It is habitual in my workplace to hear the name of “Jesus” shouted in anger. Two hands aren’t sufficient to count the number of times this occurs on a daily basis. I can assure you that those who say it aren’t calling for his help. It has become standard of postmodern, post-Christian vernacular.
The great irony here is that I work in an environment that is extremely politically correct, culture-sensitive, and “diverse” (whatever that means). I’m fairly certain that if I went about yelling “&%@#! Muhammed” or “&^*#@! Buddha” or “&$#@%! atheists!” I would be canned – or carted off for psychological evaluation before being canned.
Let me insert that I would never want the government to outlaw the public screaming of Jesus’ name in anger. The Lord does not need the state to protect Him or His followers. Over the centuries His followers have been corrupted by state power and privilege. However, I do believe in common decency and decorum; so I find the naked hypocrisy of my office, as in other public places in America, pitifully embarrassing.
That said, I think I better understand the “filling up of sufferings” that Paul wrote about. To this day, Jesus continues to “turn the other cheek” to those that mock him and take his name in vain. His followers have to bear along with this.
Paul also said that at the name of Jesus, “every knee shall bow…and every tongue confess that [He] is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”
That day hasn’t yet come. When it does, it will be to the “shock and awe” of every human being, each of whom will give account for every idle word.
Thursday, November 18, 2010
Thursday, November 11, 2010
Monday, October 25, 2010
From Old Hop to Hans Hoppe and Back Again
If John Taylor of Caroline had had his way America would have been busted up into hundreds if not thousands of little autonomous communities that traded freely and shared militia for the common defense, but would have remained otherwise self-governed. This vision approaches Hans-Herman Hoppe’s ideal of “natural orders,” i.e., privately-run communities with their own rules.
In his book Democracy – The God that Failed Hoppe argues for natural orders, but along the way makes a compelling case that monarchy is a lesser evil than democracy. Using the principle of time preference, he reasons that a king – as the absolute “owner” of a country – has a lower time preference than democratically-elected officials, who amount to temporary caretakers. The king has a greater incentive to preserve the capital well-being of his country since it passes to his heirs. Democratic rulers have an incentive to expropriate as much wealth from their country as possible since they pass it to no one. Equally perverse, democracy devolves into mob rule when officials pander to constituents aspiring to benefit from the state’s redistributive powers. These clients are typically located at opposite ends of the spectrum – the weakest and the wealthiest. The productive classes are crushed until the state collapses upon itself – an end that has befallen many democratic societies in history (including socialist states), giving empirical warrant to Hoppe’s theory. To his credit, Taylor of Caroline foresaw this parasitic fate awaiting the United States over a hundred and fifty years before Hoppe wrote.
Perhaps the best empirical example of Hoppe’s monarchy-superior-to-democracy argument is the case of Liechtenstein. Granted, the little principality has all of 35,000 inhabitants; but if nothing else it demonstrates some of the political virtue of the old, free city-state concept that flourished in the early Renaissance period. Prince Hans-Adam II demanded, on threat of resigning his rule, that each district within the principality be granted the right to secede. In turn, his subjects voted to give him sweeping monarchical powers. The “overseers” caught in the middle of this symbiotic relationship are the 25 members of the Liechtenstein parliament. To wit, those that would ordinarily have expropriative power have been largely defanged by the prince and his subjects.
In a similar way, Old Hop of Chota “ruled” over the mid-18th century Cherokees. Politically, Cherokee society was as “bottom up” as they come. No individual could be coerced into doing anything against his will. Each town council consisted of everyone who cared to participate (“direct democracy”); decisions could not be reached without complete consensus (no simple majorities). Town elders – literally the old guys, along with a prominent older woman – represented the town at larger tribal councils. But the uku (“fire-keeper”) was there to personify tradition and give advice. People bowed to his recommendations out of respect for his age, wisdom, and tribal tradition; but ultimately any individual or town could choose to go against his counsel – as was disastrously the case when Great Tellico ignored Old Hop and launched an ill-fated attack on the British.
Economics and diplomacy aside, the Cherokee example is proto-typical of Taylor’s insight and Hoppe’s analysis. In the end I suppose my political philosophy has settled upon “anarcho-monarchism” – not in the silly sense of Salvador Dali, but in accord with the measured sensibilities of J.R.R. Tolkien. Ultimately, we are under One King (Philippians 2:9-11), and that ought to give faithful people pause from giving unqualified allegiance to the modern (mob rule) messianic state.
