No Need For Conspiracy Theories!
We can understand why society serves the super rich and not We, the People, with an honest examination of ourselves and imagining the world we know in our hearts is possible.
An essay to encourage us all to avail ourselves of the social technologies that enable us to co-create the Society to Benefit Everyone.
John G Root Jr
413 329 3200
September 2022
A contribution to cover the cost of printing would be greatly appreciated
Table of Contents to make navigating easy if you are reading this online or on Kindle
PURPOSE, AUTONOMY, AND MASTERY 8
Bank Loans and Interest or Usury 36
Commentary on the Bill of Rights 50
Retributive and Restorative Justice 53
CONSENT-BASED GOVERNANCE AND COMMUNITY-CREATED CREDIT 60
INTRODUCTION
There are numerous conspiracy theories to explain how the banking and law cartel have colluded to create the economic, social and cultural conditions in which we live. The people who espouse those conspiracy theories prove that they are real, with compelling evidence, but the Mainstream Media, social media, and the educational system continually deny that anything has been proven. I had a very instructive experience while I was involved in the 911 Truth movement. In the Berkshires, where I lived at the time, the newspaper of record is the Berkshire Eagle. Our 911 Truth group was holding monthly meetings that were drawing increasingly large crowds and the Berkshire Eagle did a cover story on us. They gave brief biographies of the leadership group, they described that we meet every week to decide what to present at our monthly public meetings, that we reviewed numerous conspiracy theories about what happened on 911 to choose what videos to present, or who to invite to speak, and that we were also promoting local self-reliance initiatives. Everything the article described about the group was true and there was not a mention of any of the conspiracy theories or the proofs that we offered. The impression left by the article was that there was a group of deluded conspiracy theorists promoting nonsense. “Nothing to see here, move along now”. This is how the culture handles the truth tellers. It does not deny at all that they exist, it just marginalizes them by getting you to assume that they are quacks. And during the Covid 19 “pandemic emergency” they just delete the truth tellers from social media and disparage them in the mainstream media…
Therefore, this essay aims to point out that everything that we need to know about the powers-that-be and what is happening to us now and in the near and even distant future can be ascertained without resorting to any conspiracy theories. What leads us to accept, or acquiesce to all the unacceptable injustices all around us? What creates the reality we believe we must accept? What is driving business-as-usual?
We do not have to resort to conspiracy theories since we can examine ourselves – our own nature – our humanity, and use that knowledge, and some deductive reasoning, to determine how things would be if there were no systemic manipulation of society and our culture.
Once we have begun the process of understanding ourselves and learning to rely on our inner authority, we will be creating the world we know in our hearts is possible, our ideal social future. The ideal and the reality need not be in conflict with each other as they are now. With an understanding of who we are, we can create the ideal society, the one wherein we are free, society is just, and we collaborate with one another to provide everything that we need and desire.
We are all together in a society and a culture that is either a reflection of our true nature or a distortion of it. Here are a few questions that will prompt us to examine our nature as human beings.
The first question is: Who am I really?
The second question is: How would the world be if it were up to me?
The third question is: Do the people I know personally have a similar understanding of who they are and how the world would be if it were up to us in our communities?
These three questions cannot be answered by referring to the way the culture represents human nature. The point of the questions is to come up with answers based on the empirical evidence of one's own investigation of oneself and conversations with family members, neighbors and colleagues.
There is a great temptation - which needs to be strenuously resisted - to repeat the conventional view, the official story, the way it is, business-as-usual, etc. without the self-examination that reveals the extent to which all that is propaganda, or methods of mind control, that lead people to accept the unacceptable. The culture represents the unacceptable as the inevitable result of human nature, and the solution as electing the right people to govern us. Consider that voting creates winners and losers, and the two-party system means you tend to demonize the other side, and your side is either winning or losing! Are the powers-that-be engaging in a phenomenon known as “divide and conquer”?
