Improvement of the human condition implies the creation of things, but do those things even matter?
I spend a great deal of my time worrying about the future. I know that the present monetary policies pursued by the Fed will destroy the American economy. I know that similar policies pursued by nations such as Angola, Argentina, Austria, Belarus, Bolivia, Bosnia, Brazil, China, France, Free City of Danzig, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Krajina, Mexico, Nicaragua, Peru, Philippines, Poland, 1921–1924, Poland, 1989–1991, Republika Srpska, Roman Egypt, Romania, Soviet Union / Russian Federation, Taiwan, Ukraine, United States, Yugoslavia, Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo), and Zimbabwe have all ended in disaster for the citizens of those states.
But there is a part of me that looks at the mess we are in and says “good.” It is time to end the materialism and greed that has dominated western thinking since the inception of the United States. With the inevitable failure of the dollar will come the collapse of the largest and most expansive criminal empire in the history of the world. The debate between Keynesianism and Austrian school economics is largely pointless, given that the fate of the US economy is sealed by the people who support its government and the economic laws that govern it.
Whether people believe the theories espoused by Krugman or Bernanke is besides the point. Whether the theories espoused by Krugman or Bernanke are even correct is besides the point! The market does not care if Bernanke or Krugman are right or wrong. The market will not change the governing laws of its behavior to suit an academic theory. The market will do what it always does, and in the end, the market always wins.
Printing money has not, nor will it ever, increase the prosperity of a society. It’s not like this is some kind of new lesson to be learned. Paul Krugman recently accused Paul of wanting to set us back to where we were 150 years ago. Paul responded by saying Krugman wants to set us back to where we were several thousand years ago under the Emperor Diocletian. Paul should have also mentioned this nation’s earliest encounter with the printing press just a few hundred years ago. The destruction of the dollar will not be the first time this nation has underwent a hyperinflationary currency implosion, but this time it will be the largest such implosion in recorded world history.
Returning to my original point; the printing of money as a mechanism of wealth redistribution is borne entirely out of greed for material goods. The scarcity of goods incites fears within people that they will somehow not have enough of whatever it is they need to survive. Their fear drives them to do the same self-destructive things that people have always done throughout history. In order to overcome fear, one must have a supreme confidence in their eternal self; their consciousness, also called the soul. When a person does not fear death, there is nothing that can make them afraid. When a person realizes that their awareness is not the product of bio-chemical reactions, but rather a fundamental component of the universe, death becomes a mere transition rather than an end.
Wars are borne out of fear. Hyperinflation is borne out of fear. The state itself is borne out of fear. Fear that some other state will tax us. Fear that some other state will take our “things.” Fear that some terrorists will tear down our mercantilist edifices. Fear that poor people and the elderly will go without food, housing, clothing, or education unless violence is used to redistribute wealth. All of these fears have the same underlying cause of scarcity. It is ridiculous to think that the state can take away the scarcity that pervades our physical universe through the creation of laws or the printing of money.
The greater question of “why are we here?” must be addressed in order to make some headway in overcoming our irrational fears of scarcity that lead us to do insane things like print money or nuke cities into oblivion. When people come to understand that it is OK to be poor, it is OK to go through life living simply, and it is even OK to die, the irrational fears, that ultimately manifest themselves into reality, will disappear. Does anyone actually think that the state is necessary for society to create the material goods necessary to simply support each person’s own existence? Does anyone think they will never die? Does anyone think that they can take their toys with them after they die? Does anyone think that transferring hundreds of billions of dollars a year into the pockets of Big Pharma and the health care industry, through the use of force, will prevent them from meeting their maker at some point? If not, then what is the point of it all?
Can some people have “too much” while others have “too little?” What is too little? Starving to death or dying from exposure? What is too much? Owning a palace and a super-yacht? Is the guy with the palace somehow immune from the laws of nature regarding his ultimate fate? Would the starving man live forever if he was given food and shelter? Perhaps the yacht owner will die a horrific death from cancer a few years down the road. Is that death somehow less worse than starvation? From this perspective, isn’t it pure greed that causes us to label someone as having “too much?”
Monks around the world live in poverty by choice, with most subsisting entirely on voluntary donations from the public around them. Do you think the fact that they have overcome their greed of material things is why governments imprison and persecute them today? Perhaps it is because the monks point out the greed that is in the hearts of those who support the state which makes people hate them so much. They don’t need the state to do anything for them. They fear nothing, not even death, as is evidenced by them lighting themselves on fire to prove a point. I like to think that they overcame their fear and greed by realizing what their true selves actually are.
Of course, I’m not suggesting that we turn the world into some kind of global impoverished monastery! I’m simply pointing out that what we actually need in this life is far less than what we think we need. We don’t need violent wealth redistribution, organized by a state, to ensure the poor have a roof over their head and something in their stomach. We don’t need violence to fund our health care system. We don’t need violence to fund our defense. We don’t need these things because the awareness that is your consciousness doesn’t need anything other than to simply be. We will all eventually die and experience the transition of consciousness into the non-physical, and whether this occurs sooner rather than later is of no real consequence in the grand scheme of things.
The goal of our existence should be to relieve suffering; however, I contend that suffering cannot be relieved through violence! Violence is simply the transference of suffering, not the elimination of suffering. To eliminate suffering, we must create and we must love one another. Only through love and the creative process is suffering put to an end, rather than simply being transferred on to others.