In his book Democracy – The God that Failed Hoppe argues for natural orders, but along the way makes a compelling case that monarchy is a lesser evil than democracy. Using the principle of time preference, he reasons that a king – as the absolute “owner” of a country – has a lower time preference than democratically-elected officials, who amount to temporary caretakers. The king has a greater incentive to preserve the capital well-being of his country since it passes to his heirs. Democratic rulers have an incentive to expropriate as much wealth from their country as possible since they pass it to no one. Equally perverse, democracy devolves into mob rule when officials pander to constituents aspiring to benefit from the state’s redistributive powers. These clients are typically located at opposite ends of the spectrum – the weakest and the wealthiest. The productive classes are crushed until the state collapses upon itself – an end that has befallen many democratic societies in history (including socialist states), giving empirical warrant to Hoppe’s theory. To his credit, Taylor of Caroline foresaw this parasitic fate awaiting the United States over a hundred and fifty years before Hoppe wrote.
Perhaps the best empirical example of Hoppe’s monarchy-superior-to-democracy argument is the case of Liechtenstein. Granted, the little principality has all of 35,000 inhabitants; but if nothing else it demonstrates some of the political virtue of the old, free city-state concept that flourished in the early Renaissance period. Prince Hans-Adam II demanded, on threat of resigning his rule, that each district within the principality be granted the right to secede. In turn, his subjects voted to give him sweeping monarchical powers. The “overseers” caught in the middle of this symbiotic relationship are the 25 members of the Liechtenstein parliament. To wit, those that would ordinarily have expropriative power have been largely defanged by the prince and his subjects.
In a similar way, Old Hop of Chota “ruled” over the mid-18th century Cherokees. Politically, Cherokee society was as “bottom up” as they come. No individual could be coerced into doing anything against his will. Each town council consisted of everyone who cared to participate (“direct democracy”); decisions could not be reached without complete consensus (no simple majorities). Town elders – literally the old guys, along with a prominent older woman – represented the town at larger tribal councils. But the uku (“fire-keeper”) was there to personify tradition and give advice. People bowed to his recommendations out of respect for his age, wisdom, and tribal tradition; but ultimately any individual or town could choose to go against his counsel – as was disastrously the case when Great Tellico ignored Old Hop and launched an ill-fated attack on the British.
Economics and diplomacy aside, the Cherokee example is proto-typical of Taylor’s insight and Hoppe’s analysis. In the end I suppose my political philosophy has settled upon “anarcho-monarchism” – not in the silly sense of Salvador Dali, but in accord with the measured sensibilities of J.R.R. Tolkien. Ultimately, we are under One King (Philippians 2:9-11), and that ought to give faithful people pause from giving unqualified allegiance to the modern (mob rule) messianic state.
Monday, October 11, 2010
Broken Wheel
Back in August I took my 10 year old daughter with me to the pharmacy. While she “shopped” I went to the blood pressure machine to check my reading. It registered 150 over 100. Deadly. Heart disease runs in my family, but now I feared an imminent stroke. I made some immediate dietary changes and began a more aggressive exercise regimen. I started running again, going out at 5:00 each morning to run a mile then walk briskly for two. I carried this on for two weeks – the exertion coupled with eating right dropped my blood pressure dramatically and also some pounds, and mentally I was feeling great. And I was preparing to increase my running distance.
Then, on the morning of October 1st I moved to the left hand side of the road to avoid on on-coming car. The outside of my left foot caught the dip between the asphalt and concrete. A few more strides later the tendon attached to the base of the fifth metatarsal ripped the bone away. I’m now in the dreaded “boot” for three to seven weeks. Exercise has been reduced to slowly climbing stairs at work and doing lots of push up’s and sit up’s. I don’t have access to an elliptical machine. Meanwhile, I melancholically watch as my left calf slowly atrophies. It will be much longer than seven weeks before I walk briskly again, let alone run. I need PT or patience.
But I continue to watch markets and read history. Not reading too much theology right now apart from Griffith Thomas’ devotional work. More thoughts from Cranfield’s commentary will come later, though I’ve seen the peril of lifting quotes without capturing their complete context.