The premise of this essay is that as you transition from accepting the external authority of the powers-that-be and business-as-usual, and learn to rely on your own internal authority, your life will change dramatically and you will find multitudes of people who are also learning to rely on their inner authority. Together with those people, you and I and all of us together will be able to collaborate to create a culture and a society worthy of our true nature. We are human beings together in a society founded to protect our unalienable rights, our natural rights, the rights inherent in our nature. Here is a small excerpt from the Declaration of Independence as a reminder:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”
The just powers of our government derive from our consent. However, in this culture, silence is consent. Through our silence, are we consenting to all the injustices all around us? In the course of your life, what opportunity have you had to withdraw your consent? Is it possible that the premise of democracy, namely that we withdraw our consent by voting for a different representative is simply ineffective, wrong, or even an implemented lie?
THE GAP
If we are to realize the promise of the Declaration of Independence, then accessing one's inner authority is of paramount importance.
“Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”
Viktor E. Frankl
The space between stimulus and response can be called “the gap”. It is the idea that one needs in order to access one's inner authority. The gap is an idea that is both obvious and obscure. It is obvious because you know there is a gap between the sensation or perception that comes to your awareness from your body, senses, memory, etc., and your concepts/interpretations and responses. It is obscure because the culture automatically gives you a ready-made concept with which to understand the sensation. The gap is the key to self-knowledge because you can ask yourself what response would serve you best, or give you the most agency and joy. The sensation or perception from your body comes to your awareness and it is in your awareness that you can pose the question as to how to interpret the perception, what concept to use, and what response to make. Although it may not be immediately obvious, your life is a result of the concepts you use to understand your perceptions. This is the reality in which we live. Our reality is a result of the concepts available to us from our culture and our society. When we create better concepts, we will create a society that reflects who we choose to be.
PURPOSE, AUTONOMY, AND MASTERY
The first step in understanding who we are is to look at what motivates and inspires us. There is a very enlightening introduction to this topic by Dan Pink, who gave a lecture and wrote a book based on his understanding of the social science research about what motivates us. The lecture was turned into a video by RSA Animate and is available on YouTube: Google: “Drive, by Dan Pink RSA Animate”. In that video, and in more detail in the book, he describes that contrary to the ideas in popular culture, we are not primarily money motivated. We are most reliably motivated by our desire to serve a transcendent purpose, something that we believe in, that will make the world a better place, that will meet the needs and desires of people like us. And we are motivated to do it our way, the way that we see something needs to be done, and to learn how to do it increasingly well. He points out that money is only motivating when we don’t have enough to support the lifestyle we expect to be able to enjoy. Once our income from serving our transcendent purpose seems fair, the issue of money is off the table. He summarizes by saying we are motivated by Purpose, Autonomy, and Mastery, not money. If we have what we need to live, we are not focused on the money but on the work we are dedicated to accomplishing.
This understanding, that you and everyone you personally know, are motivated primarily by the transcendent purpose you choose to serve and not by money, makes it possible to wonder what created the money motivation and the need to “earn one’s living”? To understand this, it will be very helpful to pursue the question about who issues the money and what it is issued for. But first, let us look at some of the consequences of the belief about the need to “earn one’s living”.
The idea that one needs to earn one’s living is the rationale that we use to accept the unacceptable, namely that we must do something that someone else, who has money, wants us to do, the way they want us to do it, for their benefit. Because I have to “earn my living,” I am doing it for the money. In this scenario, the best that we can do with our motivation to serve a transcendent purpose is to align our remunerative work and career with our purpose as best we can.
There is a way of viewing our circumstances that would free us from the need to earn our living. There is a way of comprehending our nature that would make it entirely reasonable to base society on our capacity to voluntarily collaborate with one another to provide everything that we need and desire. Taking seriously that we are reliably motivated by the transcendent purpose we choose to serve, especially when we can do it our way, and develop our capacity to do it increasingly well, leads to the idea that there is something that we do not understand in our existing society that keeps that from happening. The culture provides all kinds of ideas that say if there were no compulsion to earn one’s living, most people would not work. Who would do all the things people don’t want to do? Let’s ask the question of ourselves. Would you do most of the things that no one normally wants to do as a job if it were not a job but just something that needed to be done, on occasion? It is an aspect of our creativity to redesign civilization so that we each belong to a community wherein we contribute towards what is needed, our particular gifts and talents are appreciated, and wherein we are altruistically motivated to self-actualize and become our best selves.
