Jan. 26, 1980
WACHITSUH HUSSLE
By John C. Turmel, B. Eng.
Bankers and economists tell us
that they've been fighting with
inflation, wrestling with it. The truth's out. They've been
dancing
with it. To the Wachitsuh Hussle. They tell us that they use
interest
to fight inflation. That is not true. Interest causes
inflation.
The Canadian Cattlemen's Association
complained to the Commons
Finance Committee that "the current interest interest
rates are
themselves inflationary, adding to the cost of Canadian
produced goods
and the risk of doing business." These interest costs
are passed right
along to the consumer in the direct component of inflation
and since
more producers are put out of work due to the increased risk,
there
are fewer goods produced and the prices are again bid up in
price.
They note "that the answer to inflation lies in
increased productivity
and the current monetary policy works in direct opposition to
this
central objective. "The root problem is our productive
capacity. Lower
interest rates would allow expansion of plant capacity and
productivity. The policy enunciated by the Bank of Canada is
flawed on
every front. It is preoccupied with using a few puny levers
in bank
policy and not looking at the whole engine. It's like
fiddling with
the instrument panel of one's car and not recognizing that
the
carburetor is fouled, the battery is weak and the gas gauge
is
registering empty. It is time to worry about the whole
machine." It's
time to call in the engineers. Economics is a question of
production
and delivery. Engineers are best qualified since they study
the
workings of the engine. Economists study the workings of the
dial, the
monetary reflection of our power. They say bolster the dollar
and
strangle the engine. Engineers say bolster the engine,
bolster the
dollar. The name of the engineer's game is to maximize
production of
the engine. The name of the economists' game is to maximize
profit on
the dial. Worse, their reading on the dial is not even
accurate.
Their dial misrepresents the real wealth of the national and
hence
misrepresents our real power. They constantly tell us that
there is no
money to do things that are desirable and physically
possible.
It's the same line they gave people
during the depression. There
was no power to grow food, make clothes, houses, tolls and
tractors.
Then happened the war and they found the power to grow new
food for
their boys, make them new clothes, house them in new
barracks, arm
them with new weapons and mount them on new tanks to take
part inn the
European butchery. They had an industrial boom delivering
bombs for
free to the Germans when the year before, they couldn't
deliver food
for free to themselves! Where did the power come from to
finance the
war that wouldn't finance production?
The answer is to be found in the
faulty engineering design of the
banking system. Bankers know that when they make a loan to an
industrialist in order that he might get the financial power
allowing
him access to the real power to build a factory, he would
only use it
a bit at a time as the plant gets built. Most of that money
would find
its way back to the bank as the people who receive the money
in wages
and sales put it in the bank. The bank then relends the same
money to
him over and over again. The number of times it can be relent
is
called the banker's reserve ration. It is their fudge factor.
They
make it up. It has nothing to do with the real state of
affairs and is
not in harmony with nature. Yet, the economy of the nineteen
twenties
experienced a boom because credit is as good a monetary
medium as
money in order to facilitate production. People were rich in
real
wealth energy. Factories and goods.
All real wealth is energy. It is the
sum total of the energy
expended in its fabrication. It is the cost in energy units
of man,
material and tool while interest is not an energy cost.
This period of outstanding material
prosperity experienced by the
U.S.A. was terminated by the action of the Federal Reserve
Banking system
by foreclosing on most overdrafts. President Hoover drew
attention to
the disastrous consequences and requested reconsideration. He
was
ignored. The demand of the banks for repayment in cash of
loans that
existed only as entries in their ledgers caused the financial
credit
system to collapse. Yet, the real credit of the people hadn't
changed.
This proves that financial credit is a misrepresentation of
the real
credit. Those factories, raw materials and skilled people
were still
there but the money that represented them had disappeared.
The people
were so used to trusting their banker's money dial that when
the dial
read empty, they turned off their machines rather than check
the
engines.
John Von Neumann, one of this
century's top mathematicians, in his
book `The Theory of Games and Economic Behavior' ' states
that
"important questions in economics arise in a more
elementary fashion
in the theory of games." I will not examine the banking
misrepresentations in the context of games.