Anyone who has followed my blogs for any length has noticed my peculiar affinity for the work of Joseph Stromberg, an independent historian living in north Georgia. He recently completed a long-awaited magnum opus on the thought of another of my fixations, John Taylor of Caroline, to me the most brilliant political thinker in American history: a jeremiad prophet with a keen insight into the system of patronage and privilege latent within the Constitution. His stress on radical decentralization and local autonomy makes him a forerunner of Hans-Hermann Hoppe, author of Democracy: The God that Failed. Stromberg detects in Taylor a foreshadowing of Public Choice theory and proto-Austrian economic understanding.
Speaking of Austrians, our old friend Gary North of the inflationist camp has come up with a startling piece on Ben Bernanke’s recent speech to the Rhode Island Public Expenditure Council. In a dramatic turn, North finds in Bernanke’s talk a prophecy that the Fed will not pursue hyperinflation. Interest rates must rise, which, if allowed to follow course, will mean the ultimate default of the U.S. government – unless (ominously) the Fed is taken over by Congress. We’ll see. There are not a few of us who agree with the late Murray Rothbard that the best course would be for the Federal government to default on its debt and sell off its assets.
Short of that end (or perhaps toward it), Ron Paul has an optimistic view that the irreversible laws of economics will eventually bring an end to the “empire as a way of life” that Taylor of Caroline tirelessly preached against.
Then, on the morning of October 1st I moved to the left hand side of the road to avoid on on-coming car. The outside of my left foot caught the dip between the asphalt and concrete. A few more strides later the tendon attached to the base of the fifth metatarsal ripped the bone away. I’m now in the dreaded “boot” for three to seven weeks. Exercise has been reduced to slowly climbing stairs at work and doing lots of push up’s and sit up’s. I don’t have access to an elliptical machine. Meanwhile, I melancholically watch as my left calf slowly atrophies. It will be much longer than seven weeks before I walk briskly again, let alone run. I need PT or patience.
But I continue to watch markets and read history. Not reading too much theology right now apart from Griffith Thomas’ devotional work. More thoughts from Cranfield’s commentary will come later, though I’ve seen the peril of lifting quotes without capturing their complete context.
Anyone who has followed my blogs for any length has noticed my peculiar affinity for the work of Joseph Stromberg, an independent historian living in north Georgia. He recently completed a long-awaited magnum opus on the thought of another of my fixations, John Taylor of Caroline, to me the most brilliant political thinker in American history: a jeremiad prophet with a keen insight into the system of patronage and privilege latent within the Constitution. His stress on radical decentralization and local autonomy makes him a forerunner of Hans-Hermann Hoppe, author of Democracy: The God that Failed. Stromberg detects in Taylor a foreshadowing of Public Choice theory and proto-Austrian economic understanding.
Speaking of Austrians, our old friend Gary North of the inflationist camp has come up with a startling piece on Ben Bernanke’s recent speech to the Rhode Island Public Expenditure Council. In a dramatic turn, North finds in Bernanke’s talk a prophecy that the Fed will not pursue hyperinflation. Interest rates must rise, which, if allowed to follow course, will mean the ultimate default of the U.S. government – unless (ominously) the Fed is taken over by Congress. We’ll see. There are not a few of us who agree with the late Murray Rothbard that the best course would be for the Federal government to default on its debt and sell off its assets.
Short of that end (or perhaps toward it), Ron Paul has an optimistic view that the irreversible laws of economics will eventually bring an end to the “empire as a way of life” that Taylor of Caroline tirelessly preached against.
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
The Anatomy of Inflation
From LewRockwell.com:
...and from Steve Saville:
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, who backed Bernanke shamelessly, is now ashamed. It’s time to end the Fed, he says — if there’s any time left.
Excerpts:“I apologise to readers around the world for having defended the emergency stimulus policies of the US Federal Reserve, and for arguing like an imbecile naif that the Fed would not succumb to drug addiction, political abuse, and mad intoxicated debauchery, once it began taking its first shots of quantitative easing.
“Ben Bernanke has not only refused to abandon his idee fixe of an “inflation target”, a key cause of the global central banking catastrophe of the last twenty years (because it can and did allow asset booms to run amok, and let credit levels reach dangerous extremes).
“Worse still, he seems determined to print trillions of emergency stimulus without commensurate emergency justification to test his Princeton theories, which by the way are as old as the hills. Keynes ridiculed the “tyranny of the general price level” in the early 1930s, and quite rightly so. Bernanke is reviving a doctrine that was already shown to be bunk eighty years ago.
“So all those hillsmen in Idaho, with their Colt 45s and boxes of Krugerrands, who sent furious emails to the Telegraph accusing me of defending a hyperinflating establishment cabal, were right all along. The Fed is indeed out of control.”
