Squatting on the shoulders of midgets
by Simon Black on December 6, 2012
December 6, 2012
Santiago, Chile
Isaac Newton, the father of classical mechanics and progenitor of nearly every technology we use today, was easily one of the top 10 most influential minds in all of human history…so much so that even Albert Einstein kept a picture of Newton in his study.
Newton’s achievements were so momentous that when he died in 1727, he was buried with the honors normally reserved for a king. His body lay in state for four days at Westminster Abby, and his pallbearers included two dukes, three earls, and the Lord Chancellor.
Yet as accomplished as he was, Newton credited the brilliant scientists and philosophers who came before him, acknowledging that his insights would not have been remotely possible without the foundations laid by great thinkers– Archimedes, da Vinci, Descartes, etc.
In a personal letter to a colleague in 1676, Newton famously remarked “If I have seen further it is by standing on [the] shoulders of giants.”*
No doubt, all great ideas flourish by expanding upon the works of others. Unfortunately, so do terrible ones. And one of the worst ideas in history that continues to play out today is the grand experiment of fiat money.
The idea is simple. Rather than allowing money to be scarce and have intrinsic value, our fiat system grants power to a tiny elite to conjure money out of thin air. Presumably, if the ones in control are smart, honest guys, then everything should be fine.
Fiat was a total failure right from the beginning. When unbacked paper currency was originally introduced in the 11th century by Emperor Renzong of the S’ung dynasty, nasty inflation quickly followed.
The Yuan dynasty later adopted the same tactic of printing paper money without restriction, and they, too, suffered severe hyperinflation.
In fact, upon visiting China from Europe, Marco Polo remarked in his writings with incredulity how ‘[a]ll these pieces of paper are issued with as much solemnity and authority as if they were of pure gold or silver… and indeed everybody takes them readily. . .”
For Marco Polo, this was unheard of. In the Europe of his time, the gold Florin was the major medium of exchange, not paper. And the Florin famously held its metal content at precisely 54 grains of fine gold for nearly three centuries.
It took a few hundred years, but the fiat idea eventually spread to the west. Today, fiat is the global standard; just as in Yuan China, paper is readily accepted as money, and future historians will likely look back on us the same incredulity as Marco Polo viewed the Yuan.
Nevertheless, we have our own ‘brilliant scientists’ championing this bad idea. We award our most esteemed prizes for intellectual achievement to men like Paul Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz who tell us that the path to prosperity is for one person to conjure trillions of dollars out of thin air… or to impose capital controls, raise taxes, or spend more money.
Like Newton, they’re merely building upon the foundations laid by men who came before them. Unlike Newton, they take bad ideas and make them worse, squatting on the shoulders of [intellectual] midgets like John Maynard Keynes, whose works include such gems as:
“Can America spend its way into recovery? Why, obviously!”
“[M]oney borrowed and spent will revive the economy.”
“[E]arthquakes, even wars… serve to increase wealth…”
“[To] fill old bottles with bank notes, bury them at suitable depths in disused coal mines. . . and leave it to private enterprise… to dig the notes up again… is not so different from gold mining…”
It borders on the absurd… as if it were all written as part of a satire. Yet in one of the most intellectually dishonest statements ever made, Paul Krugman recently wrote that “Keynesians have been right about everything.”
This is incredibly dangerous thinking. And it’s important to never forget that, despite how normal things may ‘feel’ on the surface, the economic engines deep below are steered by these same people who worship at the cult of bad ideas.
Roy says:
This is my last comment. I had a comment flushed down the Memory Hole this morning, “Change vs. History.” It will not happen again.
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6th December 2012 at 9:33 pm
llpoh says:
Roy – thanks for posting these. I really appreciate it. I hope your “last comment” is not in fact your last comment. Nice work.
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6th December 2012 at 9:39 pm
Administrator says:
Roy
The formatting of Change vs History did not work. I couldn’t get it to work, so I had to trash it.
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6th December 2012 at 10:05 pm
Colma Rising says:
Roy:
Good find, and the philosopher Isaac Newton’s gratitude and hat-tip to those before him is a humble act as he was indeed a GIANT who propelled human kind forward, argument for Liebnitz aside.
If you were the victim of word press swallowing your post, you aren’t the first. Back up your posts by copy and pasting to whatever word processing program (ie ms word for me) often, or make your post in word and c&p it to wp where you can edit.
Fushiznits
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6th December 2012 at 10:13 pm
llpoh says:
Roy – I now understand the problem. Type it out in word, then cut and paste it into wordpress after saving it. Bingo – no lost articles. Would be a shame for you to abandon the effort.
Admin needs all the help he can get – it takes a massive effort on his part to keep this sucker up and running. If it were not for all the ad revenue, I am sure he would stop doing it.
