Mayan – Freeread

McCall Gathering, 2007, Part 5

May 22, 2017 Joseph Dewey

This entry is part 5 of 54 in the series McCall Gathering 2007

Bureaucrats

James Wong:
I felt that maybe you were leading up to a call to action just a minute ago and I wanted to continue that thought that the challenge today is that disciples must recognize good verses evil and the see the changes that must take place and work toward those changes. What are some examples of what we should work toward today?

JJ: Let’s talk about one that most of us would agree with. Most of agree that we are taxed too much. At times in the past it cost up to 80% of the money in administration to handle our welfare. In other words, it cost several dollars to give away one dollar. Now that’s just totally ridiculous. No wonder our taxes are so high.

Now when McGovern ran against Nixon he had the idea of bypassing administration costs and suggested just sending everyone a check in the mail. He was just laughed out of existence, but I thought that was the best idea that a Democrat had for a long time. I was really beside myself in deciding to vote for Nixon or McGovern. I thought he had a good idea as far as reducing administrative costs go. But he got laughed at and Nixon won 49 states to one, if I recall correctly, and it was largely because of this one suggestion from McGovern.

It wasn’t a good idea for administering welfare, but it was a good one for escaping overhead. Anything is better than spending three or four dollars to give away one. I think we are a little more efficient now but there is still a lot of waste. Have you heard anything Sharón?

Sharón: No. I was working for a company that trains hospital staff to prescreen people for Medicaid and other government programs and it still takes boo coos in dollars to give away one.

JJ: Yeah, it’s really silly. One of the reasons that McGovern wasn’t supported, even by many fellow Democrats, is that his plan would have taken away many bureaucrats’ jobs, but I thought the idea was better than anything Nixon had for a welfare solution.

That’s one thing that everyone can agree on – that we have this tremendous bureaucracy, but then when anyone tries to change or trim it, the bureaucracy raises its head for they may lose their jobs or have a diminishment in pay or authority. They may not be able to hire as many and increase their authority. There’s lots of things at play.

What happens is there is tremendous force applied to anyone who wants to change anything and anyone who wants to make things more efficient is made to look like the bad guy. The bureaucracy and the media comes down hard on anyone who wants to make any change for the better.

There is so much positive change that could be made in the way money is spent that could lower our taxes and we would all agree on the surface that this is good; but when someone actually tries to do it, he is portrayed as the bad guy.

Social Security is another good example. If people are allowed to invest their own money in the stock market or gold and if it goes up over a period of years we could have a larger retirement than the present system. But anyone who wants to give people the choice of having control over their own money is again called the bad guy.

Those who promote the flat tax or talk of doing away with the IRS are often attacked. Representative George Hansen from Idaho wrote a book on changing the IRS and pointed out a lot of its flaws. It wasn’t long after he circulated this book that the bureaucrats came after him and trumped up charges against the poor guy and put him in jail. They got him for writing some checks before the money was in the bank even though the money was in place when the check was cleared. Almost everyone has done that one time or another. They call that check kiting and they put him in jail for about four years over that.

They not only did that but they tortured him. They tried to poison him several times. They wouldn’t give him shoes that fit. When he came out he had no toenails on his feet because of the small shoes he had to wear. He had scabs all over his body and his teeth were falling out. They tried to kill him several times as the Beast wanted that guy dead. He’s out of jail now but he’s near death and this was probably why they let him go. He would like to do something again to fight the system, but he doesn’t have the strength.

If you look up George Hansen on the Internet you can read his story. (Note: Go to: http://www.constitution.org/ghansen/conghansen.htm
Also: http://www.rumormillnews.com/cgi-bin/archive.cgi?read=22130)

The Beast came after George and portrayed him as evil even though he had a heart of gold.

The interesting thing about the Aquarian Age we are entering is there are always forces trying to take us backwards, but fortunately there is a law called the Dominating Good. In every comic book you learn that good is supposed to dominate over evil and that’s really a true principle. That which is good is a little stronger than that which pulls us backward into the old less efficient way of doing things.

