Somebody put me on to Douglas a year or two back and I was drawn in by his ideas. Critiques of capitalist dysfunction, which are real and necessary, seem hopelessly shackled to, and therefore poisoned by, the real-world results of Marxism. Douglas's social credit attracts me as a real workable alternative in the same way as the distributism in Belloc and Chesteron.
The fact that Douglas has been charged with noticing global Satanism, by identifying real problems with our financial Ponzi scheme, can only be a plus in his column.
His focus on the individual and individual freedom display, that in spite of being worthy and cursed enough to be called Cassandra, he too had drunk deep of the poisoned wells.
Even families have issue facing the powers that be, much less individuals, yet in strange twisted form, clans have made a reappearance, focused around the neo-monarchs of content creators or an interest.
Still, this in no way diminishs the impressive feat of accurately calling where the boulder will fall years and years before the house is crushed.
It will be certainly interesting to see what else this Cassandra saw.
Though, a dark thought comes.
His work and history marks another notch on that dark blade that whispers of knowledge and understanding being hollow and that carnage clears the way. After all, he saw true, but what were the results?
Some believe the blade's promises, but even before the madness of the french revolution, there were real issues,but where did the black blade lead the french?
No easy answers on this tree.
Hopefully we can make use of the dead Mr.Douglas before we find ourselves on a hill of corpses.
At the very least, to be breathing on that hill would be better than being part of it.
“knowledge and understanding being hollow and that carnage clears the way“ - I love your comment. I thought about it on a drive today, in light of all the “truths” I’ve discovered that just weren’t so the past few years. I honestly don’t think men know much of anything, and I think we stratify ourselves on thin air. You can make a thought ornate, but that doesn’t make it anything more than what it is in essence. Most of modern sophistry is just Rococo dressing of a hollow man, a stuffed man. Jargon and convoluted clauses hide the man behind the curtain. The only reason we have this false confidence is the technology, which is offered as proof of our advancement, but to be honest, I don’t think most of this stuff is the work product of man. And all the economic wizardry is an effort to conjure something from nothing by way of confusion and illusion. Not only is there a black hole at the center of the galaxy (allegedly), but there is one at the heart of human civilization. But like you imply, maybe the structure collapses if that hole is probed and publicized. Maybe the universe requires a belief, or in our case a lie, to kickstart the cascade that produces the rest. Something from nothing. An arbitrary pulse, a 1 among the 0s. After all, while I don’t believe men know much of anything, I do enjoy long stimulating journeys that remove me from that conclusion so that I can journey back to it. This is all some metaphysical journey from stasis to stasis, and the events in between are full of sound and fury signifying nothing.
The only Truth, the answer beyond theories and the dark whispers of the blade of carnage...
Is creation, survival. There'll always be tyrants, usurpers and madness, and indeed sometimes extraordinary things are required of us.
The greatest resistance in vile times like ours is to have family and thus bring forth people who will occupy the future. If we cannot do this ourselves, we can at least help the children of the future.
That words are often hollow, that carnage promises victory but often gives pyrrhic results does not mean you need accept the void, nihility.
After all, all of us here, from brilliant minds to slow of wit, are only able to stand and breathe because of countless ordinary ancestors who did ordinary things in unordinary times.
There were children born and raised in the times of black plague even.
Compared to that simple unbroken chain, the sounds and fury of the trials of today are what is truly nothing.
The blade of carnage only sometimes lies, but the void, nihilism always decieves.
Millions, possible billions of people managed to survive and reproduce in times far worse than we currently inhabit, all for each of us to be here, now. It's hubris to think this time is really different and folly to believe that this fundamental fact has somehow changed because Current Year.
I came across Social Credit roughly a decade and a half ago after reading that the early Robert Heinlein was heavily influenced by the Social Credit movement. It's part of how he maintained some libertarian elements even when he was a huge leftist.
