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Building a
Sustainable Economy from the Ground Up
“Plague is throughout the land… blood is everywhere.
The land turns round as does a potter’s wheel…Earth turned upside down ..land upside down; happens that which never [yet]
had happened. The river is blood. Men shrink from tasting; human beings
thirst after water. That is our water! That is our happiness. What shall we
do in respect thereof? All is ruin. Cattle are left to stray, and there is
none to gather them together. Trees are destroyed… No fruits, no herbs are
found… hunger… Grain has perished on every side… that has perished
which yesterday was seen. The land is left to its weariness like the cutting of flax. Gates,
columns, and walls are consumed by fire. The sky is
in confusion. “All animals, their hearts weep… Cattle moan… It is
groaning that is throughout the land, mingled with lamentations… The land is
not light… men flee… Tents are what they make, like the dwellers of hills… Years of noise. There is no end to the noise. Oh, that the
earth would cease from noise, and tumult be no more…
Great and small say “I wish I might die”… He who
places his brother in the ground is everywhere. Those who are in the place of
embalmment are laid on high ground. The children of
princes are dashed against the wall… children of princes are cast out in the
streets… the prison is ruined. Public offices are opened
and the census-lists are taken away… the laws of the judgement
hall are cast forth… men walk upon [them] in the public places… the
storehouse of the Kind is the common property of everyone… Behold, the fire
has mounted up on high.” Such
was the experience of the people living in Devastating
as this natural catastrophe was, however, the survivors did rebuild and again
take their place in the region, albeit never again as rulers of the world. The
approaching natural disasters will not be so localized.
According to Dr. White, in The Ultimate Frontier “All the volcanoes of the world will burst forth,
and a host of new ones will join them. Vast quantities of heavy gasses like
carbon dioxide and sulfur dioxide will be hurtled into the stratosphere by
the erupting volcanoes. The gasses will become supercooled in the outer
reaches of the atmosphere and then descend upon the surface of the Earth in
convection currents of such magnitude that hurricane winds will howl over the
face of the world. The skies will be filled with
dust and choking fumes so that even the sun will not be seen directly for
months. Walls of water a thousand feet high will roar across the submerging
land and sweep away everything before them. Sea and land animals, vegetation,
silt, and sand will be shredded into jumbled muck.
Where soil is not washed away, it will be covered by
boulders and stone; and the newly exposed sea bottom will be worthless
for growing crops. The stench of decay and the bleak destruction everywhere
will drive many human survivors hopelessly insane.” Introduction Given
the myriad aspects of rebuilding, we must choose one aspect at a time. In
this article we present information about a little understood cornerstone of
human existence—economics. We are going to build, from scratch, an economic
system that directly supports Egoic growth by employing the principles of
Lemurian economics. We hope that the information presented here will be used by
others to structure and govern their economic affairs and thereby solve many
of the problems that have plagued mankind for
millennia. A Brief History of the World’s Economies Regardless
of the size of a group of farmers occupying a given piece of land, they do
not become a nation until they organize economically. A collection of farmers
and tradesmen will stagnate in a primitive state of poverty for generations
and live little better than the animals they tend unless trade is promoted in a positive manner. Looting of the producers
first by warlords and then by an entrenchment of an aristocratic class is the
usual fate of primitive economies, of which there are thousands of examples.
Those in power grab everything of value, leaving nothing for investment in
the succeeding generations. In
those early days when wandering nomads settled down and lived “off the land,”
there were no commercial exchanges in today’s sense of the word. Food was harvested and consumed, and clothing and shelter were
created and used from locally available materials. Everyone spent most of
their waking hours to feed and protect themselves just to stay alive. As
civilization slowly crawled out of the last stone age, the food producers
gradually increased their efficiencies to the level where they could feed
more than just their own family. The question of how best to use the excess
production then came up. This was answered by
employing small organizations to tend to the budding civilization’s water
supply, food distribution and defense. And the food
producers fed them all! Before
long, the need was seen for a common denominator (money) for goods valuation,
as sometimes a bartering person couldn’t immediately
find what he needed in even exchange for what he had to offer. Attitude
Is Everything Out
of the need for order comes the possibility of either despair or of
rebuilding to restore order. Post World War II Their
productivity soared incredibly as they built their
economy into one of the strongest in the world out of the sheer momentum of
their creativity and the encouragement of seeing the progress they were
making. The visual evidence of their advancement was seen
as those cities that had been pounded to rubble were completely rebuilt in
about fifteen years, all with modern structures and brand new roads.
