
Profitless usurer, why dost thou useSo great a sum of sums, yet canst not live?For having traffic with thy self alone,Thou of thy self thy sweet self dost deceive:Then how when nature calls thee to be gone,What acceptable audit canst thou leave?
- William Shakespeare, The Sonnets , IV.
THE USURY ERROR
It would have been a major conceptual error to allow usury to be
charged on agricultural loans denominated in metals, especially if the
interest and principal was to be paid in metal. For one thing, metals are
“barren” – they have no powers of generation. Any interest paid in them
must originate from some other source or process, outside of the bor-
rower’s understanding or control. Money and power would concentrate
in the hands of lenders.
This structural flaw was alleviated by the central authority. Although
the Royal household was the largest lender and charger of interest, it
took decisive action to minimize the harmful effects of usury, by peri-
odically declaring agricultural debt forgiveness. It also set official prices
for valuing various farm commodities, in effect monetizing them.
“In the earliest city cultures every form of exchangeable goods could
be used as money,” Heichelheim reports, estimating that 12 to 20 such
commodities were monetized. He thought that price lists such as
Hammurabi’s price tables (and those of Sumer, and of Mesopotamia)
have been misinterpreted as price controls when they are really official
exchange rates of various commodities when used as money. 13
This meant that borrowers, depending on their harvest to repay
loans, wouldn’t be harmed by seasonal market supply and demand
forces, as the increased supply from their harvest tended to push market
prices lower. Thus the effect of monetizing these commodities was to set
minimum floor prices for them, when used to repay loans.
But the usury error struck in Europe, and by the time the practice of
usury reached Greece and Rome, over a millennia later, repayment and
interest of metallic loans for agriculture were being demanded in metal
or coinage. This practice was not sustainable, and as we shall see, it led
to horrendous societal problems wherever it occurred.
https://www.rt.com/shows/renegade-inc/379579-uk-finance-curse-suffer/
The Finance Curse
THE GODS IN COUNCIL
More worth than many men.
On the seventh day of the month in the prytany of Zeus and the presidency of Posidon Apollo in the chair the following Bill introduced by Sleep was read by Momus son of Night before a true and lawful meeting of the Assembly whom Fortune direct.
Momus
The Secular Masque
Emmanuel Macron Is Not Your Friend
Emmanuel Macron is a Silicon Valley-loving, union-hating, Third Way centrist. He’s no bulwark against the far right.
123
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Bagot_Glubb
Another remarkable and unexpected
symptom of national decline is the intensi-
fication of internal political hatreds. One
would have expected that, when the survival
of the nation became precarious, political
factions would drop their rivalry and stand
shoulder-to-shoulder to save their country.
In the fourteenth century, the weakening
empire of Byzantium was threatened, and
indeed dominated, by the Ottoman Turks.
The situation was so serious that one would
have expected every subject of Byzantium to
abandon his personal interests and to stand
with his compatriots in a last desperate
attempt to save the country. The reverse
occurred. The Byzantines spent the last fifty
years of their history in fighting one another
in repeated civil wars, until the Ottomans
The Fate of Empires 13
moved in and administered the coup de
grâce.
Britain has been governed by an elected
parliament for many centuries. In former
years, however, the rival parties observed
many unwritten laws. Neither party wished
to eliminate the other. All the members
referred to one another as honourable
gentlemen. But such courtesies have now
lapsed. Booing, shouting and loud noises
have undermined the dignity of the House,
and angry exchanges are more frequent. We
are fortunate if these rivalries are fought out
in Parliament, but sometimes such hatreds
are carried into the streets, or into industry
in the form of strikes, demonstrations,
boycotts and similar activities. True to the
normal course followed by nations in
decline, internal differences are not
reconciled in an attempt to save the nation.
On the contrary, internal rivalries become
more acute, as the nation becomes weaker. ”
Contrast With.,
In the 14th century, a Muslim historian named Ibn Khaldun wrote about the pattern of history. Farmers would build irrigation systems supporting villages and towns. Later some warrior would bring these towns under his rule and form a united political entity, like a kingdom or an empire. Then a tribe of nomads would come along and conquer the kingdom, seize all the holdings and settle in their place and further expand the new empire. As time went by the nomads would assimilate and become soft city dwellers. Exactly the kind of people they had conquered and at this point, another tribe of nomads would come along and conquer them and take their empire. Conquest, consolidation, expansion, degeneration and conquest, this was the pattern of history.
Glub is good on these questions. Social conservatism is not I think a Left Right thing, Political Correctness is a thing of the American Left, although the notions of Left and Right in the USA are quite alien to how we see them here in Europe.
A good read of Edmund Burkes Present discontents speech to parliament also addresses the point that without a rudder the quality of Captain is irrelevant.I suspect that the ECB, the Euro and Pecking orders beneath Petro Dollar Hegemony are key aspects of the factionalism between the politicians across all divides in the House of Commons, these are not Party Political but Ideological and around certain Friedmanite economic shibboleths.
Keep calling em as you see em, I for one think a Grand Coalition is a splendid idea. ( Would the grownups in Westminster please assert some authority! ( are there any?)
Sorry for the long Comment but I think Glubb is worth paying some attention to although I suspect he and I would disagree on the more abstract notions of human nature his notions of Public Service are I think sorely missed these days.
Narcissism of small differences
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Ergo.
“Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam“