Former Guinness World Record Holder for largest book signing ever, Orrin Woodward is a NY Times bestselling author of And Justice For All along with RESOLVED & coauthor of LeaderShift and Launching a Leadership Revolution. His books have sold over one million copies in the financial, leadership and liberty fields. RESOLVED: 13 Resolutions For LIFE made the Top 100 All-Time Best Leadership Books and the 13 Resolutions are the framework for the top selling Mental Fitness Challenge personal development program.
Orrin made the Top 20 Inc. Magazine Leadership list & has co-founded two multi-million dollar leadership companies. Currently, he serves as the Chairman of the Board of the LIFE. He has a B.S. degree from GMI-EMI (now Kettering University) in manufacturing systems engineering. He holds four U.S. patents, and won an exclusive National Technical Benchmarking Award.
This blog is an Alltop selection and ranked in HR's Top 100 Blogs for Management & Leadership.
If we look beneath the surface of leadership, we can discern one fundamental fact of influence, namely: to whom much is given, much is required. This is a fact that should interest all true students of leadership. He has only a secondary or derived interest in matters like character, relationship, honor, loyalty, vision and similar items of influence that fill the pages of books, magazines, and speeches of leadership gurus. All of these can be run up under one head. They have an immediate and temporary importance, and for this reason they monopolize attention, but they all come to the same thing; which is, an increase in responsibilities the higher one climbs in leadership.
It is unfortunately none too well understood that in a free society leadership is freely given by followers, not physically coerced by the leader. All the alleged power of the leader, is in fact merely the display of confidence the community has in his ability to take them where they want to go. Therefore, any attempt to physically control the community, whatever else it may be called, should certainly not be labeled leadership. In effect, influence is something a leader earns through his character and competence whereas coercion is the non-leader’s substitute for the lack of the aforementioned qualities.
Moreover, it follows that as coercion increases, true leadership decreases. After all, if the alleged leader actually had the community’s buy-in, then why would force need to be applied at all? Unfortunately, communities across the globe have become so inured to the use of force by positional leadership that the difference between influence and intimidation has been blurred beyond recognition. Bureaucratic exercise of force has been applied so steadily, that most people are unaware of any other approach to achieving the communities goals.
Nonetheless, there is a better way. In fact, it’s the only way that deserves the noble title of leadership. While neglected and abused by its ersatz replacements, true leadership is the art and science of influence without coercion. In a word, servant leadership. Under the auspices of the industrial revolution, however, servant leadership was replaced with the command and control structures modeled upon national militaries. Indeed, Big Government, Big Banks, and Big Corporations (aka: Big Bureaucracies) have all defaulted to coercion, rather than service, as the ruling modus operandi. Students of politics, naturally, recognize this trend for what it is, namely a continuation of what James Madison called “the old trick of turning every contingency into a resource for accumulating force in the government”. Needless to say,the effect all of this has upon the balance between force (coercion) and freedom (service) upon leadership cannot be overstated.
Andrew Jackson
For these reasons, among many others, Chris Brady and I wrote Launching a Leadership Revolution. The force tide must be checked before the freedom tide will return. This, however, will not occur until people free themselves from the addiction to debt, for debt is cancerous to freedom. Imagine how many people would happily exit Big Bureaucracies command and control structures were they financial capable of doing so to pursue their purpose rather than a paycheck. Not surprisingly, the longer a person is addicted to pleasure and debt, the more difficult it is to break the paycheck dependency. In other words, debt addiction not only leads to craven obedience to commands, but also atrophies the ability to think and act independently.
Accordingly, the Financial Fitness Program is an essential first step in returning to freedom and servant-based leadership. After all, only when a person is financially independent can he afford to act upon his own opinions rather than simply obeying his superiors mandates. The question boils down to how important is freedom to the reader? Strangely, some of the most vociferous supporters of societal freedom do not seem to recognize the cognitive dissonance inherent in selling themselves into debt slavery.
Thankfully, the LIFE Leadership community has identified debt as the biggest roadblock to freedom in the developed world. To put it bluntly, I simply do not believe our forefathers intended to sacrifice so much for freedom so we could be debt-slaves. The thought is ludicrous! Unlike most of the talking pundits, however, we are not just going to bewail our current situation. Instead, we are going to do something about it, namely, declare our debt independence and write our personal Emancipation Proclamation. Then, and only then, will true leadership rise again as free people make free choices to follow servant-based leaders.
And this has brought us back to where we began. We must maintain the torch of liberty handed to us by the sacrifice of our ancestors, for to whom much is given, much is required.
The civilized world is the midst of a debt deluge; nonetheless, pessimism is not the answer. After all, although no one can control what governments or businesses do, everyone can stop being seduced into debt slavery. This alone would return 33% of the average person’s income back into his control and why defense is such an important part of financial literacy. Defense, simply stated, is spending less than one makes compounded over time. The difference between what one makes and what one spends is then applied to the current debt until all debts are eliminated. Amazing how simple it all sounds and also amazing how difficult it is to stop being seduced into slavery by the latest shiny object.
Interestingly, however, most financial literacy programs cover little, if anything, of the playing field and focus mainly on the defensive steps. While defense is good, no one can win a sports championship without offense also. Strangely, however, most programs are silent on the crucial aspect of the financial game. Hence, the typical financial education directs a person’s focus to his current reality. Naturally, this keeps his head down in the details and dirt of his current financial mess. The problem with financial mindset alone is it gets a person thinking so logically about scrimping today that he forgets to dream about a better tomorrow. In contrast, a proper financial plan should lead a person to look down into the details to develop today’s belt-tightening plan to be set into motion. Then, however, one must look up so he can get up. After all, the goal is not for a person to surrender all his dreams in order to live debt free. Rather the goal is for him to live below his means so he can begin investing, as Warren Buffett said, in his number one resource, namely, his personal development.
Indeed, developing personal and professional skills is essential for offense. Why this is not emphasized in a person’s financial plan is beyond me. Especially when one considers there are only two methods to increase the amount remaining between what one makes and one spends: either make more or spend less. As a result, both the make more (offense) and spend less (defense) are vital. To make more money, however, a person must dream for a better future and then invest in more skills. Did the reader catch the crucial distinction? The financial plan defense teaches to spend less while the offense teaches to invest more to develop marketable skills. Interestingly, the skills most highly prized are not the hard technical skills, but rather the soft people skills. For many gain the technical skills but lack the people skills to convey their ideas and work as part of a healthy team. Above all else, improved people skills is the fastest way to increase one’s income. For instance, Dale Carnegie once wrote, “…15 percent of one’s financial success is due to one’s technical knowledge and about 85 percent is due to skill in human engineering—to personality and the ability to lead people.”
Perhaps a person may believe that Carnegie’s quote, written back in 1936, is no longer valid in today’s highly technical age. However, if anything, people skills are more valued today than ever. For instance, even the technology giant, Google, realized that technical skills alone did not make for a good manager. According to Google Vice President Laszlo Bock, “In the Google context, we’d always believed that to be a manager, particularly on the engineering side, you needed to be as deep or deeper a technical expert than the people who work for you. It turns out that that’s absolutely the least important thing. It’s important, but pales in comparison. Much more important is just making that connection and being accessible.” This is the where the Financial Fitness Program shines above all others. For not only does it teach all the principles of defense, but also provides the best offense skills available through LIFE Leadership’s personal development library of products. The founders of LIFE have heard thousands of testimonies from people who have raised their incomes through increased commissions, job promotions, or improved effectiveness.