Everything was changed for the better. A
people’s spirit has to soar under circumstances like that. They learned how to really work, how to make every hour pay off, despite
the fact that cleaning up the cities was largely volunteer work. Cornerstones
of Lemurian Economics Education System Economic Stability There
will be no banks. The central treasury will hold personal, corporate and
state cash and provide checking services and international trade accounts.
There will be no lending at interest, and no fractional reserves, the result
being that the cost of housing will be about one-fifth the cost in the A Currency with Intrinsic Value Most
of the civilizations that declined in the past were beset by financial woes
usually brought about by the extravagance of their rulers first and then by
the citizens as a consequence. The governments then created more money, with
the end result being inflation, which is the
increase of money beyond the value of the goods in the national asset base. When people see that the purchasing power of their money is
declining, the incentive to save is gone. If they cannot get ahead by careful
living, long-term saving, and hard work, they go for the short-term
opportunity, fearing that the money should be spent
while it still has value. Many
virtues flow from sound money—among them honesty and steady, long-term
effort. Periods of unsound money lead to moral degradation and economic hard
times. Sound money has been a basis of every successful civilization. Profit and
Distribution A
very efficient Mart System was used in Lemuria, and
it will be reinstituted in the Nation of God. This is where there is only one
distribution system, and only one mart in each town from which to buy things.
The Mart System eliminates all the middlemen and
controls all distribution — transportation from the factory, warehousing, and
moving the goods to all the stores throughout the nation. All agricultural
products will also be distributed that way, so true
parity will obtain in the agricultural markets, assuring the farmer of his
true profits. Having
just one store saves a great deal of money. Currently, each store, say a
furniture company or an industrial supply company, has a large stock which might not be called on for many months at a
time. That warehouse space has to be figured into
the cost. There may be shrinkage or deterioration as well. With
the Lemurian System, the idea was that the maximum size of a city was 250
thousand persons, and generally there were no more
than eight miles on a side, which means the centrally located mart would
never be more than four miles from any person’s home. They had a delivery
system, which we also expect to recreate. A person didn’t
have to go to a store; they just telephoned an order of what they wanted and
had the goods delivered. In the Nation of God, if you want to select
ready-made clothing or see the available hardware items for one of your
projects, you can go to the Mart, which will be like a large department store
in the Nation of God. Interest
is also a major expense for each store. In the Lemurian System, there was no
interest charged on anything. Interest charges were completely
illegal because they do not fit in with karmic law. Given the fact
that the inability to pay interest on vast debts is a major cause of
bankruptcy in many nations, probably including the Management and Labor Cooperation If a
person does not share the American immigrant’s hunger for ownership of real
estate, he is not driven to exhaust himself
gathering possessions and fighting to get to the top income brackets. He can
then feel free to cooperate rather than compete with his fellows, and the whole basic attitude of what is important to him begins to
change. One
big difference that will immediately be noticed in
the Nation of God is that people in business will be motivated by the fun of
turning their energy and talent into a profit for themselves. People enjoy
certain kinds of challenges, e.g., seeing if they can bring a price down,
performing more efficiently, gaining a larger market, etc. Money may be a
convenience and a reward, but it’s not the prime
motivation for healthy, energetic people. As for material wealth, it is anticipated that after a few generations the very best
products will be available to everyone and that everyone will soon live like
a millionaire but would not require a millionaire’s income in order to enjoy
those advantages.
