Five years ago today we ran one of our most popular blog
postings ever: “Halloween Horror Special XIII: Mean Green Mother from Outer
Space.” Possibly because of
its resemblance to a tabloid newspaper feature article (even though every word
is absolutely true), the posting has consistently ranked in the top five for
half a decade, one of the “Top Five for Five,” so to speak. That being the case, we decided to rerun it
today, with a few corrections, and adding a few illustrations, and removing the
links that no longer lead anywhere.
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| Audry I and Audry II facing off. |
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
Halloween Horror Special XIII: Mean
Green Mother from Outer Space
We
think we finally understand Keynesian economics. Frightening as that thought
is, it’s an essential first step in helping people to understand the
alternative that the natural law, social justice, and binary economics offers.
Because it integrates binary economics as well as the act of social justice,
the Just Third Way has the potential to remedy the massive and seemingly
unavoidable problems caused by reliance on Keynesian economics as the ideal
model for global economic, financial, and political systems.
First, of course, Keynesian economics is directly contrary to the precepts of
the natural law. It effectively abolishes private property and free
association, calls into question the right to life, and redefines what it means
to pursue happiness, that is, acquire and develop virtue. In Keynesian
economics, the ordinary human person is reduced to the status of “homo
œconomicus,” that is, a purely economic unit whose human needs may be satisfied
with a bare modicum of material goods, but whose wants are insatiable. (This
actually contradicts the Theory of Marginal Utility, but it’s not clear that
Keynes was ever completely consistent in anything.)
The observation that Keynesian economics is directly contrary to the precepts of the natural law leads to a breakthrough realization. That is, Keynesian economics is not from this earth. Keynesian economics is from another planet.
Does this mean that Keynes was himself an alien being, and that Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones failed in their mission to protect the earth from the scum of the universe? It would make sense, but (reluctantly) our in-depth investigation of Keynes and study of his thought reveals something even more sinister.
It turns out that Keynes was an unwitting dupe of a highly evolved vegetative
conspiracy intended to turn humanity into plant food. This was first chronicled
by Roger Corman and Charles B. Griffith in the 1960 fact-based allegory, The
Little Shop of Horrors. The film was discredited, first by changing the
title from the more descriptive The Passionate People Eater, then by
spreading the rumor that Corman and Griffith wrote the script overnight while
drunk and filmed the movie in two days.
When the message failed to penetrate the inner sancta of academia and politics, it was remade into an off-Broadway musical and then into another documentary in an all-out effort to wake people up. Since the situation had only gotten worse in the interim, the message was made more explicit, as can be seen in this clip, in which one of the alien beings reveals why it has duped Keynes into promoting a economic principles and theories that bear absolutely no relation to reality. The alien tells the character representing Keynes (played by Rick Moranis) that the goal is world conquest. Humanity is simply a source of food for the aliens, and the sooner civilization is destroyed by “Keynesian” economics, the better.
The one bright spot is that, between 1960 and 1986 when the second effort was
released in theaters, Louis Kelso and Mortimer Adler wrote The New Capitalists. The subtitle of the book gives the human race
the ultimate solution to the “slavery of savings” into which Keynesian
economics has bound the human race: “A Proposal to Free Economic Growth from
the Slavery of [Past] Savings.”
Serious students of the cinema will immediately understand the significance of
the “electrical” jolt that binary economics gives to Keynesian economics,
blowing apart its complete reliance on past savings, and ending the alien
threat represented by Keynesian economics. Of course, since (as Father William
Ferree pointed out in Introduction to Social Justice), the work of
social justice is never done, the very end of the film reminds us to remain
vigilant lest Keynesian economics once again grow up among us.
Nowhere is the alien nature of Keynesian economics better illustrated than in
the way it relies on inflation and consumer credit to run an economy. There is
no other way to explain how, in an economy that has the capacity to produce far
more than is necessary to provide a comfortable life for everyone, there is
want, even desperate need.
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| Keynes, a.k.a., "Mean Green Mother" |
The observation that Keynesian economics is directly contrary to the precepts of the natural law leads to a breakthrough realization. That is, Keynesian economics is not from this earth. Keynesian economics is from another planet.
Does this mean that Keynes was himself an alien being, and that Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones failed in their mission to protect the earth from the scum of the universe? It would make sense, but (reluctantly) our in-depth investigation of Keynes and study of his thought reveals something even more sinister.
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| Feeding the plant. |
When the message failed to penetrate the inner sancta of academia and politics, it was remade into an off-Broadway musical and then into another documentary in an all-out effort to wake people up. Since the situation had only gotten worse in the interim, the message was made more explicit, as can be seen in this clip, in which one of the alien beings reveals why it has duped Keynes into promoting a economic principles and theories that bear absolutely no relation to reality. The alien tells the character representing Keynes (played by Rick Moranis) that the goal is world conquest. Humanity is simply a source of food for the aliens, and the sooner civilization is destroyed by “Keynesian” economics, the better.
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| Mortimer Adler |
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| Louis Kelso |
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| Father William Ferree |
How
can that be? Because the alien idea has intruded that the only way to finance
new capital formation is by cutting consumption and saving.
The problem is that the rich are already saving, in fact, their savings are already invested in new capital (and, of course, old capital). Where do we get the additional savings?
From wage workers. Through artificially induced inflation, prices that wage workers have to pay go up. This forces wage workers to cut consumption, thereby generating the “savings” necessary to finance new capital formation. The savings are passed on to producers in the form of profits, thereby putting the money into the hands of people who will use it for reinvestment rather than its proper use of consumption.