Be that as it may, this is still just the tip of the offense iceberg. The real secret of offense is to develop a burning desire. In contrast to getting buried in defensive details for the next 20 years, the Financial Fitness Program teaches a person how to dream and achieve. Perhaps there has never been a time in history where Napoleon Hill’s advice (he studied over 300 multi-millionaires before writing his classic Think and Grow Rich) is more needed than today: “There is one quality which one must possess to win, and that is definiteness of purpose, the knowledge of what one wants, and a burning desire to possess it.” Indeed, a burning desire turns fantasies into dreams and dreams into goals that are achievable. Unfortunately, most people live their lives as wandering generalities rather than one with specific intention. After all, success can be boiled down to three thoughts: 1) What do you want? 2) What’s it cost? 3) Pay it. The burning desire, needless to say, is what helps a person answer these three critical questions to help them live a life of purpose in an age of purposelessness. A burning desire turns a someday fantasy into a dream with a deadline through the power of goal setting set today. Success, like they said of Rome, isn’t built in a day, but it is built day by day.
Many people, when confronted with the reality of their financial positions respond like the ostrich hunted by a tiger and merely bury their heads in the sand. Others, in contrast, realize they must make some changes, but unfortunately, they get so mired in the defensive details that they lose the forest from studying the particular tree. Of course, both of these scenarios miss out on the true strength of the Financial Fitness Program (FFP). While many financial programs offer defensive strategies to get out of debt, only the FFP describes the playing field rules (Financial Matrix) and teaches how to win the financial game by combining defense and offense. After all, who wants to live on a financial diet the rest of their lives while sacrificing all their goals and dreams merely to be debt free? Is it possible to live debt free and still live the life of one’s dreams? This is EXACTLY why the FFP was created.
Financial Fitness Pack
First, the reader must understand the financial system is rigged against him. It’s not just a matter of the consumer lacking fiscal responsibility, although this certainly plays a part. In addition, however, the system itself is designed to profit the bankers at consumer expense. For example, whereas banks are allowed to create mortgage loans out of thin air (through the wonders of the fractional-reserve-banking system), people are expected to pay back this mortgage “money” by surrendering a portion of their productive labors over the course of the next thirty years or so. Of course, mortgage loans are just one of the avenues the banking system uses to secure its tentacles around a person’s pocketbook. Once student loans, car loans, car leases, credit cards, and consumer loans are added to the list, the amount of money going to service debt amounts to over 33% of a person’s take home income! Needless to say, paying 33% to the banking system for money created out of thin air seems like an unfair playing field.
Personal debt, however, is just one of the banking systems three-pronged approach to bilking society, for businesses and governments are also highly in debt to their eyeballs. In fact, the St. Louis Federal Reserve announced the total US debt (the combination of government, business, mortgage, and consumer debt) had increased from $2.2 trillion in 1972 (the year President Nixon took the dollar off the international gold standard) to nearly $59.4 trillion in the first quarter of 2014. That’s an unbelievable 27 times increase! Interestingly, the debt is split almost evenly among all three sectors with personal, business, and government debts totaling approximately$20 trillion each. Businesses cover their debt by raising prices while governments cover theirs by raising taxes; unfortunately, the consumer ends up footing the bill for both of these debts. No wonder citizens across the civilized world are struggling, for the compounding three-pronged parasitic debt attack does not rest.
Disastrously, even at just 5% interest, America’s interest on its debt today amounts to over $3 trillion. That’s 3,000,000,000,000 dollars! This interest money is siphoned off the top of the productive capacity of every American by the banking system that created it out of thin air. In other words, before anyone is allowed to enjoy the fruits of his labor, he is forced to service all debts (personal, business, and government). Like we said earlier, the game is rigged and participation in it only ensures financial failure in the long run. The authors termed this fixed game the Financial Matrix – a system of control designed to enslave people and profit the banking system. Unfortunately, the people’s lack of financial literacy allows the banking system to seduce the people into debt enslavement. The Financial Matrix, as a result, unlike earlier matrices of control based upon coercion like slavery or serfdom, is a matrix of control where people freely choose their own enslavement.
Perhaps 2016 is the year the reader decides to make changes for his financial future. LIFE Leadership‘s top selling product, the Financial Fitness Program, has already tracked nearly $6.5 million in debt reduction for its customers! The program and it will help the reader learn the defense, offense, and the playing field (Financial Matrix) for financial success.
Perhaps the best way to explain fractional-reserve banking is by analogy. Just as a bank note was originally a metaphysical paper representation of a specific physical amount of precious metal money so too is a property title a metaphysical paper representation of a physical plot of land. Imagine the indignation a person would feel if he had exchanged his money for the title believing he had purchased a plot of land only to discover later that the unethical seller had copied the title and sold the paper title to ten other people. What was actually sold? Eleven people cannot own the same physical piece of land but they can own identical metaphysical paper representations of the land. The fraud, as a result, begins the moment the metaphysical representation no longer matches the physical reality. Legally, the seller is guilty of violating property laws and would face severe sanctions for his crime.
Curiously, however, when a bank behaves in a similar fashion and prints numerous banknotes representing titles to the same specific physical precious metals money, it is not considered a violation of property laws. Paradoxically, the same fraudulent behavior where multiple metaphysical copies a one physical item receives severe penalties in every other area, somehow is considered “legal” practices in banking and is termed fractional-reserve banking (FRB). For how can the same physical precious metals be sold (loaned) to numerous parties via its metaphysical paper representation anymore than the same physical land can be sold to numerous parties using the identical scheme? How, in essence, can several parties own the same property at the same time? The answer is a physical impossibility and a metaphysical fraud.
Another example conveying the injustice of FRB is to picture a person who decides to sell his motorcycle. He places an ad in the paper and receives a call with a strange request. The potential buyer states his wife is against him owning a bike, but he really wants one. He offers to purchase the bike if the seller will store the motorbike in his garage. The buyer will only use the bike on Saturdays and he even offers to pay a small storage fee. The seller agrees and the title is exchanged for the cash. After several months, the seller realizes the bike is just sitting there the other six days. At first, he casually takes the bike for a ride personally, realizing he practically owns the bike even though he sold it and receives a monthly fee to store it. Finally, however, he conceptualizes and even more devious plan. Why, he asks himself, not copy the title for the bike six more times (since there is seven days in the week and the “owner” needs his bike only one of the days) and sell the bike again to other unsuspecting “owners”? Not only would I seven times my profit but I would also be able to charge a storage fee to each “owner”.
The fraudulent seller proceeds to run the motorcycle ad specifically looking for husbands with limited time and protective wives. To the seller’s delight, over the next several months he identified six more buyers. The seller was careful to only select buyers who asked to store the bike and who only desired to use the bike on a specific day. Although each person believed he owned the motorcycle in full, the seller defrauded all of them for his illicit gains. Now, the storage owner had a new “owner” for each day of the week and received seven times the profit on the sale of his bike and still received storage fees on top of that! Is this fraud or an innovative fractional-reserve motorcycle selling system?
