The myth of the gold standard.
IMO people get it wrong when they praise the gold standard.
It was introduced in many countries in the 1870s.
It was probably a reaction to a long period with monetary freedom in the US (from1783) and Argentina (from 1816.)
Which of course the banking sector and the political class hated.
It sucked capital and people out of the central-bank controlled European countries, as if the Americas, with its monetary freedom, was a giant magnet.
The outflow of people and capital most likely made it extremely difficult for the finance sector and the governments to extract wealth from the people in Europe, both from taxation and inflation.
The gold standard made it easier for the countries to inflate their money supply and coordinate monetary policy otherwise.
And inflate they did.
Annual average M2 growth in the US from 1880 to 1995 was about the same as from 2008 to 2023.
When WWI broke out in 1914, people lined up outside the banks and wanted to redeem their paper bank notes for gold.
The alarm bells went off, as the banks didn't have nearly enough gold in their vaults, because they had issued far too many bank notes..
So they asked their friends in the governments, to kindly introduce "emergency measures."
The corrupt politicians happily played along, and under the pretext that it would safeguard gold from flowing out of the country, they "suspended the banks' obligation to redeem specie."
And then they gave even more gas and inflated like hell during WWI, enabling the war to extend in time and space.
Even the government, central bank and banks in my country, Norway, did this, although we stayed out of the war.
So - the gold standard was a tool, a weapon pointed against the people all over the world - a promise to inflate the money supply at high speed in a coordinated way.
It's IMO the power vacuum caused by monetary freedom in the US and Argentina that was the main wealth booster of the 19th century.
The growth that happened from 1880-1914 was created in spite of, not because of the gold standard.
I hope people soon stop praising the old original gold standard as well as the quasi versions we had after WWI and WWII.
Says Kris:
"I got UNBAR tonight. Now on page 13, I actually feel that the joy of reading the book is almost overshadowed by the "sorrow" that each page read brings me closer to the end of this experience. I understand why the designer Mattis gets so much space. The book is a very special work of art both pictorially and literary. Or in unison. Yeah. Just wanted to say that. Wish the book was 500 pages." https://image.nostr.build/92a25a82be83a4b7edd84808b60203cc1135344e384c0ba078348c01e7b65eaf.jpg
If you know someone in Tromsø - it's nice if you let them know that I'll give a talk there on money, monetary policy and Bitcoin this Friday,
nostr:nevent1qqsrnxnywr6g5l7z3d0kqygmu27m8nd7xlg4ht3vf7p6kqupqa9ujgcpz3mhxue69uhkummnw3ezummcw3ezuer9wcpzpqe29v7w7jch2nz2w4efvjjymdjdr8klvflvg5tek5vapf02aqveqvzqqqqqqypt3s8m
Just finished a 3 hour marathon talk about money, monetary history, monetary policy, gold and bitcoin here in Harstad. Lot's of great questions, met so many open, engaged and kind people, I would love to come back.
Not copper. Red.
I believe that Bitcoiners have a special relationship with the concept we refer to as "truth."
I'm not saying that we are more honest than others.
But we appreciate more than most others being able to verify the correctness of something.
For instance, we like the fact that everyone can verify the software code as well as each and every transaction.
Nothing is hidden.
Everything is in the open.
We value that we don't have to trust someone who says that "Everything is A-OK."
It's possible for everyone to check things out, without having to ask anyone for permission.
I have had the same fascination with the concept of truth as long as I can remember.
Like my father, I have also always been curious about how things work.
He had an amazing talent for understanding technologies.
My grandmother once told me a wonderful story from when he was a kid.
I think he was 12-13 years old.
He sat by the kitchen table and picked apart a mechanical sleep alarm clock, while he carefully studied how the pieces functioned together.
After he had taken it all apart, he patiently reassembled it.
It must have been very satisfactory for him to wind it up and hear the ticking.
The final test was the alarm bell.
"Ring ring ring!"
It worked perfectly.
My father had verified the truth about how the alarm clock worked.
In the 1980s he became a computer engineer.
I remember him sitting for hours in front of his PC, and how he used to fill up all empty spaces in the basement and his home office with all kinds of computer hardware.
He passed away much too early due to cancer in 2011.
Although I didn't inherit my father's understanding of technology, I got the same passion for diving deep into things, into the very core, and for understanding how things worked.
Social subjects and books have been two of my main interests, which is something I have from my mother.
