Ideas have wings. There is no transportation problem in
the export of an idea, and one may give an idea without
losing it. Both the giver and the receiver are benefited if
the idea is sound. Let us give the peoples of the world an idea,
a liberating idea, a constructive idea that involves no sacrifice
on our part and no obligation or embarrassment on the part of
others.
The social interest is served by the abolition of boundaries.
Just as it is imprudent for the family to strive for self-sufficiency
and deny itself the advantage of specialization and exchange,
so it is adverse to the social interest to be walled about by
political boundaries. Yet this adverse condition grows with the
ever-increasing number of nations, each of which strives for self-sufficiency,
balking the economic law of interdependence.
The comparative success of the American federation of states
is due largely to its denial of nationalism to the individual
states. None of the states of this union has the power to set
up trade barriers, make war or operate a separate monetary system.
But for this curbing of nationalism, America would be another
Europe. If the forty-eight states were independent nations, each
would undertake to be self-sufficient, thus countering the advantages
of specialization and, through the war-making power, burdening
itself with costly military establishments. The example of the
United States demonstrates that the less nationalism over a given
area, the better for the citizens thereof.
While the United States has continuously extended the area of
non-nationalism from the original thirteen states to the present
forty-eight, the rest of the world has been giving birth to separate
national states, setting up more barriers to free intercourse.
Each war brings new splinter states. The "secret" of
the success of the American federation has apparently been kept
from our statesmen. They hail the birth of each new nation as
a manifestation of self-determinism and democracy. Nonetheless
they object to such separation in the realm of the United States,
as was amply demonstrated by the Civil War.
Independence, in politics, means the right of politicians to
bracket a portion of society under their exclusive governorship.
These "independent" peoples are walled about against
intercourse with the rest of society, and denied self determination
within their own realm. All of us are prisoners of some state
to which, we are told, we must give fealty under a private brand
of patriotism.
Nationalism means separatism, while all human urges, conscious
and unconscious, are toward union. Federation of states is impossible
because of the jealousy of the politicians who govern the several
states. Nor would it serve the social end of self determinism
if it were possible, since the ideal of self determinism must
be pursued in nonpolitical ways. The authentic approach to realizing
man's dream of world union is through the vehicle of a nonpolitical
monetary system.
We are approaching the universal collapse of the political monetary
system. With such collapse will come revolutions, unless an alternative
monetary system shall first come into existence. A true monetary
system could avert the chaos and forestall revolution, thereby
preserving the existing national states even while gradually rendering
them harmless. For the political monetary system is the principal
instrument of state separatism. Once it is gone, all other interferences
with production and exchange will recede. Denied power over the
economy through their respective monetary systems, the states
will be obliged to abandon their paternalistic pose and stand
before the people in their true light, as dependents without productive
powers, and utterly devoid of any powers of largess. The trend
of human affairs will then be as irresistibly toward individualism
and self determination as the present trend is toward socialism
and domination by the state. The tide will have set strongly toward
union and away from economic separation.
Social, political and economic schemes in great variety have
been dreamed by dreamers who fitted men into the mosaic of their
vision. Seldom ever has it been proposed, through an empirical
system, that each man dream his own dream and let the pattern
of society work itself out.
Happiness is the objective of every life, but the word "happiness"
cannot be defined except concretely, and then only by the one
who is to experience it. Even if it were possible to give to any
man or system dictatorial powers, and they were exerted ever so
benevolently, they still could not bring happiness, because no
mind outside the individual can conceive happiness for him. The
concept and the indulgence are inseparable.It is a concept of
most profound implications to envision each individual as the
architect of his own happiness and the builder of it. This is
the ideal that the valun system projects. The life that it contemplates
is individualism triumphant. Of course, the valun system or its
equivalent would operate in a world of tangibles, and it is not
suggested that happiness is made up only of material things. But
so far as material things or their creation can bring happiness,
a true monetary system is the tool of attainment.
Since no social order has heretofore been predicated upon the
principle of a nonpolitical monetary system, it follows that its
promulgation will require a revolution in thought and action and
that it will be many years before its full implications can be
comprehended. We can be sure, however, that if man holds to the
old concept that the power over the issuance of money lies in
some external entity, he will curb his progress. When he asserts
that the creation of money is within his own powers, he will surmount
the last major barrier to self advancement and a limitless horizon
will open before him.
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