Rome – Freeread

McCall Gathering, 2007, Part 29

May 22, 2017 Joseph Dewey

This entry is part 29 of 54 in the series McCall Gathering 2007

The Power of Emotion

JJ: That is a good one. What I think is funny is they say that we need get more money and tax you more for more welfare because Jesus told us to help the poor. Now where does it say in the Bible that we are supposed to give to Rome and then Rome will give to its citizens? Did Christ say that? As a matter of fact Jesus did not even pay his taxes and they came after Him and told one of His disciples that his master has not paid any taxes to Rome and he had to do something about it.

So the disciple came to Jesus and told Him that they were after Him for taxes and it is one of the most unusual miracles in the Bible, Jesus sent Peter fishing and He said go and throw a line in a certain spot and you will catch a certain fish and there will be money in it to pay the taxes. So Peter went fishing caught this fish and opened him up and sure enough, there was the exact amount needed to pay His taxes!

I wish I could pay my taxes that way that would be great! So they had to go after Jesus and pester Him to pay taxes yet Rome had a welfare system to help the impoverished so long as you were a citizen of Rome. Those who were not citizens of Rome did not get any help. So, it’s interesting that Rome actually had a welfare system that was similar to ours and not as bureaucratic probably but they had one. If we are supposed to increase our taxes to pay for handouts and that is the work of Jesus, well then why didn’t Jesus tell us to give to Rome?

All he said was render the things under Caesar that are Caesar’s and render under God the things that are God’s. But He said to take your money and give it to whom? Give it to the poor. He didn’t say to give it to Rome and then have them give it to their poor, but to take your money and give it directly to the poor.

It takes our government three or four dollars to give one dollar to the poor. If you want to give some money to the poor is it not better to give to them directly from your pocket to their pocket? How about going down to the homeless shelter where they have little overhead and giving some of your money to them? If we give it to the government to give it to the poor, almost all of it goes to bureaucrats.

So we have a mislabeling here created that certainly gives a misconception that sounds positive but is really negative. There are quite a few labels that politicians use to make something negative sound good because they support it by applying a label to it. Okay anything else?

Audience Annie: You can trust the White Brothers but you can’t trust the dark brothers because they will lie to you as they deem it necessary.

JJ: Right, the Light Brothers are honest and the dark brothers are dishonest and they will lie to you and never tell you exactly what they believe and what they think. You cannot tell what they believe by listening to them. They will tell you what they believe is necessary to get them elected or gain your trust. The same thing for other professions they control – if they are the head of a union or a teachers group or a business, those who are gravitating toward the dark path will not tell you what they really believe or what their true intentions are. They will tell you what you want you to hear and this makes it difficult because of the deception in the dark where they are always pretending to be in the light. It is hard to tell the difference.

Sometimes I will listen to a debate where I think one side is honestly trying to present a true reality and the other giving what I see as tremendous distortion. Then I talk to people about it and they say, “I listened to both and they both made really good arguments and I just can’t figure out which one is closest to the truth.”

I think wow; it is so obvious to me and why is it not obvious to them that this one guy is just totally lying through his teeth? He just cannot see the deception of the one that is trying to lead him down the garden path. He just cannot see it. Just like the people could not see with Hitler and they could not see it with Mussolini and they could not see it with many other deceptive leaders in the past. They have a really hard time seeing through the lies and distortion.

What is the fastest way to distinguish between light and dark?

Audience: The soul

JJ: Right soul contact if you have soul contact and someone is up there speaking and he says that the this guy is part of the dark organization or whatever, when you have soul contact then you can tune into this person’s soul and he may not be perfect but you can tell whether the person has pure intent or not and that is very important.

Audience: I would like to say the dark uses emotional arguments and the light uses logic to make their arguments.

JJ: Right, that is true. The dark almost always appeals to the emotions and one of the things that DK says is, one of the plans of the Brotherhood of Light is to move evil up to a higher level. That is an interesting thing to say. The Piscean age was governed by the emotions and we are entering the Aquarian Age, which is an air sign governed by the mind. So what is going to happen over the next two hundred years is all the arguments are going to be moved up to the plane of the mind.

