Motive

2008-3-1 17:53:00

Larry quoting JJ wrote:

"I thought Larry pegged this one right when he said: 'Many of the people who come to the city will bring resources and currency of many nations to the City of Light. A polyglot of currencies will probably be the order of the day at first evolving into a native currency system.'

"I might add that gold is a good universal currency to initiate such a project because it is universally accepted. I am not against using gold when the situation calls for it. We will not start with nothing as did the people in the parable for people moving to the city will bring many assets."

Larry then responded with:

"So one has to ask why did you invent your parable? Was it because it demonstrated a principle in reality, or because it created a fiction to justify your argument? I have to say that using such means creates a real question mark in my mind as to what motivates you at times."

JJ:

Wow, Larry I went out of my way to look for something positive to say about your resent posts to try and turn this discussion in a more positive direction and you respond by questioning my integrity? Oh well - I guess you are determined to keep this conversation on an adversarial level.

My motivation is to discover and teach the truth whatever that truth may be. You may not believe this but I think most members here sense that about me.

Do you think that if the second group had assets or gold at the beginning of their quest that they would not have used them? Of course they would. Who in his right mind would throw gold away? If they could trade gold or assets with a neighboring community would they not have done so? Of course they would.

The main purpose of the parable was to illustrate an important truth and that is if you have no suitable quantity of gold (or comparable commodity) to back your money that a tremendous amount of labor has to go into acquiring it. That labor produces nothing but the gold that will not be used to make anything, but just stored in a vault. If all that labor can be used to produce goods and services instead then the community will have much more wealth than would otherwise be the case.

My motivation was to illustrate this important truth which will stand the test of time. This does not negate the fact that if I currently had assets or gold that I would not use them. Of course we all will.

Right now if all the gold reserves in the U.S. were given out evenly to all the people in the country each person would receive less than an ounce. Do you think you can live the rest of your life productively supported by less than an ounce of gold? How much effort would it take for this country to acquire several pounds per person so we could live well under a gold standard?

Then if we went and raided all the gold in the world, including jewelry, and doled it out each person in the U.S. each would only have a pound of it which is still not enough to rise one above the poverty level for just one year.

I know you are not advocating the U.S. return to a full gold standard, but the parable was not written for just you but for everyone.

"Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded - here and there, now and then - are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty. This is known as 'bad luck.'"

-- Robert A. Heinlein from 'Time Enough for Love'