Thursday, July 19, 2012

The Original Liar's Loan


Who had proper title to Eden? :)

Clouded TitleThe history of religious crusades and ethnic cleansing of indigenous peoples by invaders claiming the right to appropriate other peoples property based on Papal dispensations, biblical manipulations, or ancient religious connections to other peoples territories.

That's a fascinating topic, with deep implications.

Law of the Jungle <==> Law of Bungled Title? <==> Law of Semantics?

Before getting lost in the maze of implications, let's jump straight to the conclusion.

The only higher law is the Law of Recombination, given that the highest return is always the return on coordination. Anyone settling for ownership & theft is settling for far, far less than they could be part of.  Ben Franklin recognized this, in his famous "table talk" to the 1st Constitutional Congress.

We should stick with our original rallying cry. "We came, we saw, we made a more perfect union."  That focus on coordination is what produced the greatest wealth in human history.  Anything less is embarrassingly stupid. Progress always follows Open Recruitment and careful selection of optimal recombinations.
ps:  Multiple CopyWrong lawsuits are in process in the Court of Reality, claiming that Eden was a plagiarized idea.  Is nothing really sacred among crooks?


15 comments:

Matt Franko said...

Roger this from Alex Del Mar in 'Science of Money'

"The principal kinds of actual moneys have now been described and classified according to the importance of their several characteristics and legal attributes. It is not from these characteristics and attributes, considered separately and with respect to their various influences upon the expression of value, that the received principles of money are derived; but from the consideration of a portion of them lumped together. No analysis has hitherto been made of money; and that which, as it stands, is a most heterogeneous and complex object, has been treated as though it were homogeneous and simple. The principles of money have heretofore not been deduced from an orderly arrangement of the facts concerning it, but from disorder, from chaos, from the aspect of things endless in number and indeterminable in form, from the attributes of such things not in a simple condition, but when merged incongruously with other things equally numerous and indeterminate; and from relations which were both intricate, involved, and indefinable. Within this maze, where Tycho Brahe, Copernicus, Newton, Locke, and Humboldt, feared to venture, the financial pedants and quacks [Ed: read MORONS] of all ages have made themselves a paradise. It need scarcely be said that the principles they have established are utterly impracticable; that so far as man's intellect has been exerted in affairs relating to exchanges and money, books have been of little service to him; that the prizes of commercial life have too commonly fallen to the lot of the reckless and undeserving; and that those modern nations, whom nature, history, and opportunity, intended to be great, have been dragged down to the limits of littleness by monetary systems which were based on feudal infirmities, and a conservatism which hesitates to rise above them."

I think this is from like 1885 or so.

Looks like this has been with us humans for quite some time. Perhaps since the 'Dark Ages'. Perhpas today's ubiquitous new media can be the game changer as we who are able to see what is really going on wrt these systems can get this information out more widely to the public than perhaps Del Mar was able to do so back in the 1800's...

rsp,

Matt Franko said...

I again would make the point that our use of the word "money" itself lumps all sorts of things together which should be considered separate and unique systems.

"money" is poor terminology.

rsp,

Matt Franko said...

link to del Mar book:

http://books.google.com/books?id=QUcIAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA38&ots=2p2rPJqe97&dq=science+of+money&output=text



rsp

paul meli said...

"The only higher law is the Law of Recombination, given that the highest return is always the return on coordination. Anyone settling for ownership & theft is settling for far, far less than they could be part of. Ben Franklin recognized this, in his famous "table talk" to the 1st Constitutional Congress."

This paragraph is very powerful in it's implications.

Jim Baird said...

You gotta love the idea that Christians invading the holy land and driving out the Muslims is some kind of historical outrage, while the Muslims invading and driving out the Christians a few centuries before no only perfectly fine, but it established their rights to the land in perpetuity.

What a strange time it is we live in...

Roger Erickson said...

Progress displacing the past will always be an outrage to the latter & progress to the former ... in an endless, iterative series!

Plus, there are plenty of steps forward mixed with steps back.

It ain't over 'til the Fat Entropy can't sing anymore? :)

Roger Erickson said...

@Matt Franko

There are more perspectives on currencies as transaction-denominating methodologies.

From Markets to Market-Amoebas, and Back
http://econintersect.com/b2evolution/blog2.php/2011/12/23/from-markets-to-market-amoebas-and-back

I'm sure Boltzmann, Maxwell & Planck would yield additional perspectives. Today, you could even craft a String Theory of Currency.

Roger Erickson said...

Matt,
Thanks for the reference to the Del Mar book.

In any other field of study, all these old sources would be reviewed in the first day or week?

How is it that the teaching of finance, economics, fiscal policy & political economy has been perverted to the current whims of transient lobbies, instead of to enduring principles?

The very process of education in these fields has been diverted to the cause of making students & citizens susceptible to propaganda, not public purpose.

Solution is to OpenSource all paradigms to all citizens?

Every process is too important to leave to the presumed process owners!

Roger Erickson said...

Jim Baird,

ps: that's what recursive tuning is for; with enough table talks, we're all able to recognize & correct our mistakes ... maybe even prevent the next invasion

Tom Hickey said...

Mat: "money" is poor terminology.

A technical universe of discourse depends on operational definitions for precision. Otherwise talk is just gassing.

Tom Hickey said...

Jim Baird: You gotta love the idea that Christians invading the holy land and driving out the Muslims is some kind of historical outrage, while the Muslims invading and driving out the Christians a few centuries before no only perfectly fine, but it established their rights to the land in perpetuity.

And before that the children of Abraham drove out the locals. What happened before than is unknown.

The victors get to write history, and they rationalize their actions.

paul meli said...

@Tom

"money" is poor terminology but in the MMT world "money things" (state-backed) in the non-government can be…

• dollars
• dollar liabilities
• government bonds held by the public

where:

dollar nfa's = total dollars - total dollar liabilities

Total NFA's = dollar nfa's + government bonds held by the public.

Most MMT'rs know this, the rest of the world not so much.

Tom Hickey said...

The oracle (Warren) says, "I avoid using the term "money.'" I agree. It is too ambiguous, and when one takes an ambiguous term that is in wide use and gives it a technical definition, one is inviting misunderstanding and therefore wasting a lot of time explaining oneself.

Tom Hickey said...

Note to self: for clarity and precision and to avoid ambiguity and confusion, keep in mind the distinction among:

lexical or dictionary definition

theoretical definition

operational definition

stipulative definition

rhetorical or persuasive definition

Unknown said...

The history of religious crusades and ethnic cleansing of indigenous peoples by invaders claiming the right to appropriate other peoples property based on Papal dispensations, biblical manipulations, or ancient religious connections to other peoples territories.
loan