The Third Option - Part 1
The Third Option – Part 1
by Liam Allone
As a new contributor to ZeroHedge, let me introduce myself. My passion is fundamentally the promoting of the third option. My submissions will be a series of articles that will build up the case for this third option. So what exactly is the third option?
Let’s start with a quote from Patrick Buchannan that he penned in his letter of resignation to the Republican Party in 1999. In it, he said:
Today, candor compels us to admit that our vaunted two-party system is a snare and a delusion, a fraud upon the nation. Our two parties have become nothing but two wings of the same bird of prey. Candidates of ideas need not apply, as both parties seek out the hollow men, the malleable men, willing to read from teleprompters speeches scripted by consultants and pollsters for whom the latest print-out from the focus group is sacred text. We choose not to play our assigned role in their sham election.”
The third option is the alternative to Republicrats and Demublicans. They are in fact a one-party system who are effectively the same crap, but different pile. No matter which party is in power, nothing fundamentally changes.
Now I would like to highlight what I think is the most important characteristic of this two-party system that is in fact one and the same. If you ask a casual observer what is the defining hallmark difference between Republicans and Democrats, one would typically answer that, historically, Republicans call for balanced budgets, fiscally responsible government and the need to raise taxes to cover the nation’s bills. We can summarize them as the “tax and spend” party. The Democrats on the other hand have always been prepared to throw caution to the wind and embrace debt in the name of achieving “social justice.” In other words, they are the “spend and tax” party.
Tell me, what came first, the chicken or the egg? Tax, spend, tax, spend, tax, spend… Do you see where I am going with this? If you look at the simple evidence of history, the fact is that our national debt is ever growing and never shrinking for well over 100 years; indeed since the founding of the nation, no matter what political party is in power. It was Albert Einstein who told us that the essence of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting a different result. If a picture is worth 1000 words, this picture is much more valuable:
So next, we must ask ourselves, why is this chronic cycle of booms, busts and ever-increasing economic malaise persisting upon every political system and ideology on Earth and how can we fix it? I spent over a decade preoccupied with seeking the answer to this question. Who was it who said, “Seek and you shall find. Ask and it will be given. Knock and the door shall be opened?” That is what I did and like magic, the answers and people came to me. This is the essence of the third option – an answer to this seemingly intractable malaise that will actually work.
I will not tell you what that answer is in this installment, but I will set it up first so that it is something that you, dear reader, will want to discover for yourself. I do this to indeed build a little tension, but mostly it is because I could write a book about this solution and this forum does not allow for long tomes. You will need to settle for me meting it out a bit at a time. But I did write a book about it and you can download it for free at www.economiccures.com. It is my contribution to our social commons for the betterment of my fellow man. My father who was a salesman used to say that people value that which they pay for dearly but despise as worthless that which is free. On the balance, that is true, however Gandhi never charged his countrymen for his British Home Rule pamphlet, and with it he defeated the most powerful nation in the world; the Empire on which the sun never set, without firing a single shot, without an army and without any political power. Furthermore, no royalties are paid on any of the world’s great wisdom texts like the Bible, the Koran, the I Chang and other similar texts. I personally think that what I have learned about the third option is the most important thing I have learned in my life. Perhaps you will come to think so too and will therefore attribute some value to this book of mine. It is not enough to recognize a problem. What is more valuable is a certainty as to how to fix it. Otherwise as Hosea said many millennia ago, my people perish for lack of knowledge.
So let me set this third option up, by sharing with you some very significant quotes from some of the great men of our past. One that has always struck me particularly hard is this quote from Winston Churchill in 1930 when the world was at the onset of the Great Depression after the crash of 1929:
Who would have thought that it would be easier to produce by toil and skill all the most necessary or desirable commodities than it is to find Consumers for them? Who would have thought that cheap and abundant supplies of all the basic commodities would find the science and civilization of the world unable to utilize them? Have all our triumphs of research and organization bequeathed us only a new punishment: the Curse of Plenty? Are we really to believe that no better adjustment can be made between supply and demand? Yet the fact remains that every attempt has failed. Many various attempts have been made, from the extremes of Communism in Russia to the extremes of Capitalism in the United States. They include every form of fiscal policy and currency policy. But all have failed, and we have advanced little further in this quest than in barbaric times. Surely it is this mysterious crack and fissure at the basis of all our arrangements and apparatus upon which the keenest minds throughout the world should be concentrated.