For instance, any sales course you take right now will teach you that people buy by what they feel and if you try to sell them by reasoning then you are not going to make the sale. You have to sell them by what they are feeling. You have to make them feel good about the product. I have found after being a salesman for many years myself that if you try to use reasoning with them maybe one out of ten or fewer people are influenced by logic and reasoning but for nine out of ten you must strike their feelings right at the core and then they will buy whether they need it or not, it does not matter.

I used to sell children’s books, Wayne was selling them before me and he sent me a sales kit and I went out and I thought the people that should buy these books logically would be parents with kids six years and older. So I went through neighborhoods and looked for bicycles that revealed the kids were in this age range. I struggled for two weeks and only sold one set of books.

Wayne was out of town and when he had returned and he asked if I sold any books. And I said just one set that this was one of the most difficult jobs I ever attempted. I did not understand it – nobody wanted the books. Wayne said who are you trying to sell to? And I told him and he said you have it all wrong – follow me. He took me with him prospecting and everybody that we contacted had a baby six months old or less or was pregnant. I said, they will not buy the books – and he said yes they will.

He then gives a presentation to a pregnant woman who had not even had her baby yet and her kid would not be able to read these books for ten more years. They would be out of date by that time but he would throw the huge broadside pictures on the floor and they would say, our baby could really use this and this is great. Then he would give emotional arguments and they would say, we can’t afford it but our baby is going to need this.

I’ll tell you, I was just flabbergasted that the people that would buy the books for kids that couldn’t read ten for another decade. Those people that really needed the books for their kids that were old enough to read, none of them would buy the books. But the people that were pregnant or had a six month old child or less we sold them over 50% and the only ones that did not buy the books were those that did not have a dime to buy a cup of coffee with. I mean if they had any money at all – by the end of that sales presentation they would be buying the books and I was just amazed by this.

I would have never dreamed that those were the people who would buy the books but they bought them because they felt that their child was going to need everything possible to make sure they were taken care of in the future. But for some reason after the child learns to read all that goes out the window. Emotions are very important and if you are going to make a living at being a salesperson then you have to appeal to people’s emotions.

Audience: Sell the sizzle and not the steak.

JJ: Yes, sell the sizzle and not the steak. Elmer Wheeler made that statement and he is one of my favorite authors on salesmanship. He wrote this book, “How to sell your self to others” and I cannot find it anywhere, it is really a good book, one of the best books I have ever read and he invented that slogan, “Sell the sizzle and not the steak.” It really inspired me when I was young and if you ever see it, you may want to read it.

Tomorrow we are going to talk about the labors of Hercules. This is one of the more fascinating subjects that we will ever learn about.

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Fiat Money of the Past, Part 1

May 17, 2011July 20, 2017 Joseph Dewey

This entry is part 15 of 31 in the series 2011B

Successful No interest Fiat Money of the Past

Before we explore fiat money more deeply let us give a definition of it to avoid confusion – as, at present, the term is used in a variety of ways.
The word “fiat” comes from the Latin, which literally means, “let it be done.” The common modern definition is expressed by Dictionary.com as: “an authoritative decree, sanction, or order.”
Fiat money is often defined as unbacked money created by government decree or sanction but technically this extends to any money that is not fully backed by a commodity. So for the sake of clarification and purpose of this treatise we’ll define it as follows.

“Fiat money is any money, paper, coin, substance or digital creation which is not fully backed by a commodity. It exists only because of a decree or sanction made with enough authority to cause the people to accept it as money.”

That said we must now ask if it is possible to create a feasible fiat money system as illustrated in the parable. Many fundamentalists think not and feel that every possible form of fiat money is doomed to failure.

And why is this?

Basically because they look at the surface of a few examples of failed money in the past and lump all fiat money into one category. They pretty much call it the god-awful bad category. This is basically where their analysis begins and ends.

Let us look below the surface and first ask ourselves why fiat money has received such bad press.

Here are three reasons various economies have had problems with fiat money in the past and present.

(1) Too much money is printed or created and placed into circulation. If there is more money in circulation than the value of goods and services needed there will be inflation. If there is a shortage of money there will be deflation. If the right amount of money is in circulation the prices will be stable.

This runs contrary to the party line of some thinkers who believe that all fiat money is inflationary. It is not. It is only inflationary when too much money is added to circulation. For instance, during the Great Depression we had a contraction of the fractional fiat money in circulation and prices went down, not up.