Any casino is an example of
inflation-free banking at work. The
casino banker knows that the fundamental rule for avoiding
the
inflation of his chips is to make sure that all wealth coming
into the
game gets its own chips to represent it. There is no limit to
the
number of chips issued so long as wealth is stored to back
them up.
Present day bankers violate this simple law of good
accounting. They
insist that savings, money already backed up by a previous
set of
goods, be used to represent a new set of goods. The
investment of
savings means the reappearance of the same money in a fresh
set of
prices for a fresh set of goods. There is always more wealth
on the
table than there is money to represent it since the same
money
represents old and new goods at the same time. All the goods
cannot
get bought which explains the anomaly of a half idle
production
system with a half-starving population. If we wish to to now
trade
our wealth with other nations, we have an insufficient amount
of money
to accurately represent the wealth actually in our
possession. This
use of savings to finance new goods means that someone must
deprive
himself of his current purchasing power and hence
creates his demand
for interest. The industrialist who finances his plant with
someone's
savings must pay it back quicker than it depreciates and when
it is
paid off, again, there is real wealth in the game but no
money to
represent it. Again, the barter of that wealth is hampered
because it
is unrepresented by money. Keeping money in short supply
deludes
people into believing that wealth is in short supply.
The flaw is in the dial and not in
the engine. The arithmetic
mistake in the unsafe engineering design of money was first
presented
at the 1929 World Engineering Congress in Tokyo in a paper by
Clifford
Hugh Douglas, B. Eng., the founder of the Social Credit
Party. It
was entitled `The Application of Engineering Methods to
Finance.' In
his book, `The Monopoly of Credit,' he points out that most
financing
is done not by savings but by credit. Money born of a
banker's pen.
There is an artificial limit placed on this financial power.
Our power
is a function of what we have done times the banker's fudge
factor,
and not a function of what we can do.
In Arnold Tustin's book, `The
Mechanism of Economic Systems,' he
points out that "time series methods used by economists
may introduce
unstable high frequency modes that are essentially spurious,
counterfeit, false." Methods used by engineers based on
continuous
functions such as Laplace transformations are free from this
defect.
The time series approach tends to obscure the significance of
the
general analytical form of the solution.
All the misrepresentations and
obscurities point to interest as
the culprit.
Interest is a non-linear function.
When a man owes another some
money, if they get into an accident and both go into comas,
only when
there is no interest in their relation will the debt remain
linear.
(Fig. A) The moment interest enters into the equation, the
debt will
double in time T, then double again in time T, and again and
again.
(Fig. B) That is how an exponential function works. The line
is
crooked. A crooked line is complicated, a straight line is
simple.
Maybe we should start the Engineering Party of Canada. You
don't have
to be an engineer to join, but you will have to think
straight. People
believing in social credit already think straight. Bankers
hook up
this non-0linear function to their money dial and marvel at
the
resultant misrepresentation of the real wealth in the game.
When interest plays part of the
agreement, and if you're the one
who owes, you'd better not get laid up or you'll find
yourself between
a rock and a hard place. It is downright dangerous. That's
one reason
why the Bible, Deuteronomy 23:20 says "to a foreigner
you may lend
upon interest, but you shall not lend upon interest to your
brother."
Then Christ came along and told us that we are all brothers.
That
tells us that we should not lend upon interest to anybody.
Another reason is that when the
banker lends each of ten
brothers ten dollars to get in the game and demands that they
pay back
more than was borrowed, he creates an economic competition to
the
death since if I succeed, the other must fail because we are
not both
able to repay back more money than was put in the game.
We must
constantly try to capture each other's markets since both of
us can't
survive and unfortunately, economic war inevitably leads to
real war.
John Maynard Keynes likened it to a
game of musical chairs where
al know that when the music ends, some will remain unseated
and will
be knocked out of the game.
In the interest arena, it is kill or
be killed. Who can blame
people for turning into liars, cheats and thieves given such
a jungle
rule. Because of the interest rule, it is unsafe to lend your
brother
some of your credit since you might need it yourself. Since
you run a
real risk, you demand your interest for the use of that spare
credit.
Note that if the banker did not ask
for interest, there would
always be enough dollars in the game to allow everyone to
survive at
all times. When there is no interest, it is safe to lend your
spare so
that your brother may play.