For example, in his early novel "Beyond This Horizon" he describes a utopia that is half Bernietopia and half something that Catgirl Kulak would advocate. There's an intentional inflation of the equity currency, a citizen dividend and other Bernie approved goodies. But there is also Kinder, Gentler Eugenics and near universal gun ownership, complete with legal dueling. If you aren't openly carrying, you are some sort of wimp.
Heinlein was even more specific in his posthumously published first novel, "For Us, the Living." As a story, it is terrible. And as a father of a teenage girl, I find his jealosy-is-evil free love philosophy to be wicked. But there are also many interesting ideas therein, and in Chapter 9 (and a connected appendix) he lays out Social Credit theory in game form. I really should revisit this myself. (Being intellectually lazy, I have simply glommed onto the bits of populist theory that should be frikken obvious and moved onto promoting them, vs. trying to solve an entire economy.)
Social Credit also had a large following in New Zealand in the mid- late 20th century until being dismissed and wiped off the board by the wave of neo-liberalism, which saw the country plunge into the abyss .....
"... unwilling to work for the machine, unable to earn enough to be independent, and expending all of his energy and effort in the pursuit of games with an enthusiasm..."
TL:DR. Anyway, I've got to to grind the mats I need for tonight's raid. so BBL.
Nice post, Tree. Looking forward to reading your further analysis of his work. I like hearing about historical economists who had accurate predictions about the modern world...
On this note, have you read Guido Preparata's "Conjuring Hitler"? It changed how I saw the early/mid 20th century...In it he references and speaks very highly of the economist Thorstein Veblen, who correctly predicted in 1920 (!) in his "Economic Consequences of the Peace" that the Versailles treaty was intentionally designed by our financial overlords to lead to a second round of conflict, one that would be between Germany and Russia...Veblen recognized that the 1919 Treaty of Versailles would stir up forces of mystical German revanchism and cause financial distress to ordinary Germans, while leaving the upper classes and the military untouched and primed to attack Bolshevik Russia...
Thanks. That was a ponderous read, but a worthwhile one. I surely got more than a healthy dose of woe from it. I feel dopamines leeching out from the soles of my feet. But you are doing the Lord's work here, Sir. I'd like to see you do a hit piece or monograph (call it what you will) on Antonio Gramsci.
As always a fantastic article of someone that I had never heard of before.
I remember Manning from my Canadian history. He’s remembered as an ok PM but I’m not so hot on him now.
Notice the charge of antisemitism. One good thing that came out of the Gaza massacres is that antisemitism doesn’t quite carry the same “sting” as it did in the past.
That’s progress in my book.
I look forward to the rest of your analysis and don’t mind the slow reading - the style is hard for us moderns but holds so much depth because you have to read over again.
I'm happy you're getting around to Douglas. From what I can make out, he got just about everything right. I will read this series with especial interest.
A couple of things I noticed:
'But the efficiency of the performance as compared with the efficiency of the average factory worker is simply incomparable any factory which...'
missing preposition between any and factory?
'There is absolutely no concrete difference between work and play unless it be in favor of the former no one would contend that...'
missing full stop between former and no one?
'Her article is paywalled, so I myself haven’t read it.'
Douglas is wrong about how inflation functions. The dilution of currency to create goods is inflation-neutral. Instead, inflation occurs where the supply of money and credit expands relative to the supply of goods.
The fact that there is not perfect efficiency in production is also a wash. As Douglas correctly points out, ordinarily efficiency and productive increase over time, which is deflationary.
Unfortunately, government and banks frequently issue money and credit with no corresponding increase in the supply of goods or services, and this inflationary impulse outweighs, in the long term, the deflationary benefits of increased productivity.
I will be eager to hear more about his social credit system. That initially sounds like it would require a large government. My hope is it is an alternative somehow, to Caesar figure lays waste to technocracy, which increasingly seems the only solution other than outright economic and civiliational collapse.
Somebody put me on to Douglas a year or two back and I was drawn in by his ideas. Critiques of capitalist dysfunction, which are real and necessary, seem hopelessly shackled to, and therefore poisoned by, the real-world results of Marxism. Douglas's social credit attracts me as a real workable alternative in the same way as the distributism in Belloc and Chesteron.