True, if each owner knew he was only buying one day’s ownership then its physically possible and metaphysically permissible because the titles would represent only a fraction of ownership. This, however, wasn’t true in this case nor is it true with FRB loans. Each owner believes he owns 100% of the bike title and paid for it in full. Accordingly, the seller has committed fraud by metaphysically representing he had seven bikes to sell even though he actually owned only one physically. The pragmatic argument that since the bike owners were not using their property the other six days of the week that the storage facility had a right to sell someone’s else’s property the other six days is simply ludicrous. Especially when the owner’s property was sold without his knowledge or consent.
The banks, however, systematically practice the same thing. For instead of storing society’s money (like most people believe they do) they actually sell (loan) the owner’s money to numerous third parties while acting like the money is available to the original owner on demand. How can the same money be loaned out to ten separate parties while still being available to the actual owners all at the same time? This simply is not possible in the physical world but as shown above it is possible when practicing a metaphysical fraud. Amazingly, the motorcycle seller’s fraud would be punished severely, but the bankers similar fraud is blessed by the State.
The Bank of England (one of the first central banks) utilized FRB to print over ten times as many banknotes as the actual precious metals stored in England’s vaults. As a result, the Bank of England quickly captured the English Empire’s money supply and called the shots as Master of the Puppets. However, the issuance of paper bank notes led to one further innovation in money creation that, strangely enough, was developed in colonial America, namely State fiat-paper. Colonial America lacked precious metal money and did not like the control the Bank of England had on colonial commerce. Naturally, the question was asked, why not have the colonies issue their own paper notes and promise to redeem them with future tax revenues? In this way the government, businesses, and individuals would not have to pay the Bank of England interest on their paper notes.
The new Sovereign State backed money was a huge success (its still Fiat Money and has its problems but at least the public State does not pay interest to private international financiers) in usurping the need for the Bank of England notes. In fact, Ben Franklin was so impressed by the new innovation that he wrote a treatise in defense of the public Sovereign State backed paper money. Of course, the international bankers who controlled the Bank of England were not amused with the colonial upstarts cheekiness. The Bank of England restored its profits by applying pressure to King George III who forced the colonies to shutdown the colonial paper and return to the Bank of England notes. This, in reality, and not the infinitesimal taxes on colonial merchandise was the real cause of the American Revolution. No less an authority than Ben Franklin himself (considered by many, including me, to be the greatest diplomat in American history because of his keen understanding of humanity) believed this when he observed, “The Colonies would gladly have borne the little tax on tea and other matters had it not been the poverty caused by the bad influence of the English bankers on the Parliament, which has caused in the Colonies hatred of England and the Revolutionary War.”
In closing, one of the best principles I learned from economist Dr. Murray Rothbard was FTM – Follow the Money. For every one person motivated by ideals, there are a thousand who are bought and sold. Unfortunately, the more history I read with an eye on Cui Bono (who benefits) the more I realize that most of the history I thought I had learned is simply not so. LIFE Leadership is a company designed to help people learn the truth, escape The Financial Matrix, and live a life that matter. I promise to play my part and continue my quest for truth by helping the people understand the dangers of enslaving themselves body, mind, and spirit into the matrix.
Once the elites understood how much wealth could be pilfered from society by capturing the money supply, it was not a question of free money or controlled money. Indeed, the only real question was: who would control the money system and whether it would be led by State Power creating a national fraud or by the Money Power creating an international fraud.
In reality, it wasn’t much of a contest since the Money Elites knew the State’s Achilles heel – it’s all-consuming desire for more power. To increase the State’s power over society, at least in a money economy, the State must direct more of society’s resources, which is just another way of saying the State needs more money. This is a challenge for a States in every age but was especially problematical in the classical age when the money system of society consisted mainly of gold/silver coins. As a result, there were only two ways for the classical States to access more funds, namely, increase taxes or borrow money. Remember, this is before State had the ability to print paper money because this fraud had not been discovered yet. Society, in any event, would not have recognized it as money anyway since precious metal coins were used as money. The State elites (monarchs, emperors, and tyrants) found increased taxes harmed their popularity with the people; hence, they saw the Money Power as the lesser of two evils. The monarchs, choosing short-term good for longterm harm, simply borrowed money from the financial elites rather than upset their subjects by increasing taxes.
Master of the Puppets
The State, strangely enough, despite owning the “monopoly of force”, feared a current tax rebellion more than a future debt slavery. Ironically, it will probably end up with both. The State elites sold the nation’s financial future (freedom decreases as debt increases) for increased power in the present. Meanwhile, the savvy financial elites did not rely on just one State for profits. Indeed, they offered loans to every rival States to generate competition amongst the States, which increased the total debt and expanded their financial web. The Money Power, after all, understood as State debts increased, they could demand further privileges to ensure mastery over the State. The Money Power (international elites) now topped the power pyramid followed by the obedient State Powers (national elites) which then directed Societal Power (the masses). Over time, the State, regrettably, became just as oppressed by the Money Power as the people were by the State and Money Power combination.
Unfortunately, the bad news gets even worse. For the “loans” used to enslave the States were not based upon real gold and silver stored in bank vaults; instead, the international financiers used what is known as fractional-reserve-banking (FRB) to initiate numerous loans with only a fraction of gold/silver promised in reserves. In a word, the States enslaved themselves by loving money more than the people. Through the use of bank ledgers credits and an early form of bank note credits, the States accepted money created out of thin air, but forced the people to pay back the loans with precious metals! One may ask how the same precious metals can be loaned to numerous parties (States) at the same time? In the real world, this is physically impossible, but in the imaginary world of high finances, it is metaphysically possible (bank ledger notations) despite being morally impermissible.
It’s been said there is nothing new under the sun, only the history a person doesn’t know. The modern States seem to validate this statement as they appear to have learned nothing from their ancient predecessors – both borrowed themselves into bankruptcy. The Money Power has mastered the State and society with FRB loans created out of thin air. While this information may seem shocking, it is true nonetheless. Yes, the truth will set a person free, but usually only after it ticks him off.
The author has termed the private Money Power’s control over the banking system and money supply the Financial Matrix – a system of control where the Money Power creates money out of thin air to loan to society’s members for profit and power. The origins of the Financial Matrix can be traced back to ancient Babylonian banking practices. In the early twentieth century, however, with the creation of central banks as lenders of last resort, the Financial Matrix now reigns supreme over the earthly world. This debt system not only enslaves individuals and captures corporations into debt, but it also neuters the nation’s of the world. The Bible admonition in Proverbs 22:7, “The borrower is slave to the lender,” could not be more relevant than it is today and each person must face up to what role he is playing with respect to the Financial Matrix.
For instance, when a person borrows money to buy things he does not need, he is feeding the matrix and losing his liberties. The people must learn to deny themselves short-term pleasures in order to avoid the longterm pain. One final bitter fruit of the Financial Matrix system is the stress and pain experienced when a person attempts to pay off debt with compound interest working against him. The profits and control, in effect, go to the Money Power while the pain and stress go to the debtors. Financial ignorance is not bliss but rather pain personified. When the State debt increases the governments must squeeze society for more tax dollars even though the people are already struggling with their own debt. The shortfall, is then made up by the State borrowing even more money that it cannot afford. This is a form of insanity. Unquestionably, the kick the can down the road strategy cannot last but today’s politicians hope to be out of office by the time the can is no longer kickable. 🙂 Politics is now like a game of musical chairs where the current political leader hopes he is out of office before the music stops.