The question that arises as a result of beginning to think this way is that having to earn one's living is about the money. When money is plentiful and easy to come by, we feel prosperous. However when money is scarce, we are poor, we become anxious, and may even be tempted to steal. Ben Franklin pointed out that in the colonies, paper money, Colonial Scrip, was issued in proper proportion so that the goods passed easily from the producers to the consumers, there were no poor people, and everyone was well educated and of high moral character. When the Lords of Trade in London banned Colonial Scrip and required only gold and silver coins, a depression set in that led to the realization that the King did not treat the colonists as Englishmen, and the American Revolution was the result. Is there a way of understanding money that would make it reasonable to issue it to secure our life, so that we are at liberty to pursue our transcendent purpose, which is the true source of our happiness? Is it reasonable to think that we could create a society that we all feel is just by issuing the money to fund our voluntary initiatives? In order to answer this question, we will need to take a deep dive into banking and law.
It is our premise that using concepts that accurately describe what we experience in the banking system and the legal system will explain why there is such a huge discrepancy between the ideal and reality. We will not be delving into the question of how the situation with the banking and legal systems arose, since that would require conspiracy theories. We will, however, delve into what we experience, which is the empirical evidence, and we will contrast that with what we know in our hearts is true about us.
Firstly, we must understand why reality is created by how we understand money and law. Then we can discover how we would do money and law so that it gives us the ideal social future, the world we know in our hearts is our true birthright.
MONEY
Money is what we need in order to buy all the things we need to live. If we belong to a community or a tribe, in which, by virtue of our belonging to it, everything we need to live is provided as a gift, then we have no need for money. Typically we are familiar with this because when we were children, we were part of a nuclear and extended family and school community in which everything that we needed to live and thrive was provided for us, whether by our parent(s) working for what we needed or it being provided as a public service. So let us appreciate that money is necessary when we are dealing with the public - people or businesses - that are not part of our gift economy.
This distinction is very important to understand because money is what creates civilization. The division of labor that makes civilization possible is the legal tender means of exchange to distribute the goods and services we produce to satisfy the needs and desires of people with whom we do not want a relationship.
Money is also a way to control the populace. People who don’t need money can’t be ruled by money! For consideration: Was this the reason the Western (English) civilization considered the native American tribes, who had a well-developed gift economy, to be “primitive, uncivilized savages”? Was this the “crime” for which they were severely punished?
Consider that civilization arises when money is introduced and division of labor becomes possible to a degree that is not possible in a gift economy. When money is introduced into a society, the necessities of life, such as food, clothing, and shelter, are provided by relatively few people just because most people can buy what they need to live while they do all the other things that make up a civilization, including an army for empire building. The money that created civilization was either a gold coin that is valuable in itself, or a receipt for grain that represented the value of the grain, without any expectation that the clay tablet on which the receipt was written was valuable. In ancient times, 480 grains of wheat from the center of the stalk was a troy ounce, the standard unit for gold. In the kingdom of the Pharaoh, the people used receipts for grain delivered to the Pharaoh's warehouse as money, and the Pharaoh's soldiers were paid in gold coins because the Pharaoh’s receipts for grain in his warehouse were not recognized as money outside of his kingdom. So money as a receipt for a good or service was created by the sovereign as law (what you have to use as money) and the gold coin was a valuable commodity with characteristics such as a universally recognized value, a high value to weight ratio, it doesn’t rust, and is not consumed. However, if the gold coin is to serve as the coin of the realm, its value as money must be set higher by law than its value as gold, otherwise, it is a commodity like any other. Noteworthy is that receipts for grain is the money of peace and gold is the money of war!
