Economics, as a part of the Social Sciences, is an effort to explain how we got here. Data is pretty easy to get, but providing a comprehensive explanation of human nature requires interpretation. If your interpretation is flawed, you will inevitably ignore some data, maybe even hide it (consciously or subconsciously), to prevent your precious theory falling apart. The problem is, no one theory really accounts for everything. In the process of examining the record of mass human behavior, we find ourselves in the stream itself, and no one can ever really step out of it without losing the ability to comprehend the whole thing. We aren’t gods.
A tip of the hat to my friend, Robin, for alerting me to yet another strong analysis of how we got in this mess. You can read the original post by Charles Hugh Smith, and you might understand it. I agree with Robin’s critique in principle, but for myself, I detected a hint of his contention buried in Smith’s own analysis. That is, without reading everything else Smith has written, it seems he assumes fiat currency is a problem of its own, but does not squarely address it because he emphasizes something else.
And if you really wanted to dig into the banking moguls who lead the pack of greedy wealthy elites scraping off all the profit from the world’s peasantry, you could find all too many commentators willing to enlighten you. I don’t deny the term “Illuminati” could refer to something real and dangerous, but too many people have their own definition. The threat is real, but too many fools jabber endlessly about their private nightmares. Perhaps that is partly intentional to mask the facts, but you can easily get lost in trying to discern who is a propaganda plant, whether they know they are such, and how much fact is used to disguise blarney. It’s not a total waste of time, since the mainstream media is no better source of information than a million blathering idiots, but we don’t have enough time to sift everything. I’m pretty sure consensus is not possible, any more than it is in academia. Even PhDs can write some really stupid stuff. You’ll have to build your own filtering system and make what you can of it all.
It’s much easier to agree on what we can do about it. On the one hand, an awful lot of this is completely out of our hands. Indeed, I remain convinced the elite folk seeking to steer all this suffer, thankfully, from their own limited vision and leverage. The global intentions of past empires lasted a lot longer than anything we see today, and I doubt the brightest minds of today’s Illuminati see things any more clearly than Nebuchadnezzar, Alexander, or the Roman Senate. They have the advantage of far faster communication nowadays, but that would not exist were it not so open and out of their control as it now is. So while they can extend their manipulations farther and faster, they are paradoxically less absolute. The fine science of human manipulation inevitably grinds to a halt on things too easy to ignore in making grand plans. There will always be some who just won’t play along, the cranks who see just enough to prepare monkey wrenches to limit the power of the machinery to devour them. We can develop resistance because that is one thing which seems to change little over the course of human history.
Characterize it any way you wish, but the single greatest monkey wrench is your own brain. When you tend to question everything, to include maintaining a healthy dose of self-doubt, you won’t be herded so easily to your doom. The very existence of monkey wrenchers is the defeat of tyranny. They can never be fully eliminated, neither tyrants nor rebels. Indeed, glorious visions of liberty are always false. The American Revolution traded one slavery for another. Only briefly did anyone living in Colonial America hold real freedom, perhaps a single generation. While the tyrants of the world are afflicted with eternal lusting for a control they can never really gain, it is dangerous for us contrarians to ever believe in our own dreams fully. Rather, we have to realize the mere existence of thinking rebels is its own good. In this we agree with Jefferson about revolutions every twenty years — it’s the best we can hope for that tyrants are never allowed to fester long in control, but we should never expect them to simply go away. We can’t afford to take ourselves that seriously.
No, you don’t have to understand it all to be blessed with the assurance it’s not all a waste. Tension is both the bane and blessing of living in a fallen world. You want to end all tension? The grave is the only place you’ll see that.
