And now for
something completely different! Every so
often we’ve made a reference to Dr. Milton Friedman’s appearance on the Phil
Donohue Show and his comment that “greed is good.” It turns out that Friedman wasn’t the only
economist advocating the goodness of greed and its benefits for the human race.
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| His Economic Lordship, J.M. Keynes |
Surprisingly (or
perhaps not so surprising), the World’s Greatest Economist™ John Maynard Lord
Keynes also came out strong in favor of vice as virtue! As His Lordship declared in an essay, “Economic
Possibilities for Our Grandchildren,” first published in 1930 and republished
in his collection, Essays in Persuasion (1931),
For at least another hundred years we must pretend to ourselves
and to every one that fair is foul and foul is fair; for foul is useful and
fair is not. Avarice and usury and precaution must be our gods for a little
longer still. For only they can lead us out of
the tunnel of economic necessity into daylight.
Of course,
taken out of context like that gives the impression that Keynes was in favor of
lying and deceit as a usual thing. Read
in context, we realize that Keynes very likely believed that lying (even to one’s
self) was ordinarily to be considered something bad, or at least not very good,
but that it is permissible if you have a good reason.
. . . which is
to say, lying and deceit are okay whenever you think they might be useful to
you or are simply more convenient than honesty; the end justifies the means. Taking this fundamental principle of Keynes
as a guide, we can start to get a grip on understanding the more confusing
aspects of Keynesian economics and realize why the system as a whole doesn’t
seem to conform to common sense at key points.
Take, for example,
Keynes’s description of the role the State plays in regulating (something of a
euphemism in this context, as to Keynes, “regulation” seems to have meant “absolute
control”) money and credit, which Keynes — in common with most Currency Principle
adherents — defined exclusively in terms of currency and “currency substitutes.” As he declared in the opening passages of his
Treatise on Money (and carefully note the year of publication),
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| Knapp, founder of Chartalism. It should've stayed lost. |
It is a peculiar
characteristic of money contracts
that it is the State or Community not only which enforces delivery,
but also which decides what it is that must be delivered as a lawful or
customary discharge of a contract which has been concluded in terms of the
money-of-account. The State, therefore, comes in first of
all as the authority of law which enforces the payment of the thing which
corresponds to the name or description in the contract. But it comes in doubly
when, in addition, it claims the right to determine and declare what thing corresponds to the name, and
to vary its declaration from time to time — when, that is to say, it claims the
right to re-edit the dictionary. This right is claimed by all modern States and
has been so claimed for some four thousand years at least. It is when this
stage in the evolution of money has been reached that Knapp’s Chartalism — the
doctrine that money is peculiarly a creation of the State — is fully realized. (John Maynard Keynes, A Treatise on Money, Volume I: The Pure Theory of Money. New York:
Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1930, 4.)
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| Aristotle might have thought Keynes a bit nuts. |
Any Aristotelian or Thomist of any faith will instantly
grasp the incredible, even breathtaking scope of Keynes’s claim. If true, Keynes’s declaration not only
abolishes private property, but free association — liberty — by claiming that the
State can alter the terms of any “money contract” at will simply by changing
the definition of a thing.
Keynes was
evidently unaware that all contracts
are “money contracts.” They involve the
exchange of the value of existing or future marketable goods or services — “consideration”
— or no contract exists.
For a crash
course in legal language, a contract is defined in Black’s Law Dictionary
as “An agreement, upon sufficient consideration, to do or not to do a
particular thing.” “Consideration” is
the aspect of a contract involving value, and thus money: “The cause, motive
price, or impelling influence which induces a contracting party to enter into a
contract.” All contracts therefore
necessarily involve the exchange of something of value, and thus involve money.
Getting into a
little philosophy, the power to change the definition of a thing is the power
to change the thing’s “substantial nature” — its essence. In keeping with Karl Marx’s reformulation of Georg
Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s claim that, in a sense, the State is somehow divine
or a divine manifestation, Keynes was, in effect, claiming that the State, if
not a god per se, is at least
something with the power of a false god to change truth through
transubstantiation.
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| The State is a "Mortall God"? Not likely. Next slide, please. |
This has led to
the situation in which the great mass of people has become convinced that all
benefits flow from the State. No
recourse is to be had from any other source for anybody or anything. As one enthusiast put it, “The State is the
sole intercessor available to the poor.” (Rupert J.
Ederer, “Solidaristic Economics,” Fidelity
magazine, July 1994, 9-15.)
Unfortunately,
the State, especially under fascism and other forms of totalitarianism,
frequently has an agenda at odds with the duty of individuals to acquire and
develop virtue. (Caritas in Veritate, §§ 7, 11, 17, 27, 44, 73, 78.) When society is
oriented along lines that come into conflict with the natural law based on the
Intellect, it becomes difficult, if not impossible, for a good citizen to be at
the same time a good human being.
Thus, it
becomes perfectly understandable that, trapped in the Currency Principle
paradigm that goes contrary to natural law, even people who are otherwise
opposed, like Friedman and Keynes, would come to a mutual understanding about
the necessity of dishonesty and vice in order to make their anti-human systems
work.
It then comes
as no surprise that such experts find nothing wrong with the government
carrying out massive counterfeiting operations, as we will see in the next
posting on this subject.
#30#