Meanwhile, the St. Louis Federal Reserve announced the total US debt (the combination of government, business, mortgage, and consumer debt) has risen from $2.2 trillion total in 1971 (the year Nixon took the dollar and thus the world off the gold standard) to $59.4 trillion in the first quarter of 2014. This is not a typo. The debt in America, which took nearly 200 years to reach $2.2 trillion and included the debts from the Civil War, WWI, and WWII, is now (43 years later) 27 times higher! Even at just 5% interest, this amounts to over $3 trillion in interest to service the debt. That’s 3,000,000,000,000 dollars every year, which is more than our total debt was a mere 43 years before. What is going on?
When Nixon took America off the gold, the dollar still remained the world’s money system, but it freed the Money Power to create as much money as it wanted without and need for gold in reserve. This turbo-charged the ability of the Financial Matrix to loan money and the consumers naively accepted the bait. I believe it’s time for the citizens of the world to reject the debt seduction. True, you can, like the proverbial ostrich, put your head in the sand and ignore this entire article, but I promise you even though you may hide your head from the financial tiger, it will still be painful when you are devoured. 🙂
The chart below reveals how the Financial Matrix is siphoning off trillions of dollars of productive capacity in each nation. The debt for American governments, corporations, and individuals is now around $20 trillion each and the interest payments are causing significant price, tax, and debt payment increases. The average American family is at the breaking point and what is need is some financial wisdom to alleviate their personal debt and stress. There is a personal pathway out of the Financial Matrix and I promise to do my part in sharing the steps to freedom.
Without intending to sound overly dramatic, I truly believe this is liberty’s last stand. The Founders of LIFE Leadership intend to stand in the gap and educate the masses of the world on a plan to escape the Financial Matrix. Will you help us set the captives free?
“The great question which in all ages has disturbed mankind, and brought on them the greatest part of those mischiefs which have ruined cities, depopulated countries, and disordered the peace of the world, has been, not whether there be power in the world, nor whence it came, but who should have it.”– John Locke – First Treatise of Government
Power, as John Locke inferred, is an omnipresent force in the world. The strong, from the creation of mankind, have ruled over the weak, subjecting them to various degrees of oppression. Although many believe the worst is behind us with the end of slavery and serfdom, this may not actually be the case. For the modern Big Bank/Big State/Big Business marriage, known as Crony Capitalism, has increased the elites’ control over the weak through the power of leveraged debt. This subtle form of coercion (through the fear of debt collectors harassment, mortgage defaults, and bankruptcy proceedings) forces many people into the purposeless quagmire of long hours, loads of stress, and yet little real ownership. In effect, today’s indebted people do not work to own anything but merely work to service debt. This, however, is historically little different than the slave or serf was also coerced into working without owning. No wonder Solomon once wrote, “There is nothing new under the sun.”
Whereas Slavery was a Physical Matrix of control and Serfdom was a Feudal Matrix of control, what should we call the financial subjugation of society? I termed it the Financial Matrix and I believe it’s the elites most powerful matrix of control yet. Why? Because few people even know it exist let alone know how to resist it. While a slave knew he was enslaved physically and a serf knew he was trapped on the lord’s land, few comprehend that debt traps a person to the financial lords. In other words, a person in the Financial Matrix is enslaved and yet believes he is free; in consequence, escaping the web of debt is very difficult because he is not even aware he has been captured. The elites, on the other hand, understood quickly the benefits of the masses feeling free while actually being entrapped by their lack of financial literacy. The Financial Matrix, in other words, ensured the masses worked harder and longer than slaves or serfs were while reaping little longterm rewards. Simply looking at the statistics of the average person’s wealth at 65 is enough to demoralize anyone. How can the masses work that long and have so little to show for it? Simply put, a lack of financial literacy entraps them into the Financial Matrix the benefits the elites and breaks the masses.
The economist Henry Macleod highlighted the power and influence debt money has had upon society when he noted, “If we were asked – Who made the discovery which has most deeply affected the fortunes of the human race? We think, after full consideration, we might safely answer – The man who first discovered that a Debt is a Saleable Commodity.” The importance of Macleod’s statement cannot be overemphasized because until the reader understands its underlying message, he will think I am exaggerating the effects of debt upon people’s freedoms. Nonetheless, no less an authority than Ludwig Von Mises (one of the early members of the Austrian School of free market economics), pointed out the key differences between commodity money and debt money. Mises defined money as simply society’s most in demand commodity (typically silver or gold).
The free market has never chosen paper bank notes as its money of choice freely. Hence, when the banking system discovered they could make debt a saleable commodity, it needed to partner with the State and use its “monopoly of force” to coerce society into using debt money through passing legal tender laws. Not surprisingly, the States gladly accepted the cheap debt money created out of nothing by the Big Banks and then forced society to do the same. This is a win for the Big Banks (massive interest profits) and a win for the States (massive increases in power from access to funds) and a massive loss to society in increasing debt and inflation while decreasing the people’s freedoms. As a result, the Financial elites now control the State and the State controls society (the same old story of the strong oppressing the weak) through the Financial Matrix’s system of control.
Federal Reserve Massive Increase in Fiat Money
Author Felix Martin noted in his interesting book Money, “For credit to become money, sellers must also trust that third parties will be willing to accept the debtor’s IOU in payment as well. They must believe that it is, and will remain indefinitely, transferable – that the market for this money is liquid. Depending upon how powerful are the reasons to believe these two things, it will be easier or harder for an issuer’s IOUs to circulate as money. It is because of this third critical element of transferability that money issued by governments, or by the banks which governments endorse and backstop, is thought to be special. Indeed, there is an influential school of thought – known as chartilism – which argues that governments and their agents are the only viable issuers of money.”
Martin, although brilliant in his historical analysis, is an apologist for the Financial Matrix and supports Statism in monetary matters (State intervention into society’s money). Thus, it’s not shocking he supports the State’s role in legalizing and supporting the creation of debt money. In reality, the State must get involved if debt money is to survive in society, for no one would accept the bank notes without the State’s unnatural coercion. Again, this is nothing less than State coercion over society to for the benefit of the strong (Financial and Political Elites) over the weak (the masses). Interestingly, however, when the State collapses the paper banknotes return to their true value – nothing. State force, in other words, is the only thing that props up the value of the fiat paper notes. A true commodity money, as Mises points out, does not need State intervention to prop up its value because it marginal utility is determined by the market, not a dictating State. All the State needs to do in a free market system is define the amount of gold and silver in its monetary unit. Then, the State should ensure the weights and measurements remain unchanged. Of course, the marginal value of the monetary unit will change as the production and consumer demand for money changes, but the standard itself should never change.