To play is to work. The game is
work. To score in the game is to
produce wealth. To win is to produce more wealth than you
consume in
the process. Where there is not enough money to go around,
the
weakest, the young and the old get knocked out the fastest.
I'm tired
of hearing of old people eating dog food and seeing babies
die of
starvation on TV just because of a faulty system of
distribution that
can easily be fixed.
Because of the flaw in the
distribution system, the Government
promotes less production and even destroys crop energy. When
we claim
that this is silly, the economists answer "destroying
corps is a very
vexing moral problem when millions are starving but if the
stored
crops are given away or sold at a fraction of their
cost to other
countries, the government's plan will now show a
deficit." I supposed
avoiding a deficit let them sleep a little better after they
destroyed
those crops while fifty million babies died of starvation
last year.
The solution to the starving babies
and underfed old people is
to simply recuperate the real energy costs of the food by
selling to
the starving babies and letting them owe us that food
interest-free.
Ask only for the food energy that we lend and the babies have
a
chance. Insist on interest and the babies' debt doubles and
doubles
till we know that they won't even be able to pay back the
interest and
so to lend them enough to survive would not be as profitable
as
putting it in the bank where it'll (earn?) interest, and so
the
government's plan would show a deficit. In the name of
economic
priorities, we let them croak. Croaking babies is the
inevitable
result of a system flawed by the use of the interest device.
To lend that food to the baby with
no interest attached is to
perform barter of energy between generations. Keep the baby
alive now
and he will keep you alive when he's older and you are
retired. The
strong take care of the weak as opposed to the strong killing
off the
weak. Pretty easy choice. Those babies now become a market
for all the
food that our farmers can produce and since in an
interest-free system
where what you is what you get credited for, there is the
incentive to
work. And it is a pure incentive to work. Under the interest
system,
there is a hysterical need to work in order to survive. And
all can't
survive. Interest is the main cause of unemployment. This is
how it
affects the working population. Let the average return for an
enterprise be $14,000 and let threshold survival be $12,000.
When the
Bank of Canada raised interest rate it meant that those who
were just
breaking even are now losing and get knocked out of the game
for a
purely financial reason.
Understanding the devastating
effects of interest in an economic
system sheds a different light on the old slothful servant
story in
the Bible Matthew 25:19. That's the servant who, being the
weakest of
the servants is given only one credit and proceeds to bury it
rather
than take part in the game of trade even knowing that his
master is
one "who reaps where he does not sow" and expects
at least the
interest. He returns too his master "what is yours"
and is branded
slothful and is cast out with the rule defined as: "to
everyone who
has will more be given; but from him who has not, even what
he has
will be taken away." That servant's action was was a
gesture of
defiance against the rules of a game where all must work to
survive
but all may never survive. There must always be losers in a
game
with the interest rule.
Interest perpetuates the notion that
in order to exist, one must
work. This is inconsistent with our future since as the lever
of
technology gets longer and longer, the burden of man will get
lighter
and lighter. Television and computers will replace bank
clerks, store
clerks, insurance clerks, librarians, assembly line workers
and many
others. This terrifies most people because the only way they
have
access to purchasing power is through work. Only those with
work get
the money to buy the food to get the strength to work to get
the money
to buy the food to get ... We know that there is abundance
but it is
kept under key because only those who have the privilege to
contribute
to its production can share.
If we stick to the present system
and step fifty years in the
future, only those three men who press the buttons will get
any money
and the only way for the rest to get any is to tax them. The
present
system of distribution is unacceptable. There is the better
way.
All shall have a share in the
Corporation of Canada. They will
receive a dividend on the power of the machines. As the
machines
replace more and more workers, that condition will be a
release from
work if the extra energy wealth scored by the more efficient
machines
is shared. It will not be economically punished as it now is.
If the
machines score twenty million pairs of shoes, the dividend
for
everyone will go up since there is now more energy to be
shared. The
dividend will progressively displace the wage as the machines
progressively displace man.
To continue to insist that the only
way man will ever get the
title to goods is to work, will only get us deeper and deeper
into the
bog of job creation schemes. If the creation of jobs is the
only way
we now have to get money to the people, the solution is very
simple.
Replace every bulldozer by twenty men with shovels, and if
there are
still those who need work to get the money, take away their
shovels
and give them spoons. It is readily obvious that the purpose
of an
economic system is not to provide jobs but to maximize
goods and
services with the minimal effort.