Any why is good stronger? It is because the intelligence of humanity recognizes that which is good is better than that which is not good. For instance humanity, as a whole, recognizes that the free countries have a better system than the Taliban. Average humanity can see this. No slavery today is better than slavery. We can see that certain portions of progress are better than the old way of doing things.

That is why good dominates. Good dominates because it is supported by intelligence and, even though we have our illusions, some intelligence comes to the surface. When illusion and selfishness are stripped away we will always choose that which is good.

We will progress into the Aquarian Age, and it will be an age where there will be an increase in brotherhood, an increase in group consciousness, an increase in awareness, an increase in sensitivity, an increase in love and especially service.

As we said the key word for the Aquarian Age is service. We will seek to render service and will receive the appropriate recompense for that service. This will not be a service where we just serve and sacrifice, but it will be intelligent sacrifice, intelligent service with a recognition that there is such a thing as karma, that we are going to get back that which we have given. We will give intelligently and serve intelligently.

Now the interesting thing about the coming Age of Aquarius is the cycles involved. Each age lasts about 2160 years so we haven’t had an Age of Aquarius for about 25,000 years.

But there are larger cycles. Each one of the 25,000 year cycles is influenced by one of the signs. Now we are entering the first Age of Aquarius in 25,000 years but this coming age is also the beginning of a greater cycle of Aquarius. In other words, this next 25,000 years we will be in a greater cycle of Aquarius that only happens once every 300,000 years.

Audience: Does this have anything to do with 2012?

JJ No, it doesn’t have anything to do with that date. So the next 2160 years will be an Age of Aquarius with a greater age which is a rare occurrence. So because we have Aquarius within Aquarius this makes the energies much stronger than the last Aquarian Age. It will be a quintessential Aquarian Age.

The coming Aquarian energies are so strong that if we use them correctly we can create positive change as has not happened since the beginning of history, or even prehistory. We haven’t had an age like this since Atlantis.

Any Questions?

Audience: The Mayas talked about 25,000 year cycles.

JJ: My feeling about 2012 is that it is a point taking us into the Age of Aquarius. I don’t think there is anything magical with 2012 over 2011. From what I understand it was the end of their calendar and they saw this as the end of an age rather than the end of the world. It could be an intense time period. Let me see. It is now 2007… we could have some interesting things happen by that time. I see a larger turning point occurring around 2025-2030, which I see as an intense period of change.

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The Gold Standard, Part 1

January 19, 2011July 19, 2017 Joseph Dewey

This entry is part 14 of 50 in the series 2011A

As noted, the gold standard has appeared in three different incarnations in our history and many conservatives are advocating a return to it in some form. Are any of them practical? Let’s take a look.

We will call the first of these “the purist gold standard with no fiat money.”

One could say that this system is a refined form of bartering, for before there was any standardized money system people exchanged goods through this system of exchange. In our early history individuals had to garner some type of product that was in demand so they could trade for other essentials. If a family raised cattle they may trade a cow, meat or milk for grain, tools, gold, or even a wife for the kid.

This system proved awkward, for many of the products exchanged had a low shelf life. If you had an expensive chariot to sell you just couldn’t exchange it for a silo full of grain for several reasons. First, you had no means of storing a large quantity and secondly it would rot before you could use even half of it.

What to do… You could find ten other people who need grain, but then five out of the ten may not have anything you want so you may wind up with materials worthless to you that you have to spend days bartering away rather than spending time making more chariots.

In parts of the ancient world precious metals, particular gold and silver, became very useful in making the bartering process work. They had the advantage in that they did not decay, did not take up much space and were recognized as having value. This meant that our chariot maker could trade his vehicle for an agreed upon amount of gold and then divide it up and trade it to ten different individuals who had items he actually needed.

Some believe that gold was universally used as a medium of exchange since the beginning of civilization, but such has not been the case. Some parts of the ancient world had very little gold so its use was not practical. Other parts had gold but did not assign that much value to it.

