(translated from French by Tom Sunic)
Hieronymus Bosch: Death and the Miser, about 1485-1490
Of course, everybody prefers to have a little bit more than a little bit less. “Money does not buy happiness, but it does contribute to happiness” — as the saying goes. We need to find out, however, what happiness means. Max Weber wrote in 1905: “A man by ‘his nature’ does not want to earn more money; he only wants to live as he is accustomed to live and earn as much as it is necessary for him.”
Numerous investigations have pointed out a relative contrast between the rising standard of living and the level of satisfaction among individuals. Past a certain threshold, having more money does not mean more happiness. In 1974, in his studies, Richard Easterlin established that the average level of satisfaction expressed by the population has remained virtually unchanged since 1945, despite spectacular increase in wealth in developed countries. (This “Easterlin paradox” has been recently confirmed.) The failure of indices to measure material growth, such as the GDP, in order to assess the level of real well-being, is also well noted — especially at the level of a given community. There is no such service for undisputed choices that would be able to compute individual preferences in terms of social preferences.
It is tempting to see money as a power tool. Unfortunately, the old project of radical separation between power and wealth (one is either rich or powerful) will continue to be a dream. Once upon a time man was wealthy because he was powerful; today he is powerful because he is wealthy. The accumulation of money has rapidly become not the means for market expansion (as some believe), but the goal for the production of commodities. Capitalism has no goal other than boundless profit and endless accumulation of money. The skill to accumulate money obviously gives discretionary power to those who have it. Speculation with money dominates global governance. Speculative banditry remains the preferred method of capitalist hoarding of wealth.
Money should not be confused with currency. The birth of currency can be explained by the development of mercantile exchange. It is only through trade exchange that objects acquire their economical dimension. And it is also through exchange that the economic value is obtained with complete objectivity, given the fact that exchanged goods must skirt the subjective side of a single actor — so that goods can be measured in terms of the relationship between different actors.
As a general equivalent, currency is intrinsically a factor of unification. Reducing all goods to one common denominator automatically makes all exchanges homogeneous. Aristotle already observed: “All things that are traded must be somehow comparable. For this purpose currency was invented, which later became, in a way, an intermediary. It is a measure of all things.” By setting up a perspective from which the most diverse things can be evaluated through single numbers, currency makes all things “equal” ; it therefore, reduces all mutually distinguishing qualities to a simple logic of “more and less.” Money is the universal standard which ensures the abstract equivalence of all commodities. As a general equivalent it reduces all quality to sheer quantity. The market value is only capable of a quantitative differentiation.
But at the same time exchange also equalizes the personalities of those who are in the “business” of trade. By showing the compatibility of their offer and their demand, it establishes the interchangeability of actors’ desires. Ultimately, any exchange leads to the interchangeability of all human beings, who thus become objects of their own desires.
The Monotheism of the Market
“The rule of money, writes Jean-Joseph Goux, is the reign of the unique measure from which all things and all human activities can be assessed…. What we observe here is the ‘monotheistic mindset’ regarding the notion of value as a general equivalent for all things. This money rationality, based on a single standard of value, is fully consistent with “theological univalence.” This can be called the rule of ‘market monotheism.’ Money, writes Marx, is as a commodity, which leads to total alienation because it produces global alienation of all other commodities.”
Money is much more than just money — and it would be a big mistake to believe that money is “neutral.” No less than science, no less than technology or language, money cannot be neutral. Twenty-three centuries ago, Aristotle observed that “human need is insatiable.” Well, “insatiable” is the right word here; there is never enough of it. And yes, because there is never enough of it, there cannot be a surplus of it either. The desire for money is a desire that can never be satisfied because it feeds on itself. Any quantity of it whatsoever must be increased to the point that better must always mean more.
The thing, of which one can always have more, one will never have enough of. That is the reason why ancient European religions continuously warned against the passion for money:
The Gullweig myth in the Norse mythology
The twilight of gods “(ragnarökr)
All these were the consequences of the lust for money (the “Rheingold Curse“).
“We are running the risk,” Michael Winock wrote a few years ago, “of seeing money and financial success become the only standard of social prestige, the only purpose of life.” This is where we are now. Nowadays, everybody craves money all over the world. The Rightwing has been for ages its most devout servant. The institutional Left, under the guise of “realism,” espoused the principles of the market economy — that is to say, the liberal management of capital. The language of economics has become ubiquitous. Money has become an obligatory rite of passage in all forms of desires that express themselves on the trade register.
The money system, though, will not last long. Money will be destroyed by money — by hyperinflation, bankruptcy and hyper-debt. Probably, one will grasp by then that one can only be rich by what one gives to others.
Alain de Benoist is a philosopher residing in France. His websites are: http://www.alaindebenoist.com/ and http://www.revue-elements.com/. This article was originally published in Elements, January-March, 2011
Facing the Future as a Minority
Was the Immigration Act of 1924 Illiberal?
I agree with everything said except for the characterizations of the “rightwing” and “leftwing”. That may have been true ages ago, when those terms had meaning. They are now anachronisms. Today, economically speaking, it is a false dichotomy. The only difference between the two (again, economically speaking) is that the Left favor MORE “fascism” than the Right…they both support the idea of “economic fascism.” Again, these terms are outdated, so I apologize for using the phrase “economic fascism”. I use it here to denote the principle of taking wealth from the populace through taxation and handing that money over to large corporations in the form of government contracts or now “bailouts”. Bot the Right and the Left support that form of economic activity now. Of course the terms “left” and “right”, socially speaking, connote a real cultural divide…mostly racial, somewhat ideological and religious. But economically speaking, in the West we are now all the same. We are feudal servants…serfs so to speak…to a nexus (or perhaps synthesis) of government and corporate power. It’s the new aristocracy. Most of the bafoons in government and corporate management have no idea what they are doing or what is going on…it’s the Peter Principle writ large. They rise to power through obsequious and sycophantic pledges to their superiors, all of them clamoring for more money and power. It’s not a meritocracy. It REALLY is “who you know.” Meritocracy only applies to a certain level of technocratic slaves. Other than that, no…what we have is a good old-fashioned corrupt system which fundamentally is borrn from a corrupt people…and that is independent of any racial identity politics. We are corrupt as a civilization…to the core. I no longer buy these fanciful flower homages to ages long lost…it was corrupt then as it is corrupt now. Morality is the exception, not the rule of humanity…regardless of race, creed, or religion.