This, however, means that “the economic dilemma” kicks in. Keynesian economics is based on the
assumption that, without the savings generated by cutting consumption for
financing, there will be no new capital formed. At the same time, without the
consumption to provide the incentive for producers to invest in new capital,
there will be no new capital formed — people do, after all, have to buy the
goods and services produced.
Or do they? Keynesian economics stipulates that when people are unemployed and not producing, they should be put to work producing goods and services that cannot be marketed! The sole purpose of this useless production is to generate effective demand by wage workers without increasing the supply of marketable goods and services by having them produce anything of value, i.e., marketable goods and services.
The problem is that the rich are already saving, in fact, their savings are already invested in new capital (and, of course, old capital). Where do we get the additional savings?
From wage workers. Through artificially induced inflation, prices that wage workers have to pay go up. This forces wage workers to cut consumption, thereby generating the “savings” necessary to finance new capital formation. The savings are passed on to producers in the form of profits, thereby putting the money into the hands of people who will use it for reinvestment rather than its proper use of consumption.
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| Keynes and Kodos monopolizing all of Earth's capital. |
Or do they? Keynesian economics stipulates that when people are unemployed and not producing, they should be put to work producing goods and services that cannot be marketed! The sole purpose of this useless production is to generate effective demand by wage workers without increasing the supply of marketable goods and services by having them produce anything of value, i.e., marketable goods and services.
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| National bankruptcy, debtors prison, or both. |
Why
must you not increase the supply of marketable goods and services? Because increasing
production increases supply and drives prices down, and you need to drive
prices up in order to force people to cut consumption! In Keynesian
economics, the economy is better off if you produce nothing and the State just
prints money and gives it to you.
The problem is that there’s only so much in the way of unmarketable goods and services you can produce before things start to fall apart. The answer? Consumer credit.
The problem is that there’s only so much in the way of unmarketable goods and services you can produce before things start to fall apart. The answer? Consumer credit.
This
is because consumer credit increases effective demand without producing any
good or service, marketable or unmarketable. The downside is that, in the long
run, borrowing today requires that you repay tomorrow. Eventually that means
that the income you get tomorrow cannot be saved, because it was spent today,
or yesterday. It can’t be saved because it was already consumed.
The only way out is for consumers overburdened with debt to declare bankruptcy. True, this stiffs the producers that sold on credit, but the government can bail them out. It also gives the consumers a clean slate so they can borrow more money, then declare bankruptcy again, while the government creates more money to bail out producers.
Is there any question but that this is an alien conspiracy? The creature in Little
Shop of Horrors made this perfectly clear with its demands to be fed
constantly on the life’s blood of humanity, an obvious allegory for the misuse
of credit, the life’s blood of the economy, with the goal of world conquest.
Of course, we could also just get rid of the whole Keynesian shtick and go with a more common sense solution, say, Capital Homesteading. Or is that just too wild and unbelievable compared with the surreality of Keynesian economics?
Feed me, Seymour.
#30#
The only way out is for consumers overburdened with debt to declare bankruptcy. True, this stiffs the producers that sold on credit, but the government can bail them out. It also gives the consumers a clean slate so they can borrow more money, then declare bankruptcy again, while the government creates more money to bail out producers.
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| Keynes and Kodos successful conspiracy. |
Of course, we could also just get rid of the whole Keynesian shtick and go with a more common sense solution, say, Capital Homesteading. Or is that just too wild and unbelievable compared with the surreality of Keynesian economics?
Feed me, Seymour.
#30#
Epilog: A Word About Capital
Homesteading
Capital Homesteading is an application of the principles of
the Just Third Way, based in part on the binary economics of Louis Kelso and
Mortimer Adler. At the heart of binary
economics is “Say’s Law of Markets.”
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| Jean-Baptiste Say, not from Outer Space |
Say’s Law is based on the Adam Smith’s first principle of
economics: “Consumption is the sole end and purpose of all production.” The necessary corollary to that, of course,
is that you can’t consume what hasn’t been produced, either by yourself or
others.
Thus, in order to consume, you must produce, either for your
own direct consumption, or to trade with others for what those others have
produced. This is why Say’s Law is
usually (but misleadingly) summarized as “Production (supply) equals income
(demand), therefore, supply generates its own demand, and demand its own
supply.
“Money” is the means whereby I exchange what I produce for
what you produce. If money is not the
symbol of existing production or the present value of future production, then
it is fraudulent — counterfeit (legal or otherwise) — and a means of cheating
people or controlling them.
The problem is in how people can be productive. Before the Industrial Revolution, human labor
and natural resources were the primary factors of production. Once technology started advancing rapidly,
however (made possible by advances in financial technology), capital
instruments and natural resources became the primary factors of production.
Where the issue before had been how to ensure that people
could produce for themselves with their own labor (slavery being a way to force
people to employ their labor to produce for others), the issue was now how
people without savings could purchase the new capital instruments.
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| Keynesian Space Vampires producing nothing but higher costs of production. |
Unfortunately, Keynesian economics is built on the
assumption that human labor is still the primary factor of production. Consequently, ownership of the new capital
instruments is not a factor Keynes considered . . . except when asserting
without proof that the only way to finance new capital formation is to
accumulate savings. This “slavery of
past savings” necessarily restricts capital ownership to the rich, who can
afford to save (capitalism), or the State, which has the power to take
(socialism).
The answer, as Louis Kelso saw it, is to finance capital out
of its own “future savings,” i.e., purchase productive capital on credit that pays for the cost of capital assets out of their own future earnings. By replacing
traditional forms of collateral with capital credit insurance and reinsurance
policies, anybody with a financially feasible project (one that pays for
itself) can own capital. Ownership is
not restricted to the rich or to the State, and people can produce with both
their labor and their capital for consumption, not savings for others.