What prompted Churchill to pose this question? It was prompted by his recognition of a huge mistake he made. Two years later, when he spoke about it in the the British House of Commons, this “mysterious crack and fissure” was still a question foremost in his mind, when he remarked on Hansard:
When I was moved by many arguments and forces in 1925 to return to the gold standard, I was assured by the highest experts, and our experts are men of great ability and of indisputable integrity and sincerity, that we were anchoring ourselves to reality and stability, and I accepted their advice. I take for myself and my colleagues of other days whatever degree of blame and burden for having accepted their advice. But what happened? We have had no reality, no stability. The price of gold has risen since then by more than 70 per cent. That is as if a 12-inch foot rule had been stretched to 19 or 20 inches, as if the pound avoirdupois had suddenly become 23 or 24 ounces instead of 16. Look at what this has meant to everybody who has been compelled to execute their contracts upon this irrationally enhanced scale. Look at the gross unfairness of such distortion to all producers of new wealth, and to all that labour and science and enterprise can give us. Look at the enormously increased volume of commodities which have to be created in order to pay off the same mortgage debt or loan. Minor fluctuation might well be ignored, but I say quite seriously that this monetary convulsion has now reached a pitch where I am persuaded that the producers of new wealth will not tolerate indefinitely so hideous an oppression. . . . I therefore point to this evil and to the search for the methods of remedying it as the first, second and third of all the problems which should command and rivet our thoughts.
What is even more astounding to me though is that Churchill had two fellow countrymen who had a firm grasp of the problem and sound proposals to solve the dilemma. They were fairly well known to many Englishmen of the day. Those two men were Major Clifford Hugh Douglas and Nobel Prize Lauriat Professor Frederick Soddy, who you will hear me speak of again. Consider also that in our financial papers are today uttering cries to once again return to “sound money” as advocated by voices like Ron and Rand Paul, Peter Schiff, The Von Mises Institute, and the many clamoring voices who write articles here on ZeroHedge, on www.goldseek.com and its sister paper www.silverseek.com. As wise King Solomon said almost 3000 years ago, “Everything old is new again and there is nothing new under the Sun.”
This quote came from Major C.H. Douglas that points to what a credible, workable economic system should look like:
Systems were made for men, and not men for systems, and the interest of man which is self-development, is above all systems, whether theological, political or economic.
Now let us take a moment to point the finger at who is holding mankind back from achieving such a rational system. The following is attributed to Sir Josiah Stamp, the then second richest man in England on his occasion to visit Texas in 1927:
The modern banking system manufactures money out of nothing. The process is perhaps the most astounding piece of sleight of hand that was ever invented. Banking was conceived in iniquity and was born in sin. The Bankers own the earth. Take it away from them, but leave them the power to create money and control credit, and with the flick of the pen they will create enough deposits to buy it all back again. However, take this great power away from them, and all the great fortunes like mine disappear, and they ought to disappear, for this would be a happier and better world to live in. But, if you wish to remain the slaves of Bankers and pay the cost of your own slavery, let them continue to create money and control credit.
Amstel Mayer Bauer Rothschild, who founded his family’s dynasty as the world’s richest family, an estate that has lasted almost two centuries, boldly and arrogantly said this:
The few who can understand the system will be either so interested in its profits, or so dependent on its favors, that there will be no opposition from that class, while, on the other hand, that great body of people, mentally incapable of comprehending the tremendous advantage that Capital derives from the system, will bear its burden without complaint and, perhaps, without even suspecting that the system is inimical to their interests.
The very author of our Constitution, Thomas Jefferson, had this to say about this class of parasites on two separate occasions:
I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issuance of their currency, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all their property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.
We hear a great deal in the media about Keynesian Economics as what has guided economic policy for the better part of the last century. Would it surprise you to know that John Maynard Keynes himself recognized that his own proposals were lacking? He said so in his seminal 1936 work titled The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money:
Consumption is satisfied partly by objects produced currently, and partly by objects produced previously, i.e., by disinvestment. To the extent that consumption is satisfied by the latter there is a contraction of current demand, since to that extent a part of current expenditures fails to find its way back as a part of net income. Contrariwise, whenever an article is produced within the period with a view to satisfying consumption subsequently, an expansion of current demand is set up. Now all capital investment is destined to result, sooner or later, in capital disinvestment. Thus the problem of providing that new capital investment shall always outrun capital disinvestment sufficiently to fill the gap between net income and consumption, presents a problem which is increasingly difficult as capital increases. New capital investment can only take place in excess of current capital disinvestment if future expenditure on consumption is expected to increase. Each time we secure today's equilibrium by increased investment we are aggravating the difficulty of securing equilibrium tomorrow.
So what is the root cause of this mysterious “gap” that Keynes spoke of and what is the fix? Why the third option of course!
I am reminded of two lines in the classic movie Network that speak to how you should be feeling at this moment if all of this is a new revelation to you:
I’m mad as hell and I am not going to take it anymore!
The second is a scene where a couple of cops are kicking the crap out of someone on the streets of New York while another detective tells shocked passers-by:
Move along. Nothing to see here folks, move along.
If that is how you feel, then stay tuned for more about the third option.
For Part 2, go here: https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2023-01-02/third-option-part-2