Federal Reserve Bank Notes Increase
The money supply will change slightly as more gold is discovered, but not anything close to the amount it changes in the Financial Matrix. For instance, the total value of the gold and silver mined during the entire time the Spanish controlled its South American colonies was approximately $250 billion. In comparison, the Federal Reserve increased the money supply by $250 billion in digitized debt in just one day during the 2008 Great Financial Crisis. What took the Spanish State over 250 years to accumulate, in other words, the Federal Reserve accomplished in mere milliseconds! Disastrously, the State’s “monopoly of force” is no longer used to ensure justice for its citizens, but rather to ensure Financial Matrix injustice. How do you win an argument against a person who has a gun pointed at your face? No matter how logical or reasonable your position is, the person with the gun always gets his way. In a similar fashion the State always wins an argument regardless of how illogical its position is. 🙂 Does the reader now understand why its absurd to surrender control of the money supply to the Big Banks/Big States Financial Matrix?
Banker apologist, Felix Martin, concluded, “If money was such a powerful invention – such a revolutionary force for the transformation of society and the economy – the next question is obvious. It is one posed with brilliant clarity by the father of English political philosophy. It is to the perennial battle over who controls the money that we therefore turn next.” Martin, in reality, has posed the wrong question. And, when someone asks the wrong question, he rarely receives the right answer. The real question is – why does anyone need to control the money supply? Why not let the market determine the commodity, quantity, and price of money just as it should all other commodities? Isn’t this the definition of a free market and freedom for the people? A free market is where no one controls the supply or price of any commodity within society; instead, the marketplace (consumers) determine demand, supply and price based upon the sum of the individual valuations.
We are fast approaching the end of the road and we only have one fork remaining. Down the current path is the Hayekian road to serfdom while the last for is the path returning to freedom. Unfortunately, most people spend their whole life working for money, all the while, remaining ignorant as to what money is and how personal debt controls them.LIFE Leadership has vowed to right this wrong by by sharing the Financial Fitness Program principles of financial literacy with the masses. I can think of no better way to fulfill my God-given purpose than to take the principles Laurie and I learned to break free from the Financial Matrix and teach them to others. It’s time for LIFE Leadership to set millions of financial captives free!
Society developed money to make trade easier between its members. Real money is simply the most marketable commodity within a society. For the most marketable commodity is in high demand and is generally accepted by all parties; consequently, over time, the most marketable commodity becomes the preferred medium of exchange. Of course, this is just another way of saying the most marketable commodity becomes society’s money. Without exaggeration, money is one of the greatest inventions in the history of mankind because it greatly increases the amount of win-win exchanges.
How does it do that one might ask? Because money allows all goods to be rated using the same monetary units which makes valuation of each item much more convenient. This leads to quicker agreement on win-win exchanges compared to the older and less convenient bartering process. It’s easier, in other words, to trade excess eggs for its money market price and then buy bacon at its money market price rather than barter with every customer over how many eggs is bacon, milk, or even a chiropractic adjustment worth. Money simplifies the exchange process for all members in society; thus, it increases the amount of exchanges occurring. As a result, the division-of-labor and subsequent production and wealth for society’s members greatly increases.
Gold and Silver appear to be mankind’s preferred money because the commodity is in demand outside of its potential use for money, is easily divisible, and is extremely durable (coin collectors have many specimens over 2,500 years old). Of course, as the marketplace within society grew, the time and cost associated with moving precious metal coins from one location to another also grew. Predictably, the marketplace developed a solution to this challenge by creating modern banking. Instead of transferring the physical gold or silver, a bank would create a title or metaphysical representation of the physical precious metal. The paper claim (bank note) would allow the recipient to either receive the said amount of precious metals for the bank note or just exchange the bank notes to others in exchange for goods.
This allowed business to be carried on in others cities without having to physically move the gold or silver. So long as the banks ensured the paper titles represented actual physical gold in the banks, the system worked wonderfully. Unfortunately, however, it didn’t take long for the banks, once they had established a reputation of integrity and trust, to start printing more paper notes than the had precious metals backing them. This resulted in the birth of fractional-reserve bank notes – metaphysical banknote money backed by only a fraction of the physical precious metals the notes allegedly represented.
In essence, banks began printing more banknotes supposedly redeemable in precious metals even though the banks did not have enough gold/silver on hand to do so. Naturally, this increased banker profits exponentially but also caused rapid inflation from more not circulating within society. Furthermore, as bank members discover the bank’s fraud, they respond by returning the banknotes and demanding precious metals. Of course, this only works for the early returners of the fiat paper because the precious metals are quickly depleted and the bank collapses. The numerous remaining banknotes, allegedly redeemable in precious metals, are now worthless since the bank pledging to redeem them has bankrupted itself by falling for the something-for-nothing temptation of the fraudulent fractional-reserve-banking system.
This process of collective banknote redemption by the banks members is called a bank run. Although the banks feared and hated this scenario, it is merely society’s natural response to the banks unnatural behavior. For how can a paper note, that is supposed to be simply a representation of the physical money (precious metal), now be passed off as the actual money? This is no different than a seller of land printing multiple paper titles to his land and selling the paper titles to different buyers to reap multiple profits from multiple sales. Indeed, the main difference in the two frauds is that most land title holders will eventually want to see the physical land backing the title where few banknote holders (unless they lose trust in the bank) ever request to see the physical precious metals backing the note. The other difference, ironically, is the seller of multiple land titles (representing the same land) will be prosecuted for fraud while the seller of multiple banknotes (representing the same precious metal) will be protected by the government.
How did the banking system manage to convince governments to support fractional-reserve banking (FRB) fraud when similar practices in any other field are punished severely? Why would governments across the world support such an unethical behavior Perhaps the simplest answer is that all governments are insatiable in their desire for more money and power. The banks offer governments the philosopher’s stone of creating money out of thin air through the ‘joys’ of fractional-reserve banking. The government, in other words, supported the banks fraudulent activity because the banks happily agreed to loan copious amounts of fractional-reserve banknotes to the government. This is an ignominious alliance where the banks gain extra profits by creating money out of thin air and the governments gain extra power by borrowing the FRB funds. As a result, both the banks (profits) and governments (power) benefited while society paid the bill through the predictable inflation, boom/bust cycles, and lost liberties.
Absurdly, the monetary madness gets even worse with the beginning of World War I. For before the first World War, the bank notes at least had to be redeemed in gold or silver when demanded by the owner of the notes. Governments, however, knew this would be impossible to do during a war where billions of extra banknotes were create to fund the war without without the backing of any precious metals. As a result, the European governments ended the gold standard and permitted banks to no longer redeem the metaphysical banknotes into the physical precious metal. This was the beginning of fiat money – paper notes not backed by any precious metal but only by the coercion of government.
Fiat paper notes backed by government coercion knocked out the last connection between the metaphysical paper and the physical money. From now on, the central banks would create fiat paper and call it money. Then it allowed the big banks to pyramid fractional-reserve-banking on top of the fiat notes to multiply the money supply ten, one hundred, and eventually thousands of times over the actual commodity money. The purchasing power (amount of production each monetary unit can purchase) decreased disastrously as inflation increased the cost-of-living to unheard of levels.