(2) The second problem is the government borrows the fiat money from banks and burdens its taxpayers with paying the accumulating interest rather than creating interest free money itself.

(3) Because the money is easily created the temptation of governments to overspend by borrowing too much money is great. This straps their people with not only high interest payments but a large amount of debt.

These problems may seem significant enough to make us think we should ditch fiat money and go with a gold standard until we look at the problems of maintaining such a gold standard. Earlier we covered the gold standard and we discovered even more problems there.

Some simply state that fiat money is bad because it has always failed in the past. They count as failure every money system that is no longer with us but overlook the fact that money systems have often changed in history, not because they failed but because a new king or power comes to the throne. War and conquest has also greatly altered money systems of the past. Sometimes a good money system has been replaced with a bad one. If a new king saw the system benefitted the people more than himself then the temptation was to install one that was unstable but good for the elite.

Gold and silver backed currencies (as has been previously illustrated) have their own set of problems and one could also argue that they have all failed because they no longer exist. There is not one country in the entire world that has a gold or silver backed currency. The last one was Switzerland which backed its money with 40% gold reserves but in the year 2000 they had a referendum and the people voted to go off it. Now they merely have gold reserves for security purposes just as we do.

One might ask that if gold and silver backed currencies are so great then why has every nation on the planet abandoned them? If they are so stable and bring prosperity (as advocates claim) then why hasn’t one nation seen the light?

With all things considered a growing number of thinkers are considering that interest free fiat money represents the best hope for a permanent money system that allows for unlimited expansion of prosperity. To create this, a definite change from the one in use today is required. That is, instead of our government giving away its power to create money to private banks it will instead reserve that power to itself. It will then be able to create money for the people’s welfare, which will be interest free and debt free.

The Federal Reserve notes of today are a promise to pay. The new notes will not contain any promise to pay but will be real constitutional money.

Has there ever been any such debt and interest free fiat money in the past that we can examine to see how it worked?

Fortunately, the answer is yes. Let us look at a few.

SPARTA

For the first example let’s look way back to the foundation of the ancient Spartan way of life originated by its king Lycurgus around 800 BC. Because his story is almost larger than life some historians believe he was a fabled character but this is not likely as Plutarch wrote in detail, about him quoting historians Eratosthenes, Apollodorus, Timæus, and Xenophon as sources. No less than Plato and Aristotle also wrote of him.

There is no dispute though that an ancient powerful lawgiver created the legendary Spartan way of life along with a most unusual fiat interest free money system.

Plutarch presents Lycurgus as a dedicated spiritual leader who sought not for power but to elevate the minds and hearts of the people in a system of discipline and equality. He believed that riches, especially gold and silver, were a major detriment to the spirit. Plutarch says he banned “ownership of any gold or silver, and to allow only money made of iron. The iron coins of Sparta were dipped in vinegar when red hot to make the metal brittle and worthless. Merchants laughed at this money because it had no intrinsic value, so imports of luxuries stopped. Robbery and bribery vanished from Sparta instantly.

“All useless occupations were banned in Sparta. This law was hardly necessary, because along with gold and silver, all of the evil creatures that accompany them went away too. Who would come to practice fraud, fortune-telling, prostitution, jewelry, or the other trades of luxury and larceny, in a country where there was no gold and silver money? So luxury, deprived little by little of the fuel that fed it, gradually died out. The rich had no advantage over the poor because wealth was useless.”

The only money left in Sparta were iron discs called Pelanors. They had no intrinsic value as did gold and silver for the vinegar made them useless for anything except fiat money. Lycurgus set their value by fiat and this was their only money for centuries. During this period the Spartan city-state and way of life flourished.

Plutarch gives his reason for the end of this money system:

“For five hundred years, Sparta kept the laws of Lycurgus and was the strongest and most famous city in Greece. But eventually gold and silver were allowed in, and along with them came all of the evils spawned by the love of money. Lysander must take the blame, because he brought home rich spoils from the wars. Although not corrupt himself, Lysander infected Sparta with greed and luxury, and thus subverted the laws of Lycurgus.”

From Plutarch’s Lives of Noble Grecians and Romans, Lycurgus chapter

ROME

When Numa Pompilius came to power as the second king of Rome around 715 BC he contemplated a major problem that lay before him. To facilitate prosperity for his people he needed money and lots of it. The problem was that the authorized money of the world was composed of gold and silver.
Why was this a problem?