The Tory plan for the sharing of
Petro Canada is the forerunner
of the Social Credit National Dividend. Those shares must be
non-
transferable in order that the mechanism be ready so that
each will
receive his due.
There are those who will be content
to live on their dividend
and there are those who will have the talent for the earning
of new
wealth. All new wealth that they score will be credited to
them and
made available to anyone who wishes to buy it. Houses will
now be
bought and repaid only as fast as they depreciate. That
creates a
whole new market for houses. All those who in the past
could afford
to pay for a forty thousand dollar house but couldn't afford
to pay
for the use of the money to get it, can now buy since all
they need
pay is one thousand a year over forth years. Pay as you use.
It
maximizes the market for houses. The market for everything
that is
physically desirable is now maximized since if it can be
done, it is.
We will have the perfect barter of energy wealth between
people and
over generations. If workers were paid in what they produced,
there
would be no strikes, depressions, shorter work week,
unemployment,
poverty. They would trade some of what they produce for
better and
better machines to produce more and more to trade and so have
work for
themselves. There would be no trouble getting that tractor if
we
didn't use money as an exchange medium. Good old barter.
They would give some produce in
return for fire and police
protection but they would make sure that none of it is
wasted.
They would give some to the less
fortunate but would first insist
that these people try to help themselves. Workmen would then
have the
balance to trade for whatever comforts and luxuries they
want. Then
everyone could work because everyone would want more to trade
for more
things wanted with better products. Who would strike?
Any slowdown, tax, interest device,
old machine which prevents
you from having more of your best to trade is destroying your
standard
of living.
Because you spend your pay on what
society produces, you can't be
paid in any other way than with production or title to it. It
is
trucks and TVs for oil and bananas. The solution to the trade
deficit
is to create more wealth, not less as advocated by the
banks. They
tell us to our face that they're trying to slow down the
economy too
match what their money dial says we can do.
Just as the demand for a railway
ticket furnishes railway
management with a perfect indication of the capacity
required, so does
money furnish industry with demand for the capacity of goods
required.
It makes no more sense to argue that because there are only
one
hundred tickets printed, only one hundred may travel while
the other
seats remain unused, than to say that because there is
insufficient
money, many desirable things can't be done. The proper
business of the
bank and ticket department is to facilitate the distribution
of the
product in accordance with the public;s desire and to
transmit that
desire to those operating the industry.
There can be no interest in the
efficiently structured economy of
the future since that would be taking the credit from the man
who
scored it and giving it to a man who didn't. That's stealing.
I suppose interest got started when
a father left his estate and
gave each son a bag of seeks saying "Go forth and
prosper." The first
son found good land and reaped enough to feed his two
children, save
next year's seed and have a reserve. The others all go broke.
The
first gets hit by a storm, the next by a tornado, the
other has eight
kids who eat all his grain. At planting time, they ask
"may we use
your credit, your reserve?"
In his right ear, the rich
brother hears whispered "Give the use
of your credited seeds. It's the best bet that you all
survive." In
his wrong ear, he hears whispered "Why dive the use of
your credit?
It's yours. You earned it. Rent your credit and you will
increase your
store with no extra work and who knows, some day you may have
so much
coming in on the rental of your credit, you won't have to
plant any
yourself. You can be unemployed and live off the interest.
You won't
have to pull your weight. You'll get some of his credit.
After all, if
the weak want to survive, they'll agree. It's their choice.
It's their
hell."
When the rich brother decided to
demand interest from his
brothers, he created the economic game to the death described
earlier
and acquired so much so soon that all soon lost sight of the
optimal
strategy: `Love Thy Brother.'
If we are to pursue optimal
strategy, the exponential function
that perpetuates poverty amidst plenty must be dismantled.
Then
inflation will disappear as the misrepresentation disappears
and
unemployment disappears as the maximum number of workers get
to pull
their weight. There is no satisfactory reason for preventing
even the
weakest from contributing what they can. There will be no
such thing
as scoring too little wealth to continue to try. Let every
little
power source be working and we will score the brightest
light.
We need simply to revert to the
physical realities so that all
men may exercise their power to produce their energy and the
total
power of the nation is maximized. Our power should be bounded
only by
physical constraints and not by some banker's fudge factor of
what
we've saved.