Fiat paper money allows the banks to create money at will and profit on the loans to governments, businesses, and families. Meanwhile the government supports the FRB fraud by declaring the paper legal tender good for all taxes and monetary exchanges even though it is not backed by any physical precious metal commodity. Fiat money, in effect, is the victory of the governments and banks to replace the physical commodity money society developed with a metaphysical counterfeit that has no physical commodity backing whatsoever. Indeed, the only reason the banks can get away with this scheme is they have purchased government’s support (by loaning FRB money to it) and then using government’s monopoly of force to coerce society into using its funny money. The government has mandated acceptance of the banking system’s fiat paper money and punishes anyone who refuses to do so. Welcome to the wonderful world of fiat money. 🙂
“The trouble with paper money is that it rewards the minority that can manipulate money and makes fools of the generation that has worked and saved.” – George Goodman
The philosopher’s stone was mankind’s quest to turn base metals into gold. Although there were several reasons for the quest, the main one was to increase the power of the sovereigns over their people. Kings and princes encouraged and rewarded alchemists from the Middle Ages to the end of the 17th century in the effort to discover the philosophers stone to no avail. Unfortunately, however, mankind discovered an easier way to turn valueless material into gold, namely fiat paper money and fractional-reserve banking. I cover the basics of these two processes in my book The Financial Matrix, but I wanted to share from Jack Weatherford’s informative book The History of Money to convey just how confused most people are about money. These are blue quotes are from Weatherford’s book with my comments below. Sincerely, Orrin Woodward – LIFE Leadership Chairman of the Board
Nero Debases Roman Coins:
Nero began to tamper with the coinage itself. In A.D. 64, in a naive attempt to deceive the populace, Nero decreased the silver content in the coins and made both the silver and gold coins slightly smaller. By collecting the existing coins and reminting them with his portrait bust but less silver, Nero produced a momentary surplus of sliver and gold. The same pound of silver that had formerly produced 84 denarii now produced 96, giving Nero almost a 15 percent ‘profit.’ He similarly increased from 40 to 45 the number of golden aurei manufactured from a pound of gold, thus rendering the coins about 11 percent less golden.”
Nero attacked private property by manipulating the measuring scale of money. Instead of a certain amount of silver making 84 denarii coins, it now made 96 denarii coins. The measure of how much silver in each coin was arbitrarily changed by the sovereign. This attack on private property is no different than the State owing a certain merchant 100 pounds of gold, and then paying the merchant only 50 pounds of gold. When the merchant complains, the State points to a new law that has changed the pound to half its former weight. Therefore, the State did pay 100 pounds of gold, but changed the definition of the pound to steal half the value of amount owed. In a sense, the State debased the weight of the pound just as Nero debased the denarii coins.
Law of Inertia: If Bad Behavior is not Punished, it Expands:
Roman Coin Fraudulent Debasement = Inflation
Thus over the course of two hundred years, the silver content was cut from nearly 100 percent to virtually nothing. The amount of silver previously used to mint a single denarius eventually produced 150 denarii, and as the silver content decreased, the price of good increased in direct proportion. Wheat that had sold for one-half a denarius in the second century increased to 100 denarii a century later, a two-hundred fold increase.
If the State is allowed to arbitrarily change the monetary units at will, inflation occurs and the price system quickly accounts for the debased purchasing power of the monetary unit. The State receives the benefit of the inflated money first, but they do so at the expense of later users of the money who now need more monetary units to buy the same production as previous. This is fraud perpetrated by the State upon society and one of the main reasons Rome fell. The people lost trust in the money supply because the State could not stop debasing the dollar to benefit itself. Accordingly, the late Roman empire devolved backwards to payment in kind and landlords protecting people rather than State. Once this occurred, society could no longer support the bloated State and the Roman Empire collapsed under its own weight.
The Roman Empire Kills Its Money:
In the last centuries of the Roman Empire, the emperors operated without a workable currency; like the ancient empires that had preceded it, Rome turned to conscription and forced labor to meet its needs. The government often would not allow its citizens to pay taxes in the debased money that it still issued; instead, officials demanded payment in good, crops, or labor. . . As tax (and monetary) policies continued to suppress productivity and commerce, the emperors found it increasingly difficult to supply their armies and the bureaucracy with the equipment and goods necessary to rule the far-flung but diminishing empire. The markets had withered; even the emperor could no longer depend on the open market to supply him with the sandals, armor, weapons, saddles, tents, and other goods that an army needed. Out of desperation, Diocletian created government-sponsored workshops to manufacture armaments and supplies. As privately financed shipping and other transport enterprises declined, Diocletian also had to create government transport companies to move the goods that were manufactured in the workshops. Well before the end of the third-century, these changes made the emperor and the government the greatest manufacturers in the empire, in addition to being the largest owner of land, mines, and quarries. Step by step, the imperial government took over the direct administration of the economy and crowded out the small, independent merchants, landowners, manufacturers, and entrepreneurs. . . By its last decades, Rome had become another state-administered economy, an empire without money and markets. It had reverted to a palace system more like that of pharaonic Egypt or imperial China than that of the republican system on which it had been built.
Rome fell because as the State expanded, it destroyed the monetary system and thus the commercial system that used it as the medium of exchange in trade. Through increasing inflation and taxation the State killed society to feed the growing bureaucracy and military. The originally thriving Roman society provided a level of systematic justice unknown to previous empires eventually became just like the other empires as it killed the monetary system through repeated unjust debasements and the commercial society reverted to a command and control empire without money. The Roman Empire died, in other words, when its money did.
Fractional-Reserve Banking is Fraud:
Under the new system a bag of a hundred florins that might once have sit idle for years in a noble’s strongbox could now be deposited for safekeeping in an Italian bank that had access to branches across the continent. The bank then lent the money and circulated the bill of exchange as money. The noble still had his one hundred florins, which were now one deposit in the bank; the bank had one hundred florins on its books. The merchant who borrowed the florins was richer, and the person who held the bill of exchange now had one hundred florins as well. Even though only one hundred gold coins were involved, the miracle of banking deposits and loans had transformed them into many hundreds of florins that could be used by different individuals in different cities at the same time. This new banking money opened vast new commercial avenues for merchants, manufacturers, and investors. Everyone had more money: it was sheer magic.
Actually, it is not sheer magic, but sheer fraud. In a nutshell, the banks creates a metaphysical representation (bank notes) of the actual money (precious metal commodity florins). This would be fine if there was only one banknote to represent the same commodity money, but fraudulently, the banks through FRB create multiple sets of banknotes to represent the SAME bag of florins. This is no different than a bank selling 10 people the same physical property by creating 10 separate metaphysical property titles to represent the land. Of course, in the property example, the fraud would be exposed because the owners would eventually show up at the property and realize, along with the the other “owners” of the property, that they were duped by duplicate property titles created for the same physical property. In the same way, the bank creates duplicate banknotes to represent the same physical commodity money. This is FRAUD. In the banknote example, however, all parties can use the banknotes representing the same bag without being aware that the others also have banknotes that represent the EXACT same physical bag of money.
Of course, this violates the laws of Logic. For two people cannot 100% own the same item at the same time and two people cannot be in the same spot at the same time. In a similar fashion, two people (let along 9 or 10 than FRB legally allows) cannot both have banknotes that metaphysically represent the same bag. Because this “magic” (read fraud) is allowed, the money supply is expanded metaphysically even though the physical money hasn’t changed size, just like the land was metaphysically expanded by the fake titles even though the physical land has not changed. Unfortunately, the scam is rarely detected because the banknotes are just transferred from person to person without anyone realizing their are counterfeit not not backed by real commodity money. The result is huge bank profits, huge societal inflation, and indebtedness for governments, businesses, and people. Of course, another result is the predictable boom/bust cycle that bankrupts many others when the money supply deflation from its previous inflation.