Alain de Benoist’s article is positively thought-provoking, in the truest meaning of the phrase and Mammon’s comments on his writing even more so.
…two people who get enough rest before typing… heh heh
I gotta laugh at all of these “right wing” and “conservative” websites that are shills for gold specualtion. The biggest ponzi scheme currently going is in gold. Buy my gold the end is near. LOL.
When in fact there is a huge inventory of gold, very little gold gets used for industrial purposes, and industrial gold can be recycled directly back to gold if necessary. Most gold sets in vaults as bullion, or to a lesser extent is in the form of jewelry. This creates a HUGE inventory of gold, and gold is not as necessary as other commodities such as wheat, cotton or gasoline—all of which are consumed and have little or no recycle inventory value.
One of the things pushing up the price of gold, is the gold ETF which allows speculators to directly own gold by buying shares of the ETF. This encourages speculation, and any broker will tell you to buy a little gold.(he naturally makes a commission on your purchase of gold). :)
When the noise ends gold goes down—way down.
Another factor pushing gold up is the derivative form of most of its daily trading. Very little gold trades as physical metal for 100% cash.
Most “gold” trades are in the form of heavily leveraged commodity futures contracts and options on futures contracts. I doubt the present gold market (and price) has even 10% of genuine equity supporting it.
In such a condition it only takes a mild liquidity squeeze (in much demonized central bank currency) to create a true crash. Speculators all rush to sell out to meet margin calls and they must do so in a falling market. This feeds the maelstrom.
The old geezer gold bugs refuse to get it. Gold is no longer legal tender. Central bank currency (“collateralized” by debt) is now legal tender. Profits (and losses) in gold trading are settled in legal tender.
Hello?
Once a panic starts you’ll see gold being sold at wildly depressed prices in a frantic effort to acquire legal tender to settle debts.
I have no idea where gold will be in a year or two years from now, we could very well be in a bubble. But I think it’s wise not speak too confidently of where gold will be in the future. The truth is, it could be at $700 in the year 2013 or it could be at $2500. No one really knows.
No one really knows.
We know a few things with certainty. One of them is that gold is no longer legal tender money. There is no uber market maker ready to buy and sell to all comers at the same rate 24/7. Therefore Au is not a stable store of value.
The other thing we know is that gold trades are now transacted on commodities markets. And it trades on the very same terms as copper, aluminum, scrap steel, crude oil, pork bellies and natural gas.
If people want to make speculative trades in search of paper profits, go for it. Good luck.
Just don’t deceive yourself or others into thinking you are striking decisive blows against the Federal Reserve System by doing this. A great deal of the Libertarian-Patriot (patriotarded?) movement has been the result of a few gold and silver traders promoting their businesses. This is why it’s made no observable progress and never will. It has no reason to exist beyond promoting small scale gold and silver speculation.
Just because gold has no intrinsic value for the most part does not mean that it is not worth anything. Fiat money is not “intrinsically” worth anything either, it is only that people have collectively decided that such and such currency has such and such buying power that imbues any value into a piece of linen. While there may be excess gold in circulation, it does not come close to the amount of money governments can print at will.
Essentially, gold is worth whatever everyone thinks it is worth. India and China are huge consumers of gold for cultural reasons and those economies appear to be growing at a fast clip, and governments around the world hold gold in reserve for a reason, because it has been agreed upon collectively that gold is worth something.
The problem with gold is that it’s hard to judge how much it should be worth, there is no earnings forecast one can analyze in relation to gold and decide gold should be worth “this much.” There are some tentative factors that if you can predict should allow you to make a somewhat informed bet on gold, such as an increase in inflation, or a severely depressed economy. There is no doubt that gold is a store of value in “scary times.”
Gold ETFs have added a significant amount to the value of gold, and yes, they may contribute to a bubble. As mentioned above, people can now speculate on gold without ever owning it physically, and these gold ETFs have been huge warehouses for gold, a demand that was not a part of the gold story just a few years ago.
P.S. I do not own any gold myself.
I agree that it isn’t wise to be speculating on gold or any other commodity for that matter. Unless you are an expert stay out. Most of those big markets just fleece the average investor. Now with regard to gold, while it’s no longer legal tender, it still has the same qualities that made it a store of value and medium of exchange in the past. It’s relatively rare, it’s considered valuable by everyone on earth, it’s fungible, etc. Those traits haven’t changed, and if people lose faith in paper currencies, then gold could be become a default, at least for a while.
And it’s true that the various gold sellers are pumping gold. But they were doing that every year for the last 40 years. That can’t be the only factor in gold’s rise. There’s been a long steady rise for about 10 years now (with the Fed’s easy money policies) and then there was an acceleration after the financial crisis. All pretty logical.
But could we have deflationary forces? Some say yes. On the other hand, the Fed can print all the money it desires, and they want inflation … so I suspect they will get what they want.
I don’t understand all this talk about gold; some people believe and act as if it had some absolute value in the universe, independent of human intervention. Gold is a commodity like any other and is subject to speculation and having its bubble burst just like any other commodity.
Moreover, what can you do with gold? You can’t eat it, drink it, wash your hands with it or wipe yourself with it. It is very hard and in the past it was used to fill people’s teeth. It is an excellent conductor of electricity. Beyond that it has very little practical value.