...and from Steve Saville:
An article entitled "How Hyperinflation Will Happen" has garnered a lot of attention. According to this article:
"...hyperinflation is not an extension or amplification of inflation. Inflation and hyperinflation are two very distinct animals. They look the same -- because in both cases, the currency loses its purchasing power -- but they are not the same.
Inflation is when the economy overheats: It's when an economy's consumables (labor and commodities) are so in-demand because of economic growth, coupled with an expansionist credit environment, that the consumables rise in price. This forces all goods and services to rise in price as well, so that producers can keep up with costs. It is essentially a demand-driven phenomena.
Hyperinflation is the loss of faith in the currency. Prices rise in a hyperinflationary environment just like in an inflationary environment, but they rise not because people want more money for their labor or for commodities, but because people are trying to get out of the currency. It's not that they want more money -- they want less of the currency: So they will pay anything for a good which is not the currency."
Except for the part about hyperinflation encompassing a loss of faith in the currency, the above is almost completely wrong. In particular, economies don't "overheat", economic growth causes prices to fall rather than rise, and hyperinflation is very much an extension of inflation. The author of the article doesn't even mention money-supply growth. Trying to explain inflation or hyperinflation without reference to growth in the money supply is like trying to explain why the moon orbits the Earth without reference to gravity.
All historical episodes of hyperinflation that we know of -- and we know of many -- have been step-by-step processes set in motion by, and sustained by, increases in the supply of money. After the supply of money grows at a rapid rate for a period of at least a few years, some people conclude that the inflation will be endless. These people act today in anticipation of tomorrow's money-supply-induced price rises. As time goes by, more and more people come to the realisation that the inflation will most likely be endless and begin to act (meaning: buy stuff immediately) in anticipation of future price rises, which eventually leads to the situation where prices are rising much faster than the supply of money.
At this point it would still be possible for the central bank to clamp down on the inflationary trend by stopping, or even just slowing, the expansion of the money supply, because rapidly rising prices throughout the economy would result in a money shortage unless the supply of money were given a substantial boost. At the same time, however, the central bank could be under considerable political pressure to accelerate the monetary expansion given that doing otherwise would lead to extreme short-term economic pain. This, in effect, is what happened in Germany during the early-1920s: at every step along the multi-year path from inflation to hyperinflation to the complete collapse of the currency it was deemed by the central bank to be less economically damaging to maintain or accelerate the inflation than to suddenly bring it to an end.
The point we are trying to make is that hyperinflation doesn't just happen 'out of the blue' one day when nobody expects it. Instead, it requires persistently high money-supply growth and evolves over many years due to a gradual increase in the awareness of the population. It is part of a PROCESS and definitely is an extension of inflation, but most episodes of inflation don't lead to hyperinflation because the authorities stop the monetary expansion before it's too late.
Lastly, it should be noted that while most episodes of inflation don't extend to the point where the economy experiences hyperinflation, all paper currencies eventually get inflated to oblivion. The reason is that circumstances finally arise whereby the most politically expedient move is to risk hyperinflation by continuing the monetary inflation way beyond 'normal' limits. In this regard, today's paper currencies won't be exceptions.
Steve Saville
http://www.speculative-investor.com/
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
Cranfield on Romans 1:17
…to take ‘God’s righteousness’ as referring to the righteous status given by God agrees better with the structure of the argument of the epistle, in which 1.18-4.25 expounds the words ‘he who is righteous by faith’ and 5.1-8.39 the promise that the man who is righteous by faith ‘shall live’. If 2.13; 3.20;, 28; 4.2, 13; 5.1, 9, 19, are examined carefully, it will be seen that it is on the status resulting from God’s action and on the men on whom the status is conferred rather than on the actual actions of God that attention is focused.
The sense of the whole sentence, as we understand it, may be set out as follows: For in it (that is, in the gospel as it is being preached) a righteous status before God which is God’s gift is being revealed (and so offered to men), a righteous status which is altogether by faith. …by revealing and making available precisely this gift of a status of righteousness before Himself God is indeed acting mightily to save.
As used by [Paul], ‘faith’ has the same sense as it has in the earlier part of v. 17 and ‘shall live’ refers, not to political survival, but to the life of God, which alone is true life, the life which the believer begins to enjoy here and now, and will enjoy in its fullness hereafter.
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