Fractional-Reserve Banking (FRB), in other words, is modern man’s solution to the Philosopher’s Stone. Add to it the Central Banks special privilege to purchase items by creating banknotes not backed by anything and one can see that the modern day elites have accomplished what the middle-age kings and princes only dreamed of – creating fools gold, but having the legal right to pass off fool’s gold as real gold and enslave the people in the process. The is the Financial Matrix! Like I said previously, the modern golden rule reads: He who controls the fool’s gold controls the fools.
A big secret to life is when you discover that learning is just as enjoyable as entertainment is, but with long term benefits. – Orrin Woodward
In the process of researching for my second book in the And Justice For All series, I stumbled across one of the most profound descriptions of the importance of education in a person’s life by Professor Ernest Barker. As I read the words below, I realized how important LIFE Leadership is in improving society. For LIFE helps people focus on achievement through a process of eliminating debt and building a community through serving others by pursuing wisdom and leadership. In effect, the size and speed of the results achieved is a measurement of the wisdom applied to their life and business. The Bible teaches clearly that all true wisdom begins with fear of the Lord and that Christians should seek righteousness and all others things will be added.
Unfortunately, however, few people apply these Biblical lessons consistently. Despite the numerous historical examples of people who applied Biblical wisdom to life and were blessed beyond measure, many still chase money rather than wisdom. In a capitalistic system, money flows to those who apply wisdom to business, but the reverse of this is not true – wisdom flows to those with money. For instance, Laurie and I have many monetary blessings, but none of these satisfy like sharing wisdom with others to stimulate breakthroughs in mentoring sessions or the “aha” moments of self-discovery when the veil of ignorance is removed and one sees clearly the principles to apply to move ahead. Indeed, once a person becomes a seeker of knowledge, he will never be bored again because there is always more wisdom to learn and apply. I love my life and wouldn’t trade places with anyone else because I have been blessed with the leisure to learn and grow. Even more importantly, I am blessed to share what I have learned with other hungry students seeking wisdom in life.
The Financial Matrix is a system of control designed to enslave people in their own ignorance. Hence, if one wished to escape the matrix, one must escape not only physically, but also mentally. To do this, a person must build a business asset to buy back his time because only then will he have the leisure to invest in a self-directed education to develop wisdom. LIFE Leadership is the vehicle to accomplish this where people can live their dreams by losing their debt? However, living your dreams requires a plan and a willingness to work hard. What is the reader’s plan to develop wisdom and seek righteousness? These two steps are foundational to having everything else added unto him to live his/her dreams. I pray you achieve all the success you earn.
Our modern economic society, we have seen, requires leisure and education as its complements and its correctives. They are two things which should go together. Leisure is a time to be devoted — not wholly, for the body has its claims to relaxation, and the mind too needs its gentle indulgences ; not wholly, but at any rate largely — to the purposes of education and the gaining of that knowledge, not to be acquired in the course of work, ‘which brings wisdom rather than affluence.’ Education, on the other hand, should be a training — not again wholly, but at any rate largely — in the right way of using leisure, which without education may be misspent and frittered away. This vital connexion between leisure and education is a fundamental thing. Unless we grasp it, we are in danger of abusing leisure and misusing education. And in order that we may grasp it, it is necessary that we should have a right conception of the meaning of leisure;
One of the old Greek philosophers made a distinction which may help us here. He thought that we ought not merely to distinguish between work and leisure, but also to distinguish between leisure and recreation. Work, he thought, was something done not for its own sake, but as a means to something else — affluence, let us say, or at any rate subsistence ; recreation was rest from work, which took the form of play, and issued in the recovery of the poise of body and mind, disturbed and unbalanced by work ; but leisure was a noble thing, and indeed the noblest thing in life ; it was employment in some activity (we may almost say some form of work) which was desirable for its own sake such as the hearing of noble music and poetry, intercourse with friends chosen for their worth, or the exercise of the speculative faculty.
In this fine sense of the word, we may say that we live for leisure ; that it is the end of our being, which transcends work and far transcends recreation ; that it is the growing time of the human spirit, which in its leisure from necessary toils, and the necessary recreations they entail as their counterpoise, can expand in communion with its own thoughts and with the thoughts of others and with the Grace of God. The sad thing about modern English society is that there is so little leisure in this higher sense. It is not only that we work so hard : it is also that we play so hard. Perhaps the monotony and uniformity of work sends us in reaction to the hazards of games, or the excitement of watching them, or the still greater excitement of betting upon them : perhaps the urban aggregations in which men now live make them unhappy unless they are crowding together to some common game or spectacle.
Whatever the reason, poor leisure is far too often out in the cold, while recreation is romping about all the rooms in the house. One need be no kill- joy or Puritan to think or talk in this strain. Life is something more than a series of alternate layers of lean work and fat hearty play. It is meant for the growth and development of the human spirit. And that growth needs its growing time, which is leisure. If leisure be largely for education, education is also largely for leisure. We too often think and speak of education as something intended to fit us for life’s work. Ideally, it should rather be intended to fit us for life’s leisure. I do not mean that education should be humane rather than vocational.
Education may be humane, and yet directed to work and the better doing of work. I mean something more — that education should mean the filling of our mind with interests and possibilities of high delight, which we can develop for ourselves in all our leisure hours ; that it should be an initiation in the tastes and pursuits which will crown our leisure with fulfilment ; in a word, that it should be a training and a preparation for the right use of the time of the spirit’s freedom. Perhaps education has not hitherto been sufficiently adjusted to this end. Perhaps, if it had been, it would have been directed more to the awakening of a taste for art and music, in order that they might become the permanent possession and the abiding joy of later years.
Be that as it may, it is surely true that education is a necessity if men are to gain the faculty of using leisure easily, happily, and fruitfully. The use of leisure is a difficult thing. The majority of us, when freedom is given into our hands, fly to the excitement of some form of recreation. We must be ‘doing’ something — preferably something physical : if we are not, we are lost and without resource. We know the routine of work : we know the rules and the routine of different forms of play ; but we do not know how to move freely, originally, and by our own choice in the world that lies above work and play — the world of leisure. This is why holidays sometimes pall, and leave us at a loss : it is why men who have retired from work sometimes fall into melancholy, and find their reason for living gone.
Leisure without faculty for its use may even be a mother of mischief; men may dissipate themselves in frivolities, and worse than frivolities, because they do not know how to concentrate themselves upon better things. A society which guarantees leisure is guaranteeing something which may be useless, and even dangerous, unless it adds, or at any rate encourages its members to add, the one thing which will enable the gift to be used — a continuous process of education.
The world offers to the mind of man many noble joys. There is a joy in knowing the flowers of the field, and calling them by their names. There is a joy in knowing tlie heavenly bodies which move above us, and in understanding the rhythm and the rules of their motions. There is a joy in knowing the past of our kind, and in unrolling the long record of human history which explains what we are to-day. There is a joy in entering into the vision of the poet and painter, who have seen the ideal beauty which is hidden from ordinary eyes. There is a joy in wrestling with the thought of great philosophers, who have pondered about the why and wherefore of this mortal world and our mortal existence in it. These are the joys of leisure ; and leisure is the growing time of the spirit because it is the time of these joys. But it needs an effort to catch these joys ; and you cannot catch them without hooks of apprehension.