Because most of the gold and silver was in the private hands of the various religious temple cults or eastern religions and merchants. These private interests had power over the money and if he wanted an increase in the money supply he had to play the beggar and humbly strike his best bargain while placing Rome as collateral.

What do do?

Numa formulated an ingenious plan. He would decree that gold and silver would merely be commodities in his kingdom. They could be traded as commodities as unmarked coins or bars but the real money would be bronze, an alloy composed of mostly copper which was abundantly available.

Numa monetized bronze and the citizens used this internally for money or nomisma. In early Rome they called it nummi. Because his name was so close to “nummi,” some historians think Numa was his adopted name rather than given one.

Gold and silver was used internally for jewelry, medallions, ornaments etc and for trade with other governments. Since gold and silver were used for money outside Rome their reserves were used for necessary trade but not for internal money.

The brass money took on various shapes at first but eventually evolved into coins bearing an image. As long as Bronze was the designated money gold and silver coins and bars were blank and merely traded by weight with foreign interests or for practical internal use.

From the time of Numa the nummi had more monetary value than the commodity value of the bronze and the fiat value increased over time until the time of the second Punic war (218-202 BC) a one ounce bronze coin was worth 30 ounces of the commodity. In other words, over 96% of its value was fiat rather than intrinsic.

No one complained of being cheated during this fiat money system because the money was based on law and not the product of debasement as happened later in the Roman Empire. When the people expected a certain weight and percentage of gold or silver and the size or content was reduced then the people felt cheated and rejected the money. But because the bronze money was based on the fiat principle from the beginning and the value was established by law the people accepted it from beginning to the end of its dominance.

After war depleted their resources and plunder increased Rome’s supply of gold and silver, silver, and later gold, gained a legal status as money and by 146 BC Rome ceased producing bronze money.

So we had a period of over 500 years where bronze fiat money financed the rise of the longest lasting world power in recorded history.

During this period of time the people had their greatest freedom and were enterprising as they created a great nation state. Then when silver and gold became money hundreds of thousands of slaves were added to the kingdom – many of them mining for gold and silver to increase the money supply.

Then came the money changers which included the likes of which Jesus chased out of the temple.

The ratio of the value of gold to silver in Rome was usually set at 12:1, but in India and Asia it was set around 6:1 or 7:1. This meant that a money changer could take six pounds of silver to India and trade it for a full pound of gold. Then he could return home and trade that pound of gold for 12 pounds of silver and double his money. Then by repeating the process over and over he could become rich without producing anything.

Over time this created instability in the gold/silver money systems in both the East and West.

Contrary to the belief of many inflation was a problem on the gold/silver standard of Rome. Zarlinga tells us that “soldiers in the 2nd century BC got 110-125 denarii per year. A hundred years later, their pay doubled to 225; after another hundred years to 300; and by the 3rd century AD had increased to probably 600 denarii per year.”

Up to about 250 AD the silver content of coins remained fairly consistent but then started dropping. By 270 AD it had dropped to 4% of its original value. At this low point Diocletion instituted wage and price controls in an attempt to force people on pain of death to accept an inflationary currency. In the process many businesses were destroyed.

In 312 AD Constantine began minting the pure gold solidus, which gained the reputation of being the longest circulating coin in history – over 700 continuous years. This period was not immune to inflation as during periods of plunder there were excessive amounts of gold coins added to the system. Some think this contributed to the fall of Rome. The solidus was in circulation beyond 1000 AD long after the fall of Rome during our darkest age. It weighed 4.5 grams and was never debased and desired and accepted by all.

This gold standard did little to save the empire during the time of Rome’s greatest decline. It also did nothing to prevent a descent into the period we call the Dark Ages. It is interesting that during these two periods the world had the purest most consistent gold standard in the history of the world.

BUT… during the period of Rome’s greatest progress and individual freedom they were fueled with fiat currency.

Data on Roman money taken from
Lost Science of Money By Stephen Zarlenga

History of Monetary Systems by Alexander Del Mar, 1895

“The Imperial Foundations”. Coins in history : a survey of coinage from the reform of Diocletian to the Latin Monetary Union. Porteous, John (1969)

A History of Money by Glyn Davies, 1994

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