, the greater will be its store of liquid monetary assets relative to
its tangible assets. These money assets can be in the form of cash, stocks,
bonds and other investments. Confidence in the safety of funds when invested
outside the owner’s hands depends on long-standing stability and the
reliability of the courts enforcing contracts so one can be reasonably
assured that money entrusted to others will be repaid. The richest countries
are those that have the highest percentage of liquid monetary assets. A sound constitution has
great economic value. A constitution will be honored in broad measure as long
as the rules continue to pay off for those who have the power to change them.
Economic decline is destabilizing because then the incentive to abide by the
rules of society falls as well. Although physical force is the ultimate
determinant of the rules by which a society operates, the goodwill and
strength of ethics of its citizens will do more to preserve economic and
political stability than armed force. A man will invest his money
in his personal future only if he judges that the future will be essentially
the same as or better than the soundness of monetary conditions in the
present. If he perceives that stability is on a long-range decline, he will
spend now before money loses its purchasing power and not invest, or he will
try to emigrate to a place that is more secure. For security, we rely on
sound money, following God’s law of Tithes, a just and effective legal system
dedicated to upholding a good constitution, a strong police force, and a moral
citizenry keeping arms. If any of these is missing, there can be no lasting
prosperity. I place economy among the first and most important
virtues, and public debt as the greatest of dangers... We must make our
choice between economy and liberty, or profession and servitude. If we can
prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the
pretense of caring for them, they will be happy. Thomas
Jefferson
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