You must know a little in order to want to know more. Blank ignorance is blank incuriousness, but a little knowledge may be the opportunity and the incentive for more knowledge. The facts presented to mere ignorance are facts which there are no hooks to catch ; but when a mind has had some little training, it develops tentacles of apprehension ; it is anxious to seize new stuff, to arrange it and co-ordinate it with the old stuff which is already there, and so to make a little systematic world of its own for its own high delectation. The mind which is furnished with these tentacles and hooks of apprehension is a mind which will never be embarrassed or dumbfounded by leisure.
It will begin to play at once, in the nobler sense of the word play: the hooks will grip more and more of things seen and unseen into its consciousness ; and in the growing time there will be growth. When we say, therefore, that education is a preparation for the enjoyment of leisure, we mean that it is an equipment of the mind with these hooks and tentacles, these curiosities and appetites. And from this point of view we may see that there is a large sphere for the education of the adult, and that education is in no sense only the concern of childhood. The child learns at school ; but the child learns at a time when real experience of life has not yet begun. He learns, and is often curious to learn ; but what he learns cannot be co-ordinated with, or grappled into, a first-hand experience, because such experience has not yet begun to be gathered.
When he goes out into the world, and begins to gather experience, that experience may seem to him the one essential thing, and the school time lessons may fade away into the outgrown occupations of a vanished childhood. It is at this age — the age of adolescence, young manhood and young womanhood — that everything turns on the rescue of young minds from being immersed in mere experience. It is now that they need to recover curiosities, and to be furnished with hooks and tentacles of apprehension, by which they can capture a knowledge which can now be co-ordinated with experience. History, for example, is one thing to a child — a record of exciting events which satisfies curiosity : it is another thing to an adult — a record of the moral experience of men and nations which can be compared with and interpreted by the moral experience which the adult has himself gone through.
But unless, in adolescent and adult years, the curiosity be reawakened and recovered, the adult mind may remain immersed in its own more immediate experience ; and the high contemplation which lifts it above such experience, and yet explains and interprets that experience, may never be attained. Adolescent and adult education are in this way of primary importance, if man is to rise to that height of his being in which he uses leisure for the purpose of contemplation of the world, in order to explain it, and his own experience of it, and to attain to the justification of faith in its purpose and operation.
I love providing a business where everyone has an equal opportunity. No one should be hindered from progressing towards their dreams because of race, religion, or sex so long as they also do not hinder others. Unfortunately, the proper quest for equal opportunity has now morphed into an unjust demand for equal results. This is not only impossible physically, but extremely dangerous metaphysically. For the only way to create equality of results is to coercively take private property from some to give to others. In other words, in the quest for equality of results, the quest for liberty and justice is thrown out the window.
As Chairman of the Board of LIFE Leadership, I know everyone who enters our business has equality of opportunity (they have the same compensation plan), but also know the results will vary based upon efforts, people skills, and leadership abilities. Thankfully, even if one starts out with little abilities in any of these categories, with persistency, he or she can still climb to the top. In effect, it’s not how bad a person is when they start that matters as much as how willing he/she is to change. If the dream is big enough, a person can change until the “facts” are in his/her favor. Indeed, I have seen this process occur many times in the LIFE Leadership community.
This, however, would all change if government were to mandate equality of results rather than equality of opportunity. For anytime equality of results is enforced, what ensues is a race to the bottom as each person seeks to do the minimum amount possible since no extra efforts are rewarded. This has been proven historically by the failure of every communist regime to even feed its people let alone prosper. Below, I attached a short article on the Greek myth Procrustes and a short section of Murray Rothbard’s brilliant article on inequality. Please share your thoughts below.
Procrustes is the legendary Greek robber dwelling somewhere in Attica. Procrustes had an iron bed on which he compelled his victims to lie. Here, if a victim was shorter than the bed, he stretched him by hammering or racking the body to fit. Alternatively, if the victim was longer than the bed, he cut off the legs to make the body fit the bed’s length. In either event the victim died. Ultimately Procrustes was slain by his own method by the young Attic hero Theseus as a young man slayed robbers and monsters whom he encountered while traveling from Trozen to Athens. The “bed of Procrustes,” or “Procrustean bed,” has become proverbial for arbitrarily—and perhaps ruthlessly—forcing someone or something to fit into an unnatural scheme or pattern.
The New Coercive Elite
Procrustes Equality
When we confront the egalitarian movement, we begin to find the first practical, if not logical, contradiction within the program itself: that its outstanding advocates are not in any sense in the ranks of the poor and oppressed, but are Harvard, Yale, and Oxford professors, as well as other leaders of the privileged social and power elite. What kind of “egalitarianism” is this? If this phenomenon is supposed to embody a massive assumption of liberal guilt, then it is curious that we see very few of this breast-beating elite actually divesting themselves of their worldly goods, prestige, and status, and go live humbly and anonymously among the poor and destitute. Quite the contrary, they seem not to stumble a step on their climb to wealth, fame, and power. Instead, they invariably bask in the congratulations of themselves and their like-minded colleagues of the high-minded morality in which they have all cloaked themselves.
Perhaps the answer to this puzzle lies in our old friend Procrustes. Since no two people are uniform or “equal” in any sense in nature, or in the outcomes of a voluntary society, to bring about and maintain such equality necessarily requires the permanent imposition of a power elite armed with devastating coercive power. For an egalitarian program clearly requires a powerful ruling elite to wield the formidable weapons of coercion and even terror required to operate the Procrustean rack: to try to force everyone into an egalitarian mold. Hence, at least for the ruling elite, there is no “equality” here — only vast inequalities of power, decisionmaking, and undoubtedly, income and wealth as well.
Thus, the English philosopher Antony Flew points out that “the Procrustean ideal has, as it is bound to have, the most powerful attraction for those already playing or hoping in the future to play prominent or rewarding parts in the machinery of enforcement.” Flew notes that this Procrustean ideal is “the uniting and justifying ideology of a rising class of policy advisors and public welfare professionals,” adding significantly that “these are all people both professionally involved in, and owing to their past and future advancement to, the business of enforcing it.”
That the necessary consequence of an egalitarian program is the decidedly inegalitarian creation of a ruthless power elite was recognized and embraced by the English Marxist-Lenist sociologist Frank Parkin. Parkin concluded that “Egalitarianism seems to require a political system in which the state is able to hold in check those social and occupational groups which, by virtue of their skills or education or personal attributes, might otherwise attempt to stake claims to a disproportionate share of society’s rewards. The most effective way of holding such groups in check is by denying the right to organize politically, or, in other ways, to undermine social equality. This presumably is the reasoning underlying the Marxist-Leninist case for a political order based upon the dictatorship of the proletariat.”
But how is it that Parkin and his egalitarian ilk never seem to realize that this explicit assault on “social equality” leads to tremendous inequalities of power, decisionmaking authority, and, inevitably, income and wealth? Indeed, why is this seemingly obvious question never so much as raised among them? Could there be hypocrisy or even deceit at work?