The fact that Douglas has been charged with noticing global Satanism, by identifying real problems with our financial Ponzi scheme, can only be a plus in his column.
His focus on the individual and individual freedom display, that in spite of being worthy and cursed enough to be called Cassandra, he too had drunk deep of the poisoned wells.
Even families have issue facing the powers that be, much less individuals, yet in strange twisted form, clans have made a reappearance, focused around the neo-monarchs of content creators or an interest.
Still, this in no way diminishs the impressive feat of accurately calling where the boulder will fall years and years before the house is crushed.
It will be certainly interesting to see what else this Cassandra saw.
Though, a dark thought comes.
His work and history marks another notch on that dark blade that whispers of knowledge and understanding being hollow and that carnage clears the way. After all, he saw true, but what were the results?
Some believe the blade's promises, but even before the madness of the french revolution, there were real issues,but where did the black blade lead the french?
No easy answers on this tree.
Hopefully we can make use of the dead Mr.Douglas before we find ourselves on a hill of corpses.
At the very least, to be breathing on that hill would be better than being part of it.
“knowledge and understanding being hollow and that carnage clears the way“ - I love your comment. I thought about it on a drive today, in light of all the “truths” I’ve discovered that just weren’t so the past few years. I honestly don’t think men know much of anything, and I think we stratify ourselves on thin air. You can make a thought ornate, but that doesn’t make it anything more than what it is in essence. Most of modern sophistry is just Rococo dressing of a hollow man, a stuffed man. Jargon and convoluted clauses hide the man behind the curtain. The only reason we have this false confidence is the technology, which is offered as proof of our advancement, but to be honest, I don’t think most of this stuff is the work product of man. And all the economic wizardry is an effort to conjure something from nothing by way of confusion and illusion. Not only is there a black hole at the center of the galaxy (allegedly), but there is one at the heart of human civilization. But like you imply, maybe the structure collapses if that hole is probed and publicized. Maybe the universe requires a belief, or in our case a lie, to kickstart the cascade that produces the rest. Something from nothing. An arbitrary pulse, a 1 among the 0s. After all, while I don’t believe men know much of anything, I do enjoy long stimulating journeys that remove me from that conclusion so that I can journey back to it. This is all some metaphysical journey from stasis to stasis, and the events in between are full of sound and fury signifying nothing.
The only Truth, the answer beyond theories and the dark whispers of the blade of carnage...
Is creation, survival. There'll always be tyrants, usurpers and madness, and indeed sometimes extraordinary things are required of us.
The greatest resistance in vile times like ours is to have family and thus bring forth people who will occupy the future. If we cannot do this ourselves, we can at least help the children of the future.
That words are often hollow, that carnage promises victory but often gives pyrrhic results does not mean you need accept the void, nihility.
After all, all of us here, from brilliant minds to slow of wit, are only able to stand and breathe because of countless ordinary ancestors who did ordinary things in unordinary times.
There were children born and raised in the times of black plague even.
Compared to that simple unbroken chain, the sounds and fury of the trials of today are what is truly nothing.
The blade of carnage only sometimes lies, but the void, nihilism always decieves.
Screenshot and shared.
Millions, possible billions of people managed to survive and reproduce in times far worse than we currently inhabit, all for each of us to be here, now. It's hubris to think this time is really different and folly to believe that this fundamental fact has somehow changed because Current Year.
Poetic.
I came across Social Credit roughly a decade and a half ago after reading that the early Robert Heinlein was heavily influenced by the Social Credit movement. It's part of how he maintained some libertarian elements even when he was a huge leftist.
For example, in his early novel "Beyond This Horizon" he describes a utopia that is half Bernietopia and half something that Catgirl Kulak would advocate. There's an intentional inflation of the equity currency, a citizen dividend and other Bernie approved goodies. But there is also Kinder, Gentler Eugenics and near universal gun ownership, complete with legal dueling. If you aren't openly carrying, you are some sort of wimp.