The Aztecs are a prime example of this. Gold didn’t have much value to them until it was made into something beautiful and even then only those of high rank could use it making it fairly useless to the common citizen. In its raw form jade was more valuable. Other items used in exchange were corn, amaranth, beans, cotton armor, obsidian knives, copper bells, sandals, shields, feathered capes, cacao, shells and feathers. They just couldn’t understand why the Spaniards were so obsessed with gold and considered cheap glass beads to be just as valuable unless the gold were made into something beautiful. ¹

The Mayans used gold less than the Aztecs and the closest thing they had to money was cocoa beans.

The Incas had a lot of gold but didn’t use it for money. Most of these ancient American civilizations relied on trade and barter and had no standardized money.

In our past then gold has fallen into three categories.

(1) An interesting yellow metal that is useful for art and jewelry.

(2) A valuable metal useful in barter.

(3) Money.

So, what’s the difference between 1 and 2?

To understand this we must ask another question. Exactly what is money?

The simplest answer to this is that it is a medium of exchange. This is a simplistic definition that is not complete. For instance, most items used in barter and mediums of exchange are not considered money. A plumber can exchange his labor for potatoes, but the potato farmer will not state he received money from the plumber. He will merely say he received his services.

Similarly, there have been many times in our history, such as the British Isles after the fall of Rome, that gold was considered valuable, but used for barter instead of money.

So what makes pieces of metal, paper, shells or tally sticks money?

Now some argue that gold has always been money because it has intrinsic recognized value but so does food, shelter, fuel and tools. What is the difference?

In a barter system there is none for they are all mediums of exchange.

So then a substance is not seen by society as money merely because it is can be used for exchange, but because of something else. What is that something else?

Perhaps Aristotle was the first to identify this:

“All goods must therefore be measured by some one thing…now this unit is in truth, demand, which holds all things together…but money has become by convention a sort of representative of demand; and this is why it has the name nomisma – because it exists not by nature, but by law (nomos) and it is in our power to change it and make it useless.”

And he continues: “Now the same thing happens to money itself as to goods – it is not always worth the same; yet it tends to be steadier…money then acting as a measure makes goods commensurate and equates them… There must then be a unit, and that fixed by agreement” ²

Many years later Abraham Lincoln said it with greater simplicity: “Money is the creature of law.” ³

Gold did not just magically appear as money but some decree of law has always made it so. For instance, the Coinage Act of 1792 decreed that gold as money would have its value based on the Spanish silver dollar, or 27 grams of silver. This made an ounce of gold valued at $19.44 at the time. ⁴

Then in 1834 a new coinage act set the value of an ounce of gold at $20.67 and it stayed there until it was again changed again by law. Through The Gold Reserve Act of 1934 FDR decreed the new value to be $35 an ounce.

So one day $20.67 was worth an ounce of gold and the next it was worth only worth .59 ounces, a loss of 41 cents on the dollar.

By law then gold remained at $35 an ounce until world demand forced changes in the Seventies. Then in 1973 the value was rest to $44 and the following year it was decreed by law that the dollar would no longer be tied to gold at all.

Since that time gold has had a floating value established by the free market and has fluctuated greatly. It can still be used as a medium of exchange. Mt neighbor would sell me his car if I gave him enough gold, but it is not considered money for it is not currently defined as such by law.

So, during the 142 years that gold was valued at about $20 an ounce was it’s value consistent just because the law said it was?

No. During this period one ounce of gold or the $20 fluctuated in value and the amount of goods and services it could buy varied considerably. California during the gold rush was a prime example.

Then from 1934-1970 when the value of an ounce of gold was decreed to be $35, was the value of that ounce always the same during this period? No. The amount of goods and services you could buy for $35 again varied considerably, especially during World War II.

Conclusion: Money is a medium of exchange which is established by law. Law forces acceptance but the value of that medium will vary according to its supply, velocity of circulation, stability of the government, supply and demand for products and services and other factors.

Notes

1. The History of Money; Crown Publishers, Inc., 1997 by Jack Weatherford, Page 18

2. From Aristoltle (Ethics 1133), Quoted in The Lost Science of Money By Stephen Zarlenga; Page 34

3. Abraham Lincoln, Senate document 23, p. 91, 1865

4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_dollar

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