She has always questioned things, and I'm exactly the same.
I discovered at a very young age how important it is to accept the truth.
I went to kindergarten from I was about two or thee years old.
When I was four, I was moved out of the unit with the small kids and to the unit with the big kids.
Some of the older kids started bullying me.
They shouted:
“Rune has red hair, Rune has red hair.”
The people who worked there were unable to help me.
So, I found myself in a hopeless, prison-like situation.
I complained to my mother, and told her that I wouldn’t go there anymore.
She tried to comfort me, and said:
“It isn’t true what those kids say. You don't have red hair, it's copper brown, and it's beautiful."
The only problem was, this couldn't solve a damn thing with the bullying.
And of course, it didn't.
The day after, I went to the kindergarten as usual, and the bullies pushed on.
It's quite possible that I tried to yell back at them:
"It's not red, it's copper brown!"
If I did, it probably just made things worse, because it would be a confirmation to them that their bullying had the intended effect on me.
However, something must have clicked inside me that day.
When I came home, I met my mother in the entrance.
I ripped the beanie off my head, and shouted angrily to her:
“No, mama, look at this! It’s true - my hair is red - just see for yourself!"
When I came back to the kindergarten the next day, I had accepted my faith.
They had blond, brown or black hair.
My hair was red.
These were facts, nothing more.
They noticed that I suddenly was OK with it.
And then they lost all interest in bullying me.
Accepting the truth had made me impervious to their insults.
My mother told me this story many times, when I was a child, and also after I became a grown-up man.
She says she's convinced that it was a life-changing experience for me, and that it would shape my personality.
Looking back, I think I realized that ignoring the truth comes at a significant cost.
And just as important, I think the episode taught me that embracing the truth could set me free.
Today, it makes me sad to think back on the fact that my father and I often disagreed on many things.
We had very different ideas about the relationship between individuals and the state.
What started as civil conversations, too often ended in quarrels.
It felt like our opposing opinions on politics drove a wedge between us.
If he had lived today, he probably would have developed a fascination for how Bitcoin works.
He wouldn't have trusted Bitcoin, just because others said it's immutable.
I'm confident he would have picked apart every little piece of the technology, in an attempt to verify Bitcoin's promise.
Just like I try to do with the socio-economic aspects of it.
If my father had been alive today, I suspect Bitcoin would have brought us closer together.
He could have explained the technology for me, and I could have explained Bitcoin's socio-economic functions to him.
Possibly, he would have realized that I had been right when I challenged many of the things that the powers at be want us to believe.
It's just guessing, of course.
But it makes sense, because it seems to me that Bitcoin attracts truthseekers like a magnet.
And at the same time, Bitcoin forces us to search for the truth together, instead of quarrelling about the correctness of something that others have fed us with.
***
If you liked this piece, it would be great if you gave it a boost 🧡
https://image.nostr.build/5cc247b200d85af01593bbccc1f89dbf51a619a6ac253e26e1506785db86a33f.jpg
This piece below is to date one of the most personal I have done - I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.
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Yes, I agree. I learned that already the first time. If others organize something I will attend. But I don't spend time and energy on making it happen.
Brave, industrious people
who early see the escape hatch
are handsomely rewarded
with the biggest catch.
Others, who let subservience, ignorance or loyalty dictate
that they should be afraid and sit still
slowly see the escape hatch is replaced with bars,
as they are left with the bill.
The pent-up demand for sound money is huge.
Explain to your family, relatives, neighbors, colleagues and friends how the monetary system works, how it affects us, and that inflation is a policy.
This will transform pent-up demand to actual demand.
Leave it to others, and the process will be slow.
Take action, and it will be rapid.
Network effects are alfa and omega.
Make my network part of your network, and it will become easier for you.
Norges Bank, the Norwegian central bank, don't wan't to debate me and my book, Fraudcoin..
The economics students' union at Nord Universitetet (one of our universities) tried to organize a conference.
After repeated requests to NB they finally said NO to them.
This is not the first time something like this happens.
Following my book "Kvikkleire" (Quick clay, which one professor in geology has said should be mandatory reading for geology and geotechnical engineering students) ESRA Norway (European Safety and Reliability Association) tried to set up a conference with me and the stakeholders from the "expert" community, the regulator and others.
When the authorities and consultancies heard that I was invited, they became reluctant to attend.
