The Currency of Life Force II
Last week we looked at the most superficial layers of the money system and its corruption within our modern political system with some disciplinary recommendations. The mind can be a terrible waster of life force. So can government. They both need a currency system that has hard limits to prevent their unwise actions. The mind, as our leader, with full access to the stored wealth of the body is slavery and a guaranteed crash and burn, maybe death. Our government, with a blank check, will purchase the entire nation with the people’s own power.
How have the ancients dealt with this problem of the mind getting total control of the life force? In this post, we will leave aside the religious attempts to corral the mind with the heart. There is no doubt that a morality expressed as a religion and a unified culture is the best way to regulate both mind and body into a harmonious whole being. But in the design of a currency system, we do not want to depend on the good nature of either humans with power or humans with control. Can a currency system be designed as a stand-alone lawful set of agreements that support the enhancement of life itself?
If our fundamental risk is power and control in the same hands and by definition, the mind must exercise control then the power of the currency system must arise from the people and the body. The people must hold the wealth and access to it. Our human organization puts strict limits upon mind in accessing the energy reserves of the body. As I have often stated, being able to routinely and naturally put the government to sleep is job one of a long-lived organism. Our bodies do this by having control over the currency system of our internal life force. Even with adrenaline, caffeine and other stimulants there is still a hard stop that cannot be overcome for long.
Emergency powers and reserves are critical to have and maintain and to use only in extremis. Other than those hopefully rare situations then the wealth of a nation must reside with its people and their ability to work. When a currency system collapses, it always reverts to labor and barter. Even if the powers that be have a great army or a powerful police force eventually all the wealth is consumed and the incentive to produce is exhausted to the point where each living person is reduced to working to survive. This is ground zero for the currency of life force.
What are the ways to circumvent the people having control over their own life force’s productivity? The oldest is slavery. Slavery is third-party ownership over individual human work. This can be hard slavery with whips and chains or soft slavery with debt or limiting access to nature and resources to live. Much progress has been made in making slavery unacceptable and codified within the conscience and by the outer law. And like it or not, cheap and easy access to guns is the greatest counterbalance to slavery yet invented.
Guns and the Black Plague’s labor die-off broke the feudal system in the 1600s. It is no coincidence this is the same time period of the rise of the central banking system under which we all live today. When the slavery of labor no longer worked then control over access to and the cost of borrowing money became the method of control of king and pauper alike. The industrial revolution with a hard money banking system where the balance of power between church, state and people was relatively balanced for an age fueled the greatest expansion of life force on Earth.
But then government thru a series of wars and depressions divorced the money from labor with the printing of paper currency and the social programs provided by the government. Deficit spending and the reallocation of currency from one group to another for power created a new type of slavery to money instead of labor. Debt slavery whether to banks or by government taxes or largess has shifted the balance of power to the point of a crash of the system that has exhausted the people’s life force.
What is the solution? A new currency system that is open and transparent. A blockchain accounting of all currency transactions that every citizen can see is essential. I will gladly give up my privacy for no more black budget secret programs, no more “missing” money at HUD and the Pentagon printed out of thin air and no more hidden blackmail or bribery payments to our politicians. Previous limits on usury and sky high interest rates and second mortgages on our homes should be reenacted to limit the power of capital to rule labor through debt. A lower bound on interest rates should also be enacted to keep the well-connected from buying assets with no carrying cost and causing asset prices to rise out of reach of everyday people.
Above all, there must be some upper limit to government in power and in time. Let’s have the most beneficial and benevolent government LIMITED to 20% of GNP. Let’s have a truly independent judiciary, with term and wealth limits for elected representatives, and a truly ground-up populism driven by online political discussion forums and platforms free of manipulation of corporate and government agencies budgets and interests.
And let’s restructure our government to prevent any political and legal power struggle and change for one out of every three years. Our minds are forced out of power and control into sleep for eight hours out of 24. There can be no argument as to the safety and value of this balance of power. Give the people themselves a year free of political manipulation to develop a whole being agenda for the next period of exertion led by our group mind, our government.
The true currency of humanity is the life force harvested, husbanded and shared by each human. Let’s remember our humanity and build a new currency system that supports it.