Also, if there is a complete societal breakdown and money (paper and coins) becomes worthless, how would someone who possesses large amounts of gold use it in practical every day situations? For example, if you go to a supermarket and buy $50 worth of groceries and you give the cashier a gold $50 coin or a gold $50 bar, what guarantee do you have that he will accept it? In the first place how would he know that it is genuine gold? Would someone please explain to me how gold would be used in every day situations analogous to the way paper and coins are used?
Uncle Sam, gold is just a way to store wealth that has some advantages over others (especially if paper currencies become flaky). It’s true that land has value too, for example, but you can’t carry it with you. It’s true that diamonds have value, but they are extremely expensive and can’t easily be divided. Silver has value too, but $50,000 worth of silver weighs over 100 lbs – too heavy to carry big wealth around. So gold is today, like it was 3,000 years ago, a good store of value that is easily divisible, does not corrode, lasts forever and can be easily verified as gold.
Gold will be around for a long time. But, that doesn’t mean go out and play the gold market, because it may fall, who knows. But, if I had a million dollars, putting three or four percent in physical gold that I could put my hands on, might be a good form of insurance.
Oh and also, the use of gold on a regular basis for transactions, in it’s physical form, would not be practical in the long run, that is true, and even if the dollar collapsed, eventually you get back to some other paper currency, but it may be backed by gold, as it was most of the first 150 years of the country.
Au contraire. There is “philosophy”, then there is the world itself. The trouble with philosophy is that it is usually untethered to empirical reality. The above Easterlin paradox is no paradox at all, except for those who think more than they experience.
Recently, the Easterlin paradox was confirmed in the news. It was found that after about 60,000 dollars annually was achieved, that folks got no happier in their everyday lives. No surprise to me. LIke the old line, “wherever you go , there you are.”
Allow my remark that
DeBenoist is rambling on in this piece. First he says that money does not buy happiness, then he says that everybody is going for the gold, that we are all subverted. Nonsense.
The financial pages might suggest that, but 80% of White folks are just living their lives, although now worrying about that $60,000 or so slipping away to Wall St., Welfare (read Black and Brown), and just meybe, Jews. Folks are worrying about what is happening to their country, not making their first million.
DeBenoist finishes with a claim that money will be swept away in a cataclysmic cascade of breakdown. Wrong. I have to confess that what I have read of DeBenoist leaves me underwhelmeed.
As for his final remark about giving away your money to make yourself feel better is a kind of Dr. Feel Good corn. Please, let us stay closer to biological realism and refrain from scribbling. (I know this can be thrown back in my face, so go to it if you desire. )
What a proper WN essay on money would include is an attack on economic LIberalism which logically works itself pure into a kind of libertarianism/greed which totally lacks a Social dimension, and an examination of finance capital, elites, and Jews, which the Ed Connelly piece does…more or less.
Money is not the issue, Liberalism is the issue, both economic liberalism and social liberalism. Social LIberalism at least possesses the element of… the Social, which WN criticizes for its promiscuity, but which WN will chasten
by racialism. The economic liberalism which Whites invented, not the Jews (also Whites invented social liberalism, not the jews), is part of our intense individualism.
To be fair, White social liberals have properly reacted against the economic liberalism of their confreres, only they have universalized the protest to include Everybody, racially speaking.
So the “Dialectic” ( I usually refuse that word.) of White Individualism which includes possessive individualism/libertarianism, AND White Altruism continues to spin round and round. The resolution promises, from the news right now, to be toward WN. The Social will be retained, but purged of racial promiscuity, and Individualism/money orientation will be curbed by populism, in which, as a by-product, Jewish Power will be significantly reduced.
Joe
Joe
“As a general equivalent it reduces all quality to sheer quantity. The market value is only capable of a quantitative differentiation.”
The market value of a particular object does not reduce *all* “quality” to sheer quantity. These simplistic generalizations from the particular are why one should avoid French philosophers whether they are from the right or left.
“The money system, though, will not last long. Money will be destroyed by money — by hyperinflation, bankruptcy and hyper-debt.”
Fractional reserve banking may perish but certainly not money.
Yes, money or currency isn’t going anywhere. I’m not quite sure what the point of the article is in that regard. Any and all current forms of paper money may collapse, but some medium of exchange will be needed.
All “lefts” just collect money so “rights” can spend it, then when it is a problem they reverse places, with “right” collecting and “lefts” getting and spendings.
In America, people not on that path are attacked personally. The “Bible Belt” is directly targeted for “developments,” for instance in the “New South.” This is to bring in Northern people socialized in another way. Both “rights” and “lefts” see simply Bible based people as ignorant, rednecks, extremists, stupid, etc. (despite good IQs). But the attack is for not playing in the game of rights and lefts at all, and trying to continue to be bible based. So, developments of Fred Phelps, from civil rights lawyer and naacp award recipient, to discredit them and lead more bible-reading christians away, in confusion. They must have people who either collect or spend. These are the two jobs, basically.
That has nothing to do with living. Under constitutional republic, keep small and grow local, protestantism, bible-base, etc.— it was of a piece in u.s.a. Now, many populations, and religions better fit welfare state, ethno state, and global plantation.
This shows the system is the goal. Things are produced that suit where it wants to go, although it grows more amorphously.
Catholicism and Judaism, the main influences in America with power, better suit this globalism, via universalism and having “true doctrines” and missions. The small-town protestantism that is left in the U.S., with its disdain for authority, money, an ethnic centeredness so that similar people do all the jobs in the town— has no place in that country anymore, nor perhaps the religion in that form. Only “zionist protestants” are brought forward, (like Palin), who is like the “neo-con,” which is the name for both catholic and jewish.
They are the ones most preparing to go “underground,” in some form. Home churches, etc., and whose congregations prepare them to be persecuted. Sad.
A little education for Messrs. Benoit and Sunic. I also highly reccoment Gary North’s book, :Salvation Through Inflation”.