In the span of half more than half a year, from November 2021 to May 2022, ESRA proposed four different dates.
I said yes to each of them.
But ESRA couldn't get the stakeholders to commit people to participate in the conference.
It's evident that many don't want the truth to come out about how "experts" justifies inflation of the
- money supply, and
- the supply of land that is safe to be developed.
Nice world you live in, don't you think?
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Civilization has never had a worse freerider problem: Almost everybody believe someone else should protect their freedom and provide them with security. Time to wake up the lions.
It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe a #bitcoin would cost 10M USD before tomorrow morning.
Henry Ford
What do you think of statements like "it's a problem that bitcoiners can become a new financial elite"?
I here it more often these days.
Sometimes it looks like an attack.
Most times it feels like people just don't understand that a Bitcoin economy makes it so much harder to centralize wealth compared with the traditional system.
Analysis:
https://image.nostr.build/b73ea1b6ce06f93c53da2a6686899db353957e3fd206bc93dce1c5415f2e3e46.jpg
What could be a winning strategy for Washington?
When the US debt spirals out of control, it puts the USD's status as reserve currency at risk.
This begs the question - what's the best strategy forward for Washington, whether we're talking about the super wealthy, the leaders of the political class, the deep state, or the whole shebang?
I'll take a stab at this question below.
But first, let's look at some milestones for the USD as a reserve currency:
1945: The USD seals its reserve currency status when US airplanes bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki
1973: Nixon saves the status with the petrodollar deal with Saudi Arabia
1991: Washington breeds new life into the status by letting Russia crumble in hyperinflation at the same time as the US makes a "we will buy your cheap consumer goods if you buy our treasuries and stay away from Russia" deal with China.
And here is the situation today:
- the public debt has spiralled out of control,
- the proxy war with Russia in Ukraine is a lost case,
- China hates the US and the US hates China,
- Russia and China are in love with each other, and
- the next likely reserve currency - #Bitcoin - isn't controlled by a nation that the US can bomb to pieces.
So what is the dominant strategy for Washington in this type of situation?
My take:
Convince other countries to have a tight monetary policy, increase taxes, move further with the climate policy and fight against #Bitcoin , while in parallell make sure that the US does more or less the exact opposite.
You see, this strategy comes from an old playbook:
In the 1920's the Federal Reserve was greatly helped by Bank of England when they tricked a number of other European central banks into adopting the "parity policy," which was all about rapidly shrinking the money supply. At the same time, the US and the UK continued to print money so that the rich could make bargains at the fire sale in the European countries that crashed their economies in a deflationary nightmare.
If you're in doubt about the potency of deploying something similar today - just take a quick glance at the leaders of the European political class. Then you ask yourself if you think they have the combination of IQ, leadership and care for their people that they need in order to withstand the pressure, gaslighting and bribes from the people in Washington.
To sum up:
The dominant strategy for Washington today isn't to start another war, but to convince other central banks and other governments, especially in Europe, to do really, really stupid things.
Why I hate 1991
A story about two doctrines, the US neocon hegemony and the Norwegian battery, and a tough personal awakening.
32 long years
On Monday 24 July 2023, 32 years after the Soviet Union broke up, the whole thing about what has happened on the geopolitical scene and with my beloved Norway, begins to make sense to me. And therefore, I wrote this note, as a preliminary conclusion.
The braindead conscript
I was 19 years old when the Soviet Union collapsed. At the time I was serving my obligatory year as a conscript in the army in Skjold, up north in a region called Inner Troms.
When the news about the chaos in the Baltic countries broke out, the Norwegian defence system was put on high alert, and I remember that permissions to visit our families were withdrawn.
I wish I knew more about the world of politics back then. I wish that the 12 years of public schooling had taught me about the three pillars of politics:
. Monetary policy
- Security policy
- Energy policy
I had been one of the best in our class all the way. But in hindsight I hadn't learned anything about how society and politics really works. In this sense I was a braindead boy, a pawn and a conscript freezing my ass off somewhere deep in the Norwegian woods.
And of course, I understood zero of what was going on around me, except that we knew that we might have to defend ourselves against some crazy soldiers from Soviet Union.
The awakening
My awakening to what was going on at that time comes after having:
- written a book about inflation last year,
- been part of the public debate on monetary policy in the last few months, and
- reflected upon a recent interview with Jeffrey Sachs on The Duran Podcast.