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6th December 2012 at 10:26 pm
Roy says:
Admin – I realised the format was screwed up when I posted. I admit I am a computer klutz. Believe it or not I was on the leading edge of computers 40 years ago but dropped out when my kids knew more than I. I concentrated on low tech that I believe will be necessary to survive as energy becomes more expensive and Industrial Agriculture fades to Organic as the Amish practiced.
The site I cut and pasted was http://perspicuity.net/cgi/hypercal.cgi. Leon’s Almanac of Political History. I have corresponded with Leon and in addition to the Almanac he has lots of good stuff on his site. I hope to use some of his work on this site and get him to join us.
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6th December 2012 at 10:39 pm
llpoh says:
Roy – try cutting and pasting into Word. If that works, try to cut and paste from word to wordpress.
Thanks again.
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6th December 2012 at 10:41 pm
Roy says:
I usually use Word since my spell check doesn’t always work and I am probably the worst highly educated (at taxpayer expense) speller around. I believe poor syntax, spelling and grammar looks unprofessional.
My son who knows computers is here from CA for several days and is coaching me and Sylvia. Syl is more advanced than me and helps me.
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6th December 2012 at 10:49 pm
Eddie says:
Nice post. keep them coming, Roy. Newton…I love to read about him.
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6th December 2012 at 11:36 pm
eugend66 says:
Indeed, nice post Roy ! Oh .. you forgot the mandatory “WPES” ad.
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6th December 2012 at 1:21 am
AKAnon says:
I like your posts too, Roy. Please hang in there and try the advice of those who have conquered WordPress. Or at least developed effective work-arounds. WPES
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6th December 2012 at 2:25 am
Reverse Engineer says:
Roy, the best way to compose articles for WP is to use a WYSIWYG HTML Editor first, then copy the HTML into the WP upload box after clicking the HTML tab at the top.
A good online free HTML Editor can be found at
http://html-color-codes.info/html-editor/
Go back in the files here and look at some of my old Frosbite Falls Daily Rants. You can use a WYSIWYG editor to get about any layout you want to work on WP. Pasting out of Word or other regular text editors does not work nearly so well. Here is an example from Da Good Old Days here on TBP:
http://www.theburningplatform.com/?p=15837
On the Isaac Newton topic, I’m surprised nobody here has yet mentioned the Sir Isaac was Master of the Mint in Jolly Old England in 1692 when the Bank of England was Chartered. Similarly, the other Calculus Genius, Wilfred Gottfried Leibniz had the ear of Queen Sophia of the Hapsburghs over in Germany. These two math geniuses essentially set up the monetary system as a means to keep their benefactors perpetually wealthy. Those of you who took Calc inn college should know the notation we use in Calc is Leibniz’ notation, not Newton’s. Newton’s was very kludgy.
Isaac was also well known for his passion for ferreting out and torturing Counterfeitors in order to Monopolize money creation as strictly the province of his Illuminati benefactors.
The TBP crowd I am sure will be interested to know that Sir Isaac was Light in the Shoes and besides being a grand explorer of the fields of mathematics & physics, also explored the Hershey Highway in great depth. LOL.
RE
http://doomsteaddiner.org
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6th December 2012 at 3:27 am
Novista says:
RE
Don’t forget the alchemy and the apocryphical interpretations. And of his gig at the Mint is how we came by the GSR.
Roy
Don’t let WordPress beat you. WPES. But you can mostly overcome its ~features~.
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6th December 2012 at 6:09 am
Reverse Engineer says:
I have been known to criticize the WP software, “Word Press Hell” as I referred to it when Jim exited Jason’s software package to move TBP to WP.
However, it ain’t that bad now and is getting better. WP has better Plug-Ins available and is *relatively* easy to use compared to other Blog software with comparable flexibility.
I can tell you for sure having used both Jim’s WP package and my own, both will take most HTML pretty well. WAY better than Blogspot for sure in both cases.
You ever visit the Diner? I got Widgets running galore on WP, and they run FINE! Sliders for past articlesf from variosu authors, and really I coud do more but it is time consuming of course to go nuts with this stuff.
If you just write articles, composing in a WYSIWYG HTML Editor will resolve about any problem you have.
On the other hand, if you wanna get the WP software to recognize the SMF software used for commentary and do active updates to the pages, then you got some issues to deal with. LOL
Newton was Illuminati Scumbaf Extraordiaire, no doubt.
RE
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6th December 2012 at 8:34 am
Eddie says:
I did know that Newton was reputed to be gay., but I declined to bring it up, since everything I “know” about Newton I learned from reading Neal Stephenson novels.
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6th December 2012 at 8:39 am