You will recall the bible story in which the babylonians tried to build a tower so high that God was obliged to strike them unintelligible to each other for fear they would consider themselves omnipotent.
Rabbi Lapin (I always want to say Levine, his predecessor as to peripateticism in the Seattle area) wrote a on the tower of Babel, an extended sermon to edify the contemporary mind.
Anyone who approaches the field of economics quickly learns that there too, all is babel. There are no set definitions of money, rent, profit, loans, credit, interest, corporation, banking or even "value." This is a field with pretenses of being science.
Economics as a separate field emerged about 250 years ago, as the restrictions on usury were relaxed. Moral Philosophers, who began to replace theologians as the public intellectuals, headed off into brave new worlds where usury was not a crime. Devoid of that one restraint, thereafter there was no restraint. Specious definitions abounded, sophistry carried the day. No one economist could quite communicate clearly with another. It is as though once mankind had decided with economics there were no limits to the heights they could hit, they were again struck unintelligible to each other.
Disaster followed disaster.
Let's examine one tiny, specific controversy from 250 years ago, free banking. First, we must understand at this point there was no definition of either "free" or "banking." The controversy centered on whether one could issue more currency for circulation than the amount that represented what money (defined as gold and silver at that moment) the bank had on deposit.
Feelings were extreme on this point.
People against this practice called for free banking. People for this practice called for free banking. You read that right, both sides called for free banking.
Up to this point the practice of issuing more currency than you had backed by gold and silver was often forbidden by law, so people who wanted to do it wanted the "free" in free banking to mean free of govt, and free to practice what we call fractional reserve banking, where you issue more currency than you can redeem. The wanted to be free of govt forbiddence.
Now at times government did allow it, and so the people against it also called themselves "free bankers" to get away from government allowing it.
So we have people at opposite ends of an argument using the exact same terms to advance their opposite agendas. It actually is even more complicated, and you can read details here.
Who knows if we'll ever be able to carry on a sensible conversation about economics. Maybe if we forswear usury, we'll begin to understand each other again.
Feel free to forward this by email to three of your friends.
Rabbi Lapin (I always want to say Levine, his predecessor as to peripateticism in the Seattle area) wrote a on the tower of Babel, an extended sermon to edify the contemporary mind.
Anyone who approaches the field of economics quickly learns that there too, all is babel. There are no set definitions of money, rent, profit, loans, credit, interest, corporation, banking or even "value." This is a field with pretenses of being science.
Economics as a separate field emerged about 250 years ago, as the restrictions on usury were relaxed. Moral Philosophers, who began to replace theologians as the public intellectuals, headed off into brave new worlds where usury was not a crime. Devoid of that one restraint, thereafter there was no restraint. Specious definitions abounded, sophistry carried the day. No one economist could quite communicate clearly with another. It is as though once mankind had decided with economics there were no limits to the heights they could hit, they were again struck unintelligible to each other.
Disaster followed disaster.
Let's examine one tiny, specific controversy from 250 years ago, free banking. First, we must understand at this point there was no definition of either "free" or "banking." The controversy centered on whether one could issue more currency for circulation than the amount that represented what money (defined as gold and silver at that moment) the bank had on deposit.
Feelings were extreme on this point.
People against this practice called for free banking. People for this practice called for free banking. You read that right, both sides called for free banking.
Up to this point the practice of issuing more currency than you had backed by gold and silver was often forbidden by law, so people who wanted to do it wanted the "free" in free banking to mean free of govt, and free to practice what we call fractional reserve banking, where you issue more currency than you can redeem. The wanted to be free of govt forbiddence.
Now at times government did allow it, and so the people against it also called themselves "free bankers" to get away from government allowing it.
So we have people at opposite ends of an argument using the exact same terms to advance their opposite agendas. It actually is even more complicated, and you can read details here.
Who knows if we'll ever be able to carry on a sensible conversation about economics. Maybe if we forswear usury, we'll begin to understand each other again.
Feel free to forward this by email to three of your friends.
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