The interview was the final piece in the puzzle. Sachs talked about how he had been part of a team that tried to facilitate cooperation between Russia and some of the East bloc states. He had thought that saving them from a hyperinflation scenario was everybody’s immediate concern. Something which turned out not to be correct, and which he at that time didn’t understand why.
The hosts, Alex Christoforou and Alexander Mercouris, who both are experts on geopolitical issues, were perplexed. This was the first time they had heard about it.
And so, it was for me. But, finally after all these years, I now begin to get a glimpse of what was going on in the world at that time, why it happened, and what it caused.
When I understood this today, I first became excited. Then I felt anger. And I also felt sorry about the boy from 1991, who had been kept so solidly in the dark.
But after having written this piece, I’ve managed to calm down, and to start looking forward again.
Let’s now have a look at what was going on back in those days.
The Americans’ dilemma in 1991
Sometime in the late 1980s/early 1990s, it likely dawned upon the US government and its major constituents that the real question was:
“How can we assure that we get the financial benefits of printing of US dollars in a rapidly changing world with a collapsing Soviet Union?”
The situation involved great risks and even bigger opportunities.
One of the risks was the possibility of monetary deflation in the US.
The Fed and the government had allowed cheap credit to be used as a remedy to the stock market crash in 1987. By doing this, they kept the housing market alive, and the financial markets could then also move forward with the help of some of Fed governor Alan Greenspan uppers and steroids now and then.
In this situation, both debtors and creditors risked huge financial problems if things got out of hand internationally and many new countries begun to demand more and more USD.
If the domestic US economy became drained of USD, that meant monetary deflation and a spike in real interest rates domestically. This could cause havoc to an economy built on cheap credit and dollar hegemony.
How could the Fed and Wall Street be able to print enough USD in such a situation, without creating unmanageable bubbles in the markets, nationally and globally?
Another risk was that if the global reserve currency couldn’t meet the increasing demand for a functioning means of exchange, Russia would look for alternatives.
One alternative for them could be to default on the public debt and reintroduce gold as money.
Another more potent alternative could be to join the European countries, who were planning to create a common European currency, which later became the euro. The combination of the combined energy resources of Russia and Norway, a large common market and a common currency could easily become problematic for the US government.
In both scenarios, the USD could lose its reserve currency status.
If that happened, the US government would also lose its military supremacy as well as its No. 1 export commodity – the dollar.
The neocon solution
Today the following US policy measures, which were carved out by the neocons, and which begun in 1991, stand out:
- Saving Poland and other key East Bloc countries from hyperinflation by guaranteeing for their public debt, combined with bringing them into the EU and NATO fold.
- Turning down Jeffrey Sachs' plan to stabilize the Russian ruble with the same measures as were used to save the economy in Poland, thereby causing hyperinflation in Russia and many years of political instability inside the former superpower in the east.
- Convincing China to speed up economic reforms with the help of dollar loans from US investors and buying up US treasuries, in exchange for producing cheap goods that could be imported by the US, paid in USD.
- Relaxing house lending standards in the US, at the same time as obliging publicly funded Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to lend handsomely to the poor, thereby creating a vehicle that made it possible to funnel newly created USD into the national and global economy.
All of this happened extremely quickly – in 1991 to 1992.
These measures created a financial policy framework for the US that made it possible for them to manage the monitory policy in a relatively controlled manner.
At least in the short term…
Happy
The neocon’s policy could please all the major stakeholders, thereby creating some sort of an equilibrium, domestically, as well as internationally:
- Wall Street, who has possessed the most power at least since the creation of the Federal Reserve in 1914, would benefit handsomely.
- The US government would keep its position as rulers of the world.
- The military -industrial complex would profit greatly if things got out of hand and brute force had to be used.
- The EU could prepare onboarding of many new member states with the likely blessing of the US
- China’s political elite could show the Chinese and the rest of the world how quicly and successfully they could lift its country out of poverty and become a real international contender.
Everybody would be happy.
That is – except for Russia.
Short-term success, long-term turmoil
Although these measures could be seen as successful in the short term, they caused a high number of unintended consequences in the longer term.
We all know about the many wars and the financial instability we've had globally in the 32 years since 1991.
However, I will in the following turn your attention to Norway and have a look at the role that my country got to play when the shit started to hit the fan during the financial crisis in 2008.