THE PONCE DE LEONE’S OF FUNNY MONEY
All know the story of Ponce de Leon, the Spaniard who searched for the Fountain of Youth. He failed, for there is no Fountain of Youth. But there are always those who believe in the Fountain of Money. These people are called Social Creditors, advocates of debt free money or “Constitutional Money”, opponents of the tyranny of interest, etc. In reality, they all espouse the same idea – that money should be a free good distributed to all the citizens by a beneficent government, that economic ills are caused by a shortage of money, and that this deficiency can be cured by pumping “free” money into the economy. In short, these cranks are the Ponce de Leons of the classical printing press.
Their first fallacy is to confuse money with wealth. The Social Creditors think that the medium of exchange is wealth itself. It is not. It is merely the measuring stick in which wealth is denominated. An increase in money represents an increase in wealth but only if the currency remains sound. The next fallacy of these well-meaning but ignorant people is to think that an increase in commercial activity requires a corresponding increase in the money supply. It does not. Profitability in a market economy depends on a ratio-between-prices. In a non-inflationary economy, an increase in goods bidding against a fixed number of monetary units shall result in a drop in prices. But, since the prices of goods would be dropping as fast as or faster than wages, no reduction in purchasing power would occur. The money would simply become more valuable and buy more. Under inflation, which means an increase in the quantity of currency and credit, the opposite takes place. Prices rise much faster than wages, resulting in a drastic reduction in real wealth under the illusion of greater monetary units. The process is rather easily explained. When the Federal Reserve System creates money out-of-nothing by writing a check against a non-existent account, it pours money into the system. The first recipients of the money profit handsomely. They can use the newly created money to make purchases they could not before. No price rises have yet occurred. The next recipients of the money also benefit – but not quite as much. The new dollars bidding against goods have started to raise prices. The third on the list about breaks even, as the price rises have cancelled out the initial additional purchasing power. Those further down the chain of transactions are losers, as prices now greatly outstrip any additional cash influx. Everyone has more money but less real purchasing power. That is the A-B-C of inflation.
The Social Creditors observe this process at work quite accurately. But instead of concluding that inflation caused by central banking should be abolished, they reason instead that the inflating power should be transferred from the banks to the government. They reason: “Instead of allowing the banks to charge interest for creating money out of thin air, why not let the government create money out of thin air without the interest charge?” They thus reveal their basic idea – that money should be a free good. Their rants against interest taking are a perfect illustration of this mindset. If a man loans money to start a business with the possibility of losing it if the business fails, he should be entitled to a profit if it succeeds. That is like unpaid labor at the business office. It is a denial of the correlation of capital to the productive process.
The Social Creditors object to the gold standard because they maintain that it offers insufficient liquidity to keep the economy growing. We have already dealt with this objection. But they further argue that it leads to runs on banks and gold outflows to foreign creditors. It does indeed, but these are positive things, not drawbacks as the Social Creditors imagine. What the gold standard really does is to impose immediate penalties for financial irresponsibility. If a nation inflates its currency in the hope of repaying its creditors in worthless paper, then the creditors can reject the phony currency by demanding real money, i.e., gold. This is called a “run on the bank”. The phrase, which imputes blame to the depositors, really means: “We do not trust your IOU’s. We want the real thing.” Gold runs are very embarrassing to the authorities. Since they do not want the discipline of gold, they denounce the virtues of the gold standard as a vice.
The Social Creditors ignore the historical record of their doctrines as well as their theoretical fallacies. Nowhere do they discuss the example of John Law in eighteenth century France. He, too, preached the doctrine of nourishing the economy with transfusions of paper assignats, which would provide the liquidity that “barbaric gold” lacked. The authority of King Louis would guarantee the value of the currency and prevent depreciation. Within a few short years of Law’s “modern economics” the assignat was valueless and the economy of fair France was devastated. There has never been the slightest difference between the theories of John Law and the theories of the Social Creditors. They are identical. The results are always the same. The Social Creditors are like the Jews and their fabulous “gas chambers”. No matter what the proofs against them, they cling to their fallacies with the fanaticism of the faithful. They are incurable and incorrigible.
You have a gold bubble going now. Paying S1,344.50 plus commission & storage for an ounce of gold isn’t prudent considering the huge inventory of gold held as bullion, coins, and jewelry. You don’t want to be standing in the door when the panic to sell gold starts.
Don’t forget holdings in gold pay no interest, only the commidity value of the gold.
i
Benoit was right. Money cannot quantify that which makes life most worth living. As it comes to dominate more and more of our existence we lose those things which money cannot represent. We are reduced.
Hi John Thames, good piece except you forgot one thing: the money created out of ‘thin air’ by the Fed and Treasury goes on the books as debt, adding to the National Debt, which gets repaid, thus taking money out of circulation.
It is not necessarily inflationary. However, if National Debt is not paid down, then it is inflationary. Agreed that some inflation is intended, short term. That is good for the economy, gets people spending in a recession, etc. When the economy gets more robust, then money is withdrawn from circulation thru taxation, and the National Debt is paid down.
That is the theory, and the more or less reality. Less, if the Debt is not paid down by the Big Spenders.
You are right to point out that money merely represents real wealth. Fiat money is that which represents the total value of an economy.
The problem is not money, it is , can I say, Mad Dog Finance Capitalism. Finance has got to be roto-rooted. The Graham book per the Connelly review sounds like a good guide to reform.
Joe
“But at the same time exchange also equalizes the personalities of those who are in the “business” of trade. By showing the compatibility of their offer and their demand, it establishes the interchangeability of actors’ desires. Ultimately, any exchange leads to the interchangeability of all human beings, who thus become objects of their own desires.”
I thought this was kind of confusing but I finally got it, I think.
A key point is that exchange also equalizes the personalities of those who are in the “business” of trade.
Equalizing the personalities; this is a bad thing?
Showing the compatibility of their offer and their demand establishes the interchangeability of actors’ desires. We can be certain of that.