Heinlein was even more specific in his posthumously published first novel, "For Us, the Living." As a story, it is terrible. And as a father of a teenage girl, I find his jealosy-is-evil free love philosophy to be wicked. But there are also many interesting ideas therein, and in Chapter 9 (and a connected appendix) he lays out Social Credit theory in game form. I really should revisit this myself. (Being intellectually lazy, I have simply glommed onto the bits of populist theory that should be frikken obvious and moved onto promoting them, vs. trying to solve an entire economy.)
Social Credit also had a large following in New Zealand in the mid- late 20th century until being dismissed and wiped off the board by the wave of neo-liberalism, which saw the country plunge into the abyss .....
"... unwilling to work for the machine, unable to earn enough to be independent, and expending all of his energy and effort in the pursuit of games with an enthusiasm..."
TL:DR. Anyway, I've got to to grind the mats I need for tonight's raid. so BBL.
Nice post, Tree. Looking forward to reading your further analysis of his work. I like hearing about historical economists who had accurate predictions about the modern world...
On this note, have you read Guido Preparata's "Conjuring Hitler"? It changed how I saw the early/mid 20th century...In it he references and speaks very highly of the economist Thorstein Veblen, who correctly predicted in 1920 (!) in his "Economic Consequences of the Peace" that the Versailles treaty was intentionally designed by our financial overlords to lead to a second round of conflict, one that would be between Germany and Russia...Veblen recognized that the 1919 Treaty of Versailles would stir up forces of mystical German revanchism and cause financial distress to ordinary Germans, while leaving the upper classes and the military untouched and primed to attack Bolshevik Russia...
Thanks. That was a ponderous read, but a worthwhile one. I surely got more than a healthy dose of woe from it. I feel dopamines leeching out from the soles of my feet. But you are doing the Lord's work here, Sir. I'd like to see you do a hit piece or monograph (call it what you will) on Antonio Gramsci.
As always a fantastic article of someone that I had never heard of before.
I remember Manning from my Canadian history. He’s remembered as an ok PM but I’m not so hot on him now.
Notice the charge of antisemitism. One good thing that came out of the Gaza massacres is that antisemitism doesn’t quite carry the same “sting” as it did in the past.
That’s progress in my book.
I look forward to the rest of your analysis and don’t mind the slow reading - the style is hard for us moderns but holds so much depth because you have to read over again.
Antisemite: Noticing things the jews don't want you to notice.
You might want to look at the economic writings of Kerry Bolton. That's where I first heard of Douglas.
I'm happy you're getting around to Douglas. From what I can make out, he got just about everything right. I will read this series with especial interest.
A couple of things I noticed:
'But the efficiency of the performance as compared with the efficiency of the average factory worker is simply incomparable any factory which...'
missing preposition between any and factory?
'There is absolutely no concrete difference between work and play unless it be in favor of the former no one would contend that...'
missing full stop between former and no one?
'Her article is paywalled, so I myself haven’t read it.'
If you really care(?) to read it, here ya go:
https://paperpanda.app/search
Well worth the time to read. Thank you.
Capitalism and communism are two sides of the same crooked jewish coin.
Frankly, Douglas's system is closer to Communism than either is to Capitalism.
Douglas is wrong about how inflation functions. The dilution of currency to create goods is inflation-neutral. Instead, inflation occurs where the supply of money and credit expands relative to the supply of goods.
The fact that there is not perfect efficiency in production is also a wash. As Douglas correctly points out, ordinarily efficiency and productive increase over time, which is deflationary.
Unfortunately, government and banks frequently issue money and credit with no corresponding increase in the supply of goods or services, and this inflationary impulse outweighs, in the long term, the deflationary benefits of increased productivity.
I can't wait for Tree's article series explaining National Socialist economics in their own terms.
I can't tell if you're being serious or not
And like many who can predict the future- he was ignored….
I will be eager to hear more about his social credit system. That initially sounds like it would require a large government. My hope is it is an alternative somehow, to Caesar figure lays waste to technocracy, which increasingly seems the only solution other than outright economic and civiliational collapse.