The legacy of Jens Stoltenberg
Smack in the midst of the Great Financial Crisis, the Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg and his government launched the idea in March 2008 that "Norway can become Europe's battery".
The concept was that Norwegian wind and hydro power could solve the coal- and nuclear dependent Europe’s need for access to safe, climate friendly, and renewable energy.
This year also marked the beginning of 15 years of more or less systematic debasement of our currency, the Norwegian krone (NOK). It has since then lost roughly 50% of its value against the USD and 25% against the EUR. The last year the NOK has become a veritable shitcoin.
As we shall see the "battery for Europe" doctrine has also been put into place in the exact same timeframe.
In 2013 the government made the decision to build two new high-capacity power cables, one to the UK and one to Germany. This was a large and costly project that would take many years to complete.
In 2014 Stoltenberg switched roles and became Secretary General of NATO. This was the same year as the coupe in Ukraine, when the neocons in the US government started their big push for Ukraine membership in NATO.
Recent Norwegian energy policy
The power cables to Germany and the UK were put into operation in 2020/2021. In exchange of export of electricity to the Germans and Brits, we immediately imported their electricity prices, which were significantly higher.
As a result, electricity prices spiked at once in the southern and middle part of Norway, causing an uproar among the voters.
Our country has been built on cheap energy, but the cables marked an end to this era. People and companies had to adjust to a reality with sky high electricity prices compared to what we used to have, and many small and medium businesses have folded as a direct result of the cables.
This sudden electricity tax, which it became in reality, has been complimented with an insane use of subsidies from the Norwegian government to various renewable energy projects in the form of land and ocean wind farms, battery projects and much more.
Foreign large corporations have been the main recipients of the subsidies, which are financed over electricity bills to Norwegian consumers and corporations, as well as in the form of taxation.
Devaluation and energy export
The relationship between the Norwegian monetary policy and our energy policy is straight forward: Devaluation of the NOK makes it cheaper for European countries to buy energy exported from Norway.
The political motive for the battery doctrine
It might be that you believe that this is something that Norway has done as some part of a European project. Our current PM, Jonas Gahr Støre, who IMO best can be described as a climate fanatic and Europe romantic, might hope so. If you instead “torture” Jens Stoltenberg for answers, you would probably come closer to the truth.
The last few decades Germany has become increasingly skeptical to US foreign policies. Germany saw the possibility of becoming more independent from the US, by making closer ties to Russia. Gas pipes were built from Russia to Germany, and they made long term contracts for supply of gas.
The only problem was that the Germans were stupid enough to shut down the country’s own nuclear plants, making them even more dependent on gas supplies from Russia. It’s beyond any doubt that this caused panic and outrage among the neocons in the US government.
Washington, not Oslo
Norway has been a vassal state under the US since the end of WWII, and it’s highly likely that both ideas, the currency devaluation as well as the battery doctrine, came directly out of Washington. The Norwegian citizens were supposed to be the ones who would have to pay the price for keeping European countries from trading with Russia, and thereby prolong American hegemony.
In this way the Norwegian taxpayers and our hydropower dams became financial batteries in the US government’s fight for protection of the status of the USD as the global reserve currency.
We can create our own future
As what seems to be a proxy war between the US and Russia in Ukraine slowly seems to come to an embarrassing conclusion for Biden, Nuland, Blinken and the other neocons, the Norwegian citizens continue to pay a high price. Electricity bills still put companies out of business, and cause hardship to the people. And the madness related to battery and ocean wind projects seem to have no limit.
In this situation I cannot but help myself from hating 1991. For me it will forever stand as a symbol of my ignorance and a public education system that had created a brainwashed kid who knew nothing about what was going on around him.
On the other hand, I cannot let this hate burn me up from inside. It’s no use. I’m wasting my energy. Instead, I must focus on the future. The question I have to ask is the following:
“How can I make sure that today’s kids don’t end up in the same situation as I was in?”
Because I am firmly of the opinion that we can shape our own future. The neocons’ hegemony is probably about to end, and with that the, we – the Norwegian people – suddenly have options:
Should we just shut our mouths and glue ourselves to the mast of a sinking ship?
Or do we want to start discussing our future openly, and try to find out what the best way forward for Norway is?
I know for sure what the brainwashed conscript from 1991 wants. He’s done with being kept in the dark. And he wants the public debate to begin as fast as possible.
How about yourself?
Is it true that ignorance is bliss when we are talking about your kids’ future?