If their offer and their demand have their compatibility shown, that will equalize the personalities people in the business of trade, which is not a good thing.
Ultimately, any exchange leads to the interchangeability of all human beings, who thus become objects of their own desires. But this “ultimately” is time, but if it does happen and ex-change leads to inter-change-ability then human being will desire their selves. This is not a good thing.
“Equalizing the personalities; this is a bad thing?”
One argument first advanced by the “free traders” to promote business with the Chicoms was that as the Chinese middle class grew, China would become more like us: liberal (small l), more open-minded and tolerant of diversity and dissent. What they did NOT say (and this is more likely to happen) is that as our middle class shrinks and we are forced to become more like the Chinese, we will tolerate dissent less and less, turn a blind eye to authoritarianism at home and, in time, will tolerate our own “lao gai” on the grounds that they make economic sense. China now globally peddles the organs of executed prisoners. How soon before we begin doing the same?
Think it can’t happen here? Guess again. It’s always harder to build up a more beneficial and sophisticated system like ours than it is to tear it down to the level of China’s.
I do NOT want to become like other people. I do NOT want my country to become like other countries. This unrestricted and open “free trade” benefits only the elite in our society and spells slavery and tyrrany for the vast majority of Americans. To continue to buy shoddy garbage and poinsonous food from China when it will ultimately mean enslavement of one’s children and grandchildren, (if our nation’s current trajectory isn’t radically changed), is downright unethical.
I would like clarification on this point:
Money is the universal standard which ensures the abstract equivalence of all commodities. As a general equivalent it reduces all quality to sheer quantity. The market value is only capable of a quantitative differentiation.”
But there are differences in some commodity prices. The exact same commodity, for example, natural gas varies widely based on geography. Natural Gas is much higher in the Northeast than in Southern California. There are other examples of commodities that vary based on location and other factors.
Also, have we really seen commoditization in all markets, for example, the car market? BMWs and Mercedes sell at quite a premium to Corollas and Dodge Neons. This is based on the public perception of superior quality in the German cars. In fact, it seems like across the board we see products like clothing, food and housing that vary widely based perceived differences in qualities. I believe Morton’s Steakhouse will set a couple back about $100 …. Taco Bell only $8. How are these things being commoditized by money?
Consumerism and evolutionary fitness – Geoffrey Miller
Someday,
That Geoffrey Miller quote is really interesting, thanks. I think I will pick up his recent book “Spent”.
I have just seen the awful movie “Des dieux et des hommes”. Despite winning prizes at Cannes, even the Hollywood mafia refused it a nomination for best foreign film – yes, it’s that bad. France as a country is based on the bullshit idea that murdering priests and nuns is way to progress civilization. Other than that there is not much to the place.
A singular desire for more money has arisen from an absence of the intangibles that used to dominate the life of most human beings. Religion has been usurped and ethnic nationalism for European countries is fast fading (as nationalism in Europe does not tacitly imply a particular ethnicity anymore). However, I will focus on the religious aspect of my argument.
Most intelligent people are atheists, agnostic, or wholly indifferent to religious institutions. Atheism conflicts with Christianity because Christianity is ultimately about spiritual nonsense. Interestingly enough, atheism is perfectly compatible with Judaism, as Judaism was mostly a tribal/ethnic based religion that easily withstood the age of reason. It’s main message is one of ethnic solidarity, and once God is removed, the tribe still stands. Remove God from Christianity and what are you left with? Nothing that is useful for someone with ethnic inclinations. Essentially, people who were Christians had to defy some of its core tenants in order to achieve their aims, including the subjugation of fellow Christians. It is only through intense manipulation of Christianity that this is possible to achieve violent ends through Christianity. However, don’t get me wrong, Christians are about one of the easiest groups to manipulate to this day. Just look at the fundamentalists and their blind support for Israel.
Sorry, sort of strayed from my point. Basically, with no superior being to dictate the morality of human beings, materialism and an adherence in the spectacle of technology have replaced spiritualism permanently. I say spectacle because most technology seems to entertain rather than add to any real increase in the quality of life. In fact, technology increasingly detaches us from the real world community that not only allows us to form the bonds that most humans have found so rewarding throughout their history, but also detracts from the abilities for communities to maintain their independence or effect change. “Clicktivism” is a perfect example of the ubiquity of interest groups and our individual ability to find them now, but upon finding them, our complete inability to use that online community to effect change in the real world.
Ireland is a good example of the effect of capitalism in fast forward. For many years it was left behind as other European countries raced ahead in terms of progress. It was also one of the more community-oriented and religious countries in Europe, with more conservative social mores than other Western European countries. Now that they have been absolutely conned by the casino capitalism system, and the rug was pulled out, you get an idea of what the Irish are left with. They have no real social institutions to rely on besides burying their faces in a pint glass, and a countryside completely blighted by urban sprawl.
There was an inflection point in the last 50 years or so that has led to a rapid transformation to a purely capitalistic society in the Western World, one increasingly detached from any ideal besides the perpetuation of wealth. What is going to replace religion? I do not see anything on the horizon. It was an institution that dominated the lives of millions of Europeans for over a thousand years and it is now gone. Religion served ethnic interests for many years as well and promoted a life outside of capitalism. Just look at someone like Luther. Now, ethnic interests keep losing out every year in the US and it is unclear what institution will be there to promote them when money seems to be infinitely more appealing to white individuals.
Excellent comment and thought process John,
Ethnicity is what has held Jews together for thousands of years. Europe is a melting pot just like the US. The only cultural super-ego that is getting stronger are the Jews in Europe and in the US. It doesn’t take much to figure out …Replacement Theology reversed? Money is already appealing to whites. Just think of the Money-gospels and the exploitations of the Christian by the Pastors and Priests. It is a dying culture, unless the Christian becomes the new ethnicity/race/ multicultural, just as Judaism is.