Individual
Responsibilities
As a result of years of erroneous religious teachings, many of us have come to
feel that economics is too commercialistic a study to undertake when striving
toward a spiritual goal. We seem to forget that an empty stomach and a leaky
roof—or lack of a roof—are hardly conducive to that
peace of mind essential to Egoic advancement. As long as we must have food, clothing,
and shelter, money plays an important role in our daily affairs. It was the
love of money against which Christ cautioned mankind,
for money in itself is neither good nor bad. It is the use to which it is put that determines its effect. Used for good, it
becomes good. In the Nation of God, there shall never be a tax on
the individual citizen. There will be the expectation that everyone will
contribute ten percent of their income to provide for the various municipal
services and governmental services that benefit everyone. There will also be
an expectation that each individual will tithe another ten percent of his
income to the work of God, which is essential to the educational system.
Ongoing education of adults and children will be the basis of the high-level
advancement and the continuation of that advancement in the Nation of God. Corporate Responsibilities So
public ownership of natural resources will help minimize effects of human
greed, and high-quality products will end what we know as “planned
obsolescence”. What
must and will be avoided in government in the Nation
of God is the ideology of the total state with its inherent threat to
personal freedoms. A free economy meets the needs of people in the most
effective way. What people need and want are best met historically by the
profit motive of industry. Farmers and factories
produce whatever customers want. Government is to serve, not rule, and it
will be set up to monitor against profiteering and to keep corporations
relatively small so their officers don’t challenge
the government for control of the nation. The danger of great family fortunes
can be prevented by not allowing personal assets to
be passed on to subsequent generations. The short work week
of twelve hours will afford employment for all who want to work. Today
we are witnessing the sheer power of market forces which
the The
1930’s saw the experiment of total state control in Government Responsibilities The
overall effort to uplift every citizen and to promote and defend the
fundamental rights of every human being to develop his mental and spiritual
powers in the image of God must inevitably produce a civilized culture that
is tremendously beneficial to all citizens. Harmony with Natural Law
guarantees an environment where men and women can best perfect themselves in
their humanness. All this depends on a government whose policies benignly
marshal the inherent talents of its citizenry toward Egoic advancement. The
creation of a city requires co-ordination of the efforts of all the persons
who will build it, and co-ordination implies organization if there is to be
efficiency and economic soundness in meeting the needs of all its
inhabitants. In
the Lemurian system in the Nation of God, the commonwealth, rather than a
stock market, provides money for capital equipment to a corporation. The
commonwealth owns and leases the buildings and the machinery. It sees to it
that what is being produced by the corporation is
valuable to the commonwealth; otherwise, the government wouldn’t have
invested in it and licensed the corporation management in the first place. Yet
everyone realizes it's the government’s duty to
invest in public works and infrastructure to increase the efficiency of
commerce such as large projects like roads, dams, sewage treatment, docks and
airports. When
the government is just starting out, it can create value by undertaking
public projects without existing funds in its treasury. It does this by
monetizing credits to the workers and suppliers of materials within its own
national boundaries. These credits are then circulated as money
which will eventually be repaid to the government through tithes and
through tolls and rents by those who use the facilities. The credits would thus be based on real projects of intrinsic value. It is
essential that the government establish standard weights and measures and an
efficient postal service, as well as a sound and stable currency. The
central treasury should serve as a storehouse of wealth
which can loan money without interest to individuals and to manufacturers
who have worthwhile projects. The treasury also serves as the clearinghouse
for all drafts of funds between individuals and commercial establishments.
All these things give a sense of national identity to the populace. Trade
between nations sometimes needs to be controlled
nationally by protective tariffs or domestic subsidies to encourage
beneficial industries at home. A
minimum of laws and a thorough understanding of karmic principles will keep a
nation running smoothly indefinitely. A constitution that holds public
servants to the task of meeting the needs of all the people and prevents
governmental abuse must be maintained. A Vision
of the Future In
short, our future is for practical idealists who treasure the same principles
envisioned by the founders of the U.S.A. Justice, truth, love, creativity,
beauty, and freedom are what we all seek, and we can start clean again even
though it is on a comparatively small scale. Each person of sound mind
recognizes that he must grant these precious gifts to everyone else if he is
to have them for himself. Only by practicing these principles will all have
prosperity, contentment and personal growth. |
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