Do you want them to be the next to stand in the cold somewhere up north on the border to Russia, or as soldiers being dispatched to a faraway country, not knowing anything about why they are going?
I think not.
We cannot leave this discussion to the experts and the politicians. It’s far too important for that. If they get the opportunity, they probably won’t think twice about continuing to use you and your offspring as their batteries.
Choose wisely.
This article from the Council of Foreign Relation's timeline of the great financial crisis including the buil-up to it, provided an overview that helped me to come to these preliminary conclusions on what was going on in 1991-1992. Coincidentially the CFR has by severak experts on geopolitics been referred to as an organisation that influenced the neocons' policies.
https://www.cfr.org/timeline/us-financial-crisis
The so-called "Chinese miracle" startet in 1992 and led to an average growth of GDP at 10 percent for 30 years. The growth is in particular built on cheap credit, from foreign investors and state controlled banks.
This transcript from president Bush's unofficial visit with chairman Deng in 1989 illustrates what was brewing: A Sino-US relationship based on "mutual trust" and mutual scepticism to Soviet Union. Deng specificallt pointed his finger towards Japan and tzarist Russis/Soviet Union as "the two countries [that] had done the greatest damage to China".
Bush played along and said:
"So the China-U.S. relationship must stand on its own feet. After that we can talk about the broad challenges that face all of us because of changes in the Soviet Union, the unification of the European common market in 1992, and the Third World debt. We can discuss these problems. But I was anxious to come as President to make the relationship stronger and better. I can guarantee that in my Administration our bilateral relationship will be stronger and better."
It's interesting to note that finance, currencies or the dollar aren't mentioned at all, although it's every reason to assume that this was a major underlying issue.
https://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/memorandum-conversation-president-bushs-meeting-chairman-deng-xiaoping-peoples-republic
The meeting between Bush and Deng took place on 26 February 1989. Shortly after the Chinese government established the Stock Exchange Executive Council (SEEC) in March 1989 to create a nationwide treasury bond trading system.
Goldman Sachs writes in an article published on its website:
"On December 19, 1990, the Shanghai Stock Exchange reopened, the same year as the development of the financial hub of East Shanghai (Pudong) started. The Shanghai Stock Exchange restarted operations in the former Pujiang Hotel on the city’s waterfront and had computer terminals linked to other trading counters in the city and in cities around China. On July 15, 1991, the Exchange launched its first stock index."
These facts demonstrate the speed of the developments in US policymaking towards the end of the Soviet era. They clearly show us that China would be the preferred party. The former communist regime in the east was to be the US government's new best buddy, while Russia was shoved out in the cold, economically and politically.
https://www.goldmansachs.com/our-firm/history/moments/1990-shanghai-stock-exchange-reopens.html
Interesting.
Your geopolitical headline probably covers the utopian idea that many in the political class have, global dominion. Although I think that idea is impossible, due to the chaotic dynamics involved, they will still try, and the rest of us must defend ourselves against it.
I don't have an idea about a headline right now.
The so-called "intellectuals" loved the ideas of Yuval Harari's, the WEF adviser, professor in philosophy and historian from Israel.
And many of them probably like his ideas about "human gods" - homo deus, and hoped that they could become part of this elite group of people.
They swallowed his presentation of the human race as narrative builders (that we love the concept of shared myths and that it's this that separates us from other species), and of the history of our civilization (where he don't make any attempt at explaining the enormous dfference between monetary freedom and monetary monopoly) and his ideas about economics (including that it's not enough resources for everyone, and that a two-class system therefore is both natural and necessary).
This messed up many people's belief systems, and I think it hampered their ability to think critically and logically.
Even many bitcoiners still admire Harari's writings.
So I thought, this is so wrong, and why hasn't Harari been seriously challenged?
His stuff if IMO just some New Age deconstructionist shit on steroids, and even smart people seem to fall for it.
In the end this led me to write a little book that we called UNBAR. I did it, because it's necessary that we rebel up and try to win the battle of the ideas.
I think my headline would have to include something with the battle of ideas, and possible the key concept of rediscovering the cost of freedom.
https://undoqo.com/pages/project-u
Nostr readers zapped about USD 50 to me for this post about the history's most famous crime. This was more than what X paid me for a whole month of content contribution. 50K viewed it on X. I posted it on Facebook too, the engagement was OK, but significantly lower than on X. Nostr wins hands down.