Who isn’t Jewish?
o Richard Witty
o 16.12.10
o 00:30
According to halacha, if a person has a Jewish mother, he/she is Jewish. According to Torah and oral traditions, 10 of the 12 original tribes dissolved into thin air, assimilating, converting, to the point of being indetectable as Jewish. But, if their mother’s, mother’s, mother’s, mother’s, etc was Jewish, then they are. So, if the Jewish population of the world currently is around 13 million (is it that much?), and that represents 1/6 of the tribes, then the remaining 5/6 would 65 million, with equally proportional male/female representation. 65 million is 1/100th of the world’s population, and 5/6th of the Jews in the world are invisibly Jewish, not even known to themselves. Can a person afford to sin by even considering to persecute those who are potentially of the brit? Another definition of a Jew is a person with a Jewish soul, one who is attracted to the native instinct for holism inherent in the Shema and the theme of tikkun olam (to make what is disparate, whole/coherent). MANY have that Jewish instinct, that characteristic of a Jewish soul. Many Arabs, many Christians, many Africans, MANY. Kipas, even tzitzis don’t make a Jew. I don’t wear a kipa, nor tzitzis. The recognition that his person in front of me may be of the brit, or conspiring in the brit mission to make things whole, is enough to convince me to interpret “love thy neighbor as thyself” in the larger interpretation, rather than in the smaller.
• http://www.dhm.de/ausstellungen/hitler-und-die-deutschen/en/index.html
You make some excellent points. While now not a believer myself, let me acknowledge that much religion actually did restrain human rapacity, albeit far from perfectly.
Dostoievski’s thesis from “The Brothers Karamazov” was largely correct: Without god everything is permitted. Without god, with no moral restraint, look forward to a tomorrow where might makes right and the ultimate arbiter of everything will be power and, therefore, money.
BTW, how stable does anyone think such a world will be? How safe will be anyone’s life?
Actually, Nietzsche, no great lover of the German people, wrote about Christianity: “the one great curse, the one enormous and innermost perversion…I call it the one immortal blemish of mankind…This Christianity is no more than the typical teaching of the Socialists.” However, Nietzsche also found religion to be useful for controlling society, which he writes on below. Essentially, a select group need the morality of religion to contain the masses.
He wrote on society: “Society is not entitled to exist for its own sake but only as a substructure and scaffolding, by means of which a select race of beings may elevate themselves to their higher duties..There is no such thing as the right to live, the right to work, or the right to be happy: in this respect man is no different from the meanest worm.”
The Nazi party took Nietzsche and found in him a basis for their justification of an Aryan Superman. Now, the hilarious part to me is that whether consciously or not, the Jews have taken Nietzsche’s philosophy, which was partly hijacked by the Nazis to justify subjugating Germany’s Jewish population, and have turned it on the rest of the world. They are essentially relying on all sorts of ideas of morality, and especially Christian morality, to maintain support for Israel and keep order in society while they operate in an immoral/atheistic manner.
The Jewish religion is closely tied to race. There was no real genius behind it as they could not have possibly have surmised how opportunistic remaining insular would be. However, a series of highly fortunate developments in Western thought, such as freedom of religion, allowed the Jewish people to flourish in the modern era. Essentially, they can operate in the interests of the Jewish religion without being criticized for purely ethnic interests when many of the Jews who belong to the “religion” are there for purely ethnic reasons and have no real belief in a supreme being. Catholics and Christians cannot promote their interests without promoting a whole host of ethnic groups that have been accepted into their religious groups, thus eroding ethnic groups within Christianity from promoting their own ends.
You want to go to a church and talk business with fellow whites? Problem is, there aren’t just whites there, and the whites who are there, do not see any common ethnic interest, partly through mass assimilation and social conditioning, partly just the nature of the Christian experience, which promotes “love” between all peoples.
You go to Synagogue and it’s just Jews, and people who have no qualms about being ethnocentric, and so religion is used as a cover for a wholly ethnic end.
The Jews completely lucked out by remaining so insular and refusing to spread their religion. It was an evolutionary gamble that led to persecution throughout the Middle Ages, but in the modern-era, has reaped massive benefits.
AB:”This money rationality, based on a single standard of value, is fully consistent with “theological univalence.” This can be called the rule of ‘market monotheism.’ Money, writes Marx, is as a commodity, which leads to total alienation because it produces global alienation of all other commodities.”
Why Marx? Benoist seems to be stuck in the Marxian universe of alienation. Baudrillard and others have shown that this kind of thinking is outdated, quite simply passé. Besides, are there any “standard values” in an age dominated by endless fluctuations and instabilities?
Maybe it’s just because it is a translation but Benoist seems to express himself in the very convoluted way that is unfortunately typical of French writers.
Geiseric: “Besides, are there any “standard values” in an age dominated by endless fluctuations and instabilities?”
There should be ‘standard values’.
I try to do my part to champion respect and honest appraisal in my contributions to courageous blogs like this, (though I have been known to contribute more than my share of “endless fluctuations and instabilities” to other supposed “good guy” sites.
Some sites are just vile, filled up to their brims with fear and belligerence rather than solutions to even the simplest problems.
What is the relationship between parameters of reinforcement like magnitude and delay (see Chung in the 1960s)? This question and its answer is critical to understanding the emergence of Behavioural Economics (cf. Herrnstein) and its relationship to intelligence. What is the relationship between the Ashkenazim, the demographics of NYC, and money lending both to outgroups and within its own community (and its similar proscription in Islam)? How is that proscription related to birth-rates, secularisation, immigration and ‘The War on Terror’? How are parameters of reinforcement and cognitive behaviour related to academic and applied work on intelligence and its verbal/spatial subscales, and how is this related to brain-gender, awareness of one’s own behaviours and ts consequences, acquisitive crime, plagiarism, etc, and its genetics? How is this related to ‘personality’, which, along with ‘g’ is the second of two statistical Factors which are used by differential psychologists to class behaviour? Note, that DSM-V is moving in this direction too, i.e with respect to psychopathologies being viewed as extremes of (largely genetically determined) personality.