One need only study the function of
a stationary engineer to see
how a properly run industry should work. When the machines
produce a
lot and the steam pressure goes down on his meter, he adds
coal to the
furnace. If the machines produced less, he would put in less
coal. The
amount of steam delivered is decided by the industrial
demand.
The banker delivers the financial
credit that enables industry to
obtain the real credit, the materials, tools and people
needed for
work. The banker, like the engineer, should deliver that
credit energy
too maintain industrial activity and leave up to the
competent
authorities the care of guiding the consumers in their
choice. If
either the banker or the engineer doesn't deliver credit or
steam
energy according to demand, if either raised or lowered the
delivery
according to their wish, they could regulate industrial
activity. If,
as in the boom of the twenties, they delivered lots of credit
power,
the machines would work. If, as in the depression, they
restricted
delivery, the machines would slow down, even stop. They would
make of
steam or credit a power that dominates and not that serves.
The engineer has learned to make the
steam serve, the banker has
learned to make the credit dominate. All it takes is the good
sense of
the engineer to understand that the industrial demand should
regulate
the delivery of power and not the delivery of power regulate
the
industrial demand. The problem exists because keeping the
less
fortunate short of funds assures bankers their jobs and
profits.
The solution is at hand. Once
computers start to accurately keep
track of the wealth in the system, the misrepresentations
will be
impossible. Yet, we need not wait. Any monetary system that
does not
use interest is necessarily linear and trivial to implement.
They
could have easily avoided the depression by having every
manufacturer
who owned collateral issue receipts for that wealth, verified
by an
accepted official. As that asset depreciates, the receipts
must be
retired out of circulation. Those receipts are just as good
as money
while the asset is there to back them up. Better. They won't
inflate.
A banana grower in Brazil would readily accept those receipts
because
he knows that with enough of them, he can collect the wealth
backing
them them up. Just like a properly banked casino game. So the
essential question is "Why represent our wealth with
their receipts
for a fee when we can represent our wealth with our receipts
for
free?" When that banana grower buys our wealth, he is
paying for the
energy cost of the man, the energy cost of the materials and
the
energy cost of the tool. No more will he have to pay for the
non-energy cost of interest.
We now have the simplest definition
of inflation. When the Bank
of Canada raised interest rates, they raised the non-energy
cost of
our living and when we pay more for no wealth, that is
inflation.
Paying more for real energy costs is a barter effect, not
inflation.
If a casino banker tried to tell his
players that their chips had
inflated, odds are they would beat him up. I don't suggest
that we go
and beat up the bankers for having distorted the real energy
picture,
but the secret's now out. The power reading on their money
dial is
distorted and must be corrected. It makes no sense to adjust
the value
of our wealth to the number of their dollars through
inflation or
deflation when we can adjust the number of dollars to the
value of our
wealth with neither effect.
As a Canadian money systems engineer
and professional gambler
with ten years inflation-free banking experience, I protest
the
banker's mismanagement of the industrial machine and the
misrepresentation of the real energy wealth in the game. What
baffles
me is how the banker's strategy of slowing down the
industrial machine
can go unchallenged by men of science and engineers who know
the real
potential has yet to be harnessed.
No system of counting our
money will stand in the way of the
liberation of our industrial power. After all, we're only
wrestling
with the banker's bad arithmetic. A scientific monetary
system will be
trivial to implement. Unrestrained by financial fetters, the
resources
of modern production will be sufficient to provide plenty for
all at
the expense of less and less labour.
The problem at hand is the
harnessing of all the power. All those
unemployed are proof that bankers and economists don't know
how to
harness all the power. The economic ship is going down
because their
money dial says "no power." They are wrong about
the real power.
Engineers handle the real power rating of the engine;
economists
handle the money power on the dial. I understand both, the
engine and
the dial. Watch out, banks, there's an engineer working on
your
faulty dial.
While a minority opinion is not
necessarily right, a right
opinion on a novel problem always begins with a minority of
one!
It's time to say Amen when the
engineer asks for your support in
order to fix the engine that keeps you wealth. I need your
`So be
it.' I need your Amen.
The Engineer
WATCH IT ALL YOU WANT, SIR. IT'S NOT A HUSTLE!
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