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Thx, yes I agree, Jesus had even bigger fish to fry - correcting our base layer, the belief system we have broadly speaking.
And I would add:
Our belef system, broadly speaking, is Layer zero.
The next layer, Layer one, is the monetary system, is scaled upon the belief system.
And almost everything else in the civilization is layered upon the monetary system.
If we believe that
- we don't have to respect the truth,
- or that we don't have to fight to protect our freedom and sovereignty
- or that we can leave it to others to provide for our security
then we are bound to end up with letting someone monopolizing the monetary system.
I wonder if things could have been different if Jesus had this analytical framework.
Follow-up on my piece 👇 on the killing of Jesus:
The biblical texts referring to Jesus lashing the money changers, overthrowing their tables and driving them out of the temple court in Jerusalem a few days before he was arrested and killed, don't mention at all that the temple was much more than a religious building.
The texts don't mention that the temple also was the largest and most powerful bank in the region.
Neither do they mention that Pontius Pilate most certainly taxed the profits that the high priests made from deposits, loans and money changing.
Therefore, the story about Jesus chasing away the money changers lacks important context.
Directly after his arrest, the high priests held a meeting where they interrogated Jesus, before they led him to Pilate.
The high priests took Jesus to Pilate and asked him to execute the rebel.
According to the gospel of Luke, they said to Pilate:
"He opposes payment of taxes to Caesar and claims to be Messiah, a king.”
It seems likely that "taxes to Caesar" referred to taxes on the temple's banking business, which were paid by the high priests to Pilate on behalf of the Roman empire, and which Jesus directly or indirectly had objected against when he created the ruckus in the temple yard.
However, when Pilate went on to examine Jesus, he didn't mention the subject of taxes at all.
The scriptures also make it seem like Pilate was reluctant to the proposed execution of Jesus.
All of this seems very odd to me.
I suspect that it throughout history has been a great deal of politically motivated editing of these texts.
I believe that the motive for this censorship has been to steer clear of the fact that political control over religion, especially when it comes to the the monotheistic religions of Judaism and Christianity, goes hand in hand with political control of the monetary system.
It's an unholy marriage that stretches a long way back in time, long before Jesus lived.
He demonstrated against this sinful arrangement and was punished accordingly.
And instead of focusing on the evil profiteering of the state and the high priests, today's narrative seems to me to focus a whole lot on Judas the betrayer, who became a useful fall guy.
It's disgusting.
I have no other word for it.
We shouldn't be kept in the dark about these things. https://image.nostr.build/6fe58f252fc1121926d4c62ea713ed5fe4ac063ce1a05289f6e796645455a557.jpg
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Fair points, you might be right. Info about the coin, the mint, herod, the debt business, deposit service, the profits and possibly some other details I didn't deduce from the gospels, but found them in various articles on the Internet.
But I find it noteworthy and strange that Pilate's and the high priests' economic motives aren't at all reflected in the gospels. It's subjects like blasphemi, Judas' betrayel, and the people freeing Barabas instead of Jesus that comes across as important.
I can't say for sure that someone has messed with the texts, but considering that the result is favorable for the political class and the fact that it's so normal that "winners write the history books" I wouldn't at all be surprised, especially considering how important this specific story is for politics, religion and culture.
Highly relevant points. But I actually think more people had a good understanding of money then than they have today, and the evils of monerary policy were probably widely understood.
Nostr readers zapped about USD 50 to me for this post about the history's most famous crime. This was more than what X paid me for a whole month of content contribution. 50K viewed it on X. I posted it on Facebook too, the engagement was OK, but significantly lower than on X. Nostr wins hands down.
nostr:nevent1qqsxpvwll6rwka0xxrrg25ar977ya5wrt9j3t5af3d63p348fkavlyspp4mhxue69uhkummn9ekx7mqzyzpj52euaa93w4xy5atjje9yfkmy6x0d7cn7c3ghndge6zj746qejqcyqqqqqqgzkjdst
In case you missed this one 👇
nostr:nevent1qqsxpvwll6rwka0xxrrg25ar977ya5wrt9j3t5af3d63p348fkavlyspz3mhxue69uhkummnw3ezummcw3ezuer9wcpzpqe29v7w7jch2nz2w4efvjjymdjdr8klvflvg5tek5vapf02aqveqvzqqqqqqya4tlp9
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