These are, I suggest, some of the important issues which readers here should take more interest in. If this is largely unfamiliar, then there is stuff here to learn, and that’s usually a good thing.
Longley, I’m intrigued by some of the terms you used above, primarily “parameters of reinforcement”.
Could you suggest some links or other reading that would be a good source to understand the conceptual grid you’ve presented? Thanks.
Gregor: I hope you won’t be taken in by behaviorist jargon, a tool essential to hiding its at-root determinism. You’d be better off adopting straight-from-the-jungle animism as a parametric device of choice.
Of course, you’d be still better off taking your psychology from Homer, your ethics from Boethius, your metaphysics from Aquinas, and your rhetoric from Dr. Johnson and Chesterton.
Sure, Google JEAB.
FTA: “The rule of money, writes Jean-Joseph Goux, is the reign of the unique measure from which all things and all human activities can be assessed…. What we observe here is the ‘monotheistic mindset’ regarding the notion of value as a general equivalent for all things.”
Today’s masters of the universe know the price of everything but the real value of almost nothing. We are living at the start of an age that I would call neo-barbarism. We’re a technically rich and powerful culture. But, beyond using our sophisticated achievements to neurotically distract us from the nagging questions of “Why are we here?” and “Where are we going?” we don’t know what it’s all really for and can’t see that at most it’s only the means to ends that we now apprehend more poorly than our ancestors did and not ends in themself.
IOW, despite all our accomplishments, we can’t even see that we’ve been putting the cart before the horse for a very long time now.
This link went in ERROR with my comment to John.
oops,
• http://www.dhm.de/ausstellungen/hitler-und-die-deutschen/en/index.html
Good because it’s bullshit, but what would one expect from any German government after WWII.
Social Credit http://douglassocialcredit.com/resources/resources/social_credit_by_ch_douglas.pdf
I suggest people read if for themselves.
Heuristic question: If (more) male jewish people have (more) feminized brains than male gentiles (i.e. they have higher verbal than spatial IQ which is normally found in females, rather than a higher spatial than verbal IQ, which is normally found in males), might the same behaviours which are usually found amongst gentile females relative to gentile males also be more prevalent in Jewish males (and vice-versa for their females)? For example, Jewish males not being so good with spatial issues and sports, but being rather good at story telling and manipulating males to their advantage etc? See any selective advantage in the past?
Second, if Europeans came out of Africa about 30,000 years ago, and it was about that time that they genetically mutated and lost dark melanin pigmentation (and becamse white – good for UV absorbtion in N lattitudes and thus avoidance of rickets) – and if indeed the population of the entire planet in 1AD was only about 100-300 million, with most of that population being in S Asian and China, there would not have been many Europeans for the tribes of Israel to mingle with would there?
However, that aside, as I’ve suggested and referenced elsewhere, I’d look into the gene CYP21 on C6p21 and its polymorphisms resulting in NCAH and its prevalence in different ethnic groups for a possible brain-gender effect duer to a sex steroid shunt via 21-OHD (both ways). This gene has an impact on part of the fight/flight stress system and the MHC immune system, i.e. as part of the HPA-Axis which includes central Noradrenaline of Locus Coeruleus (A6) origin.
C.H. Douglas was an inflationist crank. I reccomend “Salvation Through Inflation” as the most thorough debunking of Douglas around.
LOL Gary North, the gold bug libertarian. When Gary can show me a Free Market that is really free, I will take him seriously. Tying our currency to gold didn’t work in the past and it won’t work in the future. The system isn’t working John. Social Credit worked in Alberta Canada and it’s time we try it here. Social Credit isn’t inflationary.
Douglas wrote this in 1924, does it sound familar?
The only line of action which can be effective in the emergency with which the world is confronted must be one which can paralyse or break up the group control of credit to which the majority of individuals in every country have become helpless slaves; and it is not without interest that the antagonism between the American people and the United States Government is
crystallizing into an attack on the mutual support given to each other by the interests symbolised by Wall Street and Washington. Pg. 52
Prof. McDonald – why are the comment boxes so annoyingly small?
Speaking of genetics, just started Erectus Walks Amongst Us, by Richard D. Fuerle. the cover art is a bid weird and will turn some away (black apelike guy with spectacles in a suit) but the book is great, so far. He goes into anatomy and genetics more than I recall Rushton did in Race, Evolution , and Behavior. The early chapters educate the reader with hard science, to prepare them for more racial nitty-gritty. Fuerle rejects the Out of Africa thesis, and I have not gotten any further into the book. But is is full of great stuff, blue eyes, index and ring finger relationships, White superior to East Asian IQ above 130, anatomical details you might never have wanted to hear about , like genitalia differences between blacks and whites and Asians, not only size, but position, prognathous faces as opposed to flat faces, jaws and teeth, the hole in the bottom of the skull for the spinal cord….black skulls have the hole a bit farther toward the rear of the skull…lilke 4 footers, alleles that code our genes, the identified alleles for IQ, on and on, more fun than a barrel of monkeys, chimp adult IQ at 40!, 1% of American blacks can achieve an IQ of 120, on and on and on. Big format with lots of pictures and charts. I am even getting straight on what a standard deviation is. (The reason there are more very smart Whites (above 130 and almost always men) is that the standard deviation on the East asian bell curve is about 12 while for the Whtie bell curve, it is about 16.
page turner. Joe
There are clearly people writing, commenting and arguing here (and elsewhere) who do so primarily for entertainment, fame and/or fortune, and/or just for narcissistic supply. There are far fewer who do so because they are genuinely driven to idnetify and solve problems (usually because such problems bother them, not because they like the work per se). It is alas, also sometimes very hard to tell the difference with some people.
