Monetary Reform

>From: "Dan Parker"

>Reply-To: monetaryreform@cog.kent.edu

>Subject: Re: MONETARY: Working and Consuming in Utopia: Comments by Wally Klinck

>Date: Sun, 27 Oct 2002 12:21:40 -0700

>----- Original Message -----

>From: "Wallace M. Klinck"

>Sent: Sunday, October 27, 2002 2:16 AM

>Subject: Re: MONETARY: Working and Consuming in Utopia: Comments by Wally

>Klinck

> >Usually those who are

> > insecure seek to reassure themselves by seeking control over others.

> > Incidentally, the concept of "World Government" is to Social Credit the

> > ultimate horror--almost certainly to become the ultimate instrument of

> > tyranny (note this Dan).

>Wally, the insecurity comment is a good insight. Like political

>activism within a political party, I disagree with the social credit

>stance against world government.

>Robert Klinck's article on how power hungry people can misuse

>good ideas for selfish ends is a good warning. However, there is

>another side of the equation. Just as it only takes one person to

>dispose of their old paint in a town's water supply, to require

>a law to discourage such behaviour; only one country has to pump

>raw sewage upstream of another country to require similar regulation

>at the international level.

>rgds always

>Dan Parker

The objection was not so much to "activism within a political party" but to a party identifying itself as Social Credit. Such a party would inevitably bring discredit to the concept of Social Credit.

As to the metaphor about old paint, the rule of law does not necessarily require government. What is required is a consensus as to what is acceptable behavior and the certitude that there will be sanctions if that behavior is bridged. People are quite capable of organizing themselves to deal with problems as they occur. Social Credit does not oppose government per se, but supports government from the ground up, not from the top down. Government should be limited, not unlimited. It should be decentralized, with local control of local institutions.

There is a water dispute between Mexico and the United States, where the United States contends that Mexico is in material breach of the existing treaty. The matter will be resolved in a civilized manner between the two nations.

What World Government means is the surrender local sovereignty to some supra-sovereignty, supposedly in control of the world. Some anonymous body would dictate terms to Mexico and the United States.

GATT is one such body. Who elected its members? What is the appeal process? To whom do we appeal?

Either we are capable of self-government, or we are not.

The idea behind World Government is that we are not.

It is the idea behind every dictatorship.

I am appending some excerpts from Douglas' The Approach to Reality http://www.geocities.com/new_economics/The-Approach-to-Reality.htm :

Social Credit Party

There is at the present time an idea that we should have a Social Credit party in this country. I can quite understand and sympathise with that idea, but it is a profound misconception. It assumes that the government of the country should be a government of experts.

Let me show you that it does assume that.

If you elect a Social Credit party, supposing you could, I may say that I regard the election of a Social Credit party in this country as one of the greatest catastrophes that could happen. By such an election you proceed to elect, by the nature of it, a number of people who are supposed to know enough about finance to say what should be. done about it.

Now it is an axiom of experience that no layman can possibly direct the expert in details, and in normal things no layman is fool enough to try to do it.

If you had a Social Credit government, it would proceed to direct a set of very competent experts - the existing financial authorities, for example - how to do their job. The essential thing about that situation would be the responsibility for what was done.

Now no set of 500 or 600 men whom you could elect in this country could possibly know as much about finance as the people they would presume to direct.

You know, in all that I have said about financiers, I have never at any time said that they were incompetent, nor are they, within the limits of their own philosophy. But to elect a Social Credit party in this country would be to elect a set of amateurs to direct a set of very competent professionals.

The professionals, I may tell you, would see that the amateurs got the blame for everything that was done.

World Government

I began my address tonight by saying that we are engaged in a war for truth. It is one of the curious phenomena of that war that most of the soldiers on both sides do not know what they are fighting for. This applies both to soldiers on the side of lies and soldiers on the side of truth.

The war to a large extent is a war to capture public opinion, and public opinion is very often captured by something which is more of a fundamental lie than even the thing from which the people think they are flying.

The League of Nations provides just one of those instances of the overwhelming importance of priority in this world. There are probably millions of things which are equally sound and good and important in the cosmos (such as the abolition of capital punishment - you can make a catalogue for yourself).

The question is, what are you going to do first? A RAT is not the same thing as TAR although composed of the same letters - priority of the letters is obviously important. The idea of the League of Nations, of course, on the face of it is attractive and is meant to sound attractive. Had we got a reformed financial system, one which did not force exports, one which did not really place everything under the control of finance, one which did not produce frustrations caused by the working of financial institutions: if these things were not so - if, I repeat, we had a reformed financial system - the right kind of internationalism would be fairly sound and proper.

But not first, not before the financial system is rectified.

The only safeguard against a world governed by international finance is nationalism. Whatever may be said about the inception of the League of Nations - and some very queer things are being said - there is no doubt whatever that it has been the sport of international financiers from its very beginnings; and while it may be thought the duty of the League of Nations to reform the financial system. I do not think that the League of Nations has either the power or, so far as it is at present concerned, the desire to do so; but rather so to strengthen itself that it may become a world government of Finance - which it is rapidly becoming at the present time.

These are from The Tragedy of Human Effort http://www.geocities.com/new_economics/The-Tragedy-of-Human-Effort.htm :

The problem before the world and, in particular, the problem before this country, therefore, is plain, though difficult.

First, we have to know how to bring into our consciousness what sort of a world we want, and to realise that we alone can get it, not in detail, but in objective; and I might say at once that there is not one person in this room who is secure in the world that he now has.

In my opinion, we want, first of all. security in what we have, freedom of action, thought, and speech, and a more abundant life for all. Every one of these is possible, and every one of them in the present state of progress of the world can be reduced to the possession of more purchasing power, so that it is not too much to say, even though it may sound banal, that the first objective of a democracy should be a national dividend.

A second aspect of the problem has been clarified by the courageous utterance of the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Hewart, in his objections to the encroachments of bureaucracy. If I may restate them - the business of bureaucracy is to get us what we want, not to annoy and hinder us by taking from us by taxation and irritating restrictions those facilities which we otherwise should have.

Thirdly, and most important, we have to obtain control of the forces of the Crown by genuine political democracy...

Let me interject here: How is it conceivably possible for us to even imagine that we could obtain control of the forces of the World Government? It might be possible for us to take control of our state or provincial government, or perhaps the national government. But the World Government? World Government is the abnegation of the very potential for personal consciousness.

It was essential to obtain agreement on policy, and if in any association such as a nation, it was not possible to obtain agreement on policy, then it became imperative that the association should break up into smaller units, until in any unit the policy was agreed.

He remarked that this was exactly the opposite of the current attempt to make the national problem into a world problem...

Smaller units, not larger units like World Government.

Question: Is it not true that in totalitarian states, such as Germany, experts have been told to produce results?

It is not the people who have specified the results that they want, said Major Douglas, but the dictator; and the assumption of dictatorship is that the dictator knows what is good for the people. As a theory of government this is similar to the idea that you must have strict supervision to see that the girls in a chocolate shop do not eat the chocolates, whereas, as everyone knows, it is quite unnecessary, because after the first orgy which makes them sick, they tend not to eat chocolates. There is too much attention paid to the material aspects of these matters.

What is important is that we should become conscious of our sovereignty - that we should associate consciously, understanding the purpose of our association, and refusing to accept results which are alien to the purpose of our association. We must learn to control our actions consciously, and not act at the behest of some external control of which we are not conscious. That is exploitation, and is similar to the behaviour of an insane man led to the edge of a precipice because he has no control over his own actions.

"External control" is what World Government is all about.