I suggest you look at the 2009 OECD PISA results here. There are methodological issues which make a non superficial reading of the results a bit of a headache, but if you look at the end of the main report (i.e the technical appendices), you will see means and SDs, perhaps not in as much detail as one might like, i.e by SDs sex, but the distributions can be looked at in terms of Proficiency Levels. You will note that the OECD (which keeps an eye on the workforce with a view to EU economics, and is part of The European Project) and the USA have adopted this way of looking at educability (see the US No Child Left Behind Act. Next think of the ETS America’s Perfect Storm video and report from feb 2007. You will find Charles Murray (2005: “In Our Hands”) holding ‘European’ socialism the culprit for its current plight. Whilst I have a lot of respect for much that Murray has done over the years, if you’ve followed my comments in these threads, you’ll see that I’ve been suggesting how and why, on the contrary, it’s far more likely to have been the decline of European communitarianism (‘socialism’)brought about through the anarchistic (deregulative) impact of the post-war export of USA individualistic Libertarianism to thwart European socialism during the Cold War (ironically, as an integral part of the European Project’).
To Jason speaks—
You say that “gold is just a way to store wealth”. This is not a question of storing wealth but one of immediate utilitarian purpose. If money becomes worthless, and I cannot use it in everyday transactions, what the hell good is gold if it cannot be used in these situations. You seem to be implying that once the monetary system becomes functional the gold that you have stored can be bartered for money. Now that raises several questions, one of which is will you get more money than you paid for it, assuming the purchasing power of the new money is the same or more than the old money? If the purchasing power is less, then you suffer a loss.
The analogy with land is a fair one. However, land is of no value unless it is put to some practical use, such as farming or constructing buildings on it.
I can assure you of one thing: if money becomes worthless, items such as toilet paper, soap and toothpaste will have far more value than gold. I think you would agree with that. So if you a vast store of them, you could barter them for just about anything. Therefore, for those of you who are really concerned about the economic future, I would strongly suggest that you have vast stores of those items instead of gold. You would be much better off.
Correction:
I inadvertantly left out the verb “have” in the 3rd sentence of the last paragraph. It should read: “So if you have….”
Uncle Sam,
One thing is certainly true: If a nation’s currency fails, it really isn’t good for anyone. No one (with very rare exception) is going to “get rich” off an economic collapse, as some of the gold hawkers imply. It’ll be rough for everyone.
And it is true that if such an event was coming, having a cabinet full of food would be really valuable. However, that’s not likely to get that bad.
Even so, gold has certain qualities that make it an excellent way to hold wealth and transfer it over time, even though it isn’t going grow. What an ounce of gold will buy has been remarkably steady over time – not year to year, but over the centuries. The main advantage of a paper currency backed by gold is that it limits the power of the Fed to print money at will. This means the government can’t run endless deficits to finance huge social programs. It imposes discipline and limits the power of the government.
“The Nazi party took Nietzsche and found in him a basis for their justification of an Aryan Superman.” – This is British WWII propaganda.
Here we have Gary North defending Jewish banking interests while attacking Ellen Brown and white nationalist.
http://www.garynorth.com/public/6940print.cfm
North dismisses Count Cherep-Spiridovich as a Tsarist anti Semite and claims his book *The Secret World Government or “The Hidden Hand”: The Unrevealed in History* is just conspiracy theory. Yet Benjamin Disraeli said “The world is governed by very different personages from what is imagined by those who are not behind the scenes. AND Disraeli said this “The governments of the present day have to deal not merely with other governments, with emperors, kings and ministers, but also with the secret societies which have everywhere their unscrupulous agents, and can at the last moment upset all the governments’ plans. ” Would North call him a conspiratorialist?
I would like to also note that from North’s link (Count Spiridovich’s book pg. 180) that “Bismarck knew the truth and revealed it in 1876 to a German, Conrad Siem, who published it (“La Vieille Prance,” N-216, March, 1921) .” is found. This Conrad Siem is a GERMAN who published in Fance, so I question if it is the same one that North link to as being born in 1861.
Munny, munny, munny. Dirty stuff. We don’t need it! Ha.
I know folkish families with young children who are shivering in their houses now for lack of an income, because they bought into this “anti-materialist” idea that you can live on noble principles and your garden, and maybe the meagre royalties from publishing white identity concepts, and nought else. Do they think that bread for their families or wood for their fires will just “come”, as the righteous man’s reward? It will fall from the sky like manna if you keep the spirit pure? Right. I have no truck with these sorts of people anymore. Sneer away. I’d rather spend more time upskilling, developing survival nimbleness, and feeding my kids with the results.
I imagine that pain medications, toilet paper, coffee, handyman skills, food, weapons, ammo, etc., all these things may well be worth more than gold in terms of their barter value, if things really hit the fan. I am not a survivalist or gold bug, per se, but I’d be a fool not to take a worst-case scenario and our options for family material existence into some consideration.
Only slightly less breathtakingly brilliant than what de benoist says is the brevity here in which he says it. A stellar piece. This should be printed as a 1-2 page flyer. Another great thing is the intelligence & cogency of the responses a de benoist article generates. Btw PVCWolfman’s comments have my deepest sympathy. I was raised by an autistic literal to-the-manor-born mother who crammed the money-isn’t-important-rich-people-are-unhappy-etc crap down my throat (after she married a manual labourer). I dont think that’s how de benoist meant his article, altho some bits in his writings do not show as much sensitivity to the issues confronting those with families as i think would be right. Among the main issues confronting me in my life at present is the grim one of what i can do to earn a living with an ounce of good conscience.
The most disturbing thing to me about this line of thought (taking up where PVCWolfman left off) is that, whatever happens–& i seriously doubt there is going to be any overnight, catastrophic collapse etc–it will be the super rich & rich who will be left standing. Many or most of whom are those who helped create the current mess,sustained it,made it impossible to change (peacefully &/or legally) etc.In a value judgement,those least deserving to survive.