The primary characteristic of money is as a unit of value. It is the unit of value that makes everything available for a price commensurate (comparable). It is money that makes it possible to decide which exchanges will benefit you, will be profitable to you. When you sell your labor to an employer, a client, or a customer, you set the price so that you will be better off for your effort. You know that if you buy something at the stated price, it will be profitable to the seller. Therefore every transparent, honest exchange between a buyer and a seller using money necessarily benefits and is profitable to both parties. This means that human transactions create a surplus. If every transaction happens because it is not just equal, but rather profitable, then where is the surplus, the profit going? It is obvious that if the wealth we all create together were equitably (not equally) distributed we would all be amazingly well off. There must be some aspect of law and governance that is allowing the wealth we all create together to become concentrated in the hands of a very few obscenely wealthy people. The wealth discrepancy is so great that it is very difficult to imagine it. Demonstrated below, for example, is a graphic representation of the wealth concentration. Imagine what it means that 1% have 40% (or more) of the entire wealth of the rest of us and 75% of us share 7% of the wealth! There are studies by the NIH that show a higher incidence of health problems in societies with great wealth inequality than in those with less, or more reasonable wealth inequality.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPKKQnijnsM
The wealth discrepancy has consequences that become obvious when we consider various legal issues that we are all familiar with. Take, for example, the Supreme Court deciding per Citizens United that corporations are people, with the same rights as people, and that money is speech, and therefore companies can spend as much as they want to influence the political process. Or take the Princeton Study that showed that statistically, Congress legislates what the people want insignificantly often. Less than ½ % of the legislation passed by Congress is what the people want.
https://represent.us/americas-corruption-problem/ https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/files/gilens_and_page_2014_-testing_theories_of_american_politics.doc.pdf
As Americans, we have a healthy regard for the idea that we are a meritocracy and that communism is an abhorrent idea to be opposed at all costs. But, we obviously practice corporate socialism, as evidenced by all the corporate subsidies in the Congressional Budget every year. Consider for a moment that the official story is that there is a left and right in politics. All the way on the left is communism which is state control of society, or the dictatorship of the proletariat, and all the way on the right is fascism or corporate control of society which is the dictatorship of the multinational Corporations masquerading as democracy and a free market. What we need to see is the true political spectrum which is from anarchy, no government, to dictatorship which is total control of society. Where, on the true political spectrum would you like to be? Can we imagine together ways in which we could all collaborate so that everyone enjoys the standard of living that their capacities warrant just because everyone is at liberty to pursue happiness? Can you imagine if all companies were worker-owned cooperatives or multi-stakeholder cooperatives? Especially if every part-owner understood how what they do for the company contributes to the bottom line? We could create the ideal society, the one we know in our hearts is possible if we could also issue the money to fund it. We could have the ongoing conversations in which we recognize the differences between us and come up with the unifying ideas that would give us the society to benefit everyone.
The point here is that a little deductive reasoning will enable us to see that the way the political system, our educational institutions, and the mainstream media represent our power to elect the right people is a lie. Have you noticed from what you know of our history that the country seems evenly divided and the democrats and republicans trade places in power on a regular basis? Have you noticed that both the republicans and the democrats support the technocracy and the wars? Is it obvious to you that Wall Street and the 1% have bought the government and that it serves them and not us? What seems perfectly obvious is that divide and conquer works. We are all occupied with denigrating the other side! If you identify with the left, is it because you value love over freedom? If you identify with the right, is it because you value freedom over love? Can you imagine for a moment that we all are free to act out of love? Can you imagine that there is no compulsion coming from society, only encouragement to know who you are and do what you love, just because you are free, at liberty!
Now it gets very interesting because we can discover from our own experience and our ability to reason that there is a law cartel and banking cartel that is creating the reality in which almost every one of us is a debt and wage slave and we live in fear of not being able to earn enough to enjoy the standard of living and freedoms that should be our birthright.
BANKING
We will start this investigation with an appreciation of banking. Banks are utterly reliable. You never worry about whether or not the bank will fail or lose your money or do anything other than what you instruct it to do with your money in the bank. The cash in your purse or wallet or even in your safe is not as secure as your bank account. It is easy to see that banks make a modern economy possible because they settle the accounts between us. They may not do it as cheaply or quickly as it could be done, but they do it utterly reliably. And they do it between banks all over the world. When you write a check or swipe your debit or credit card, you are instructing your bank to transfer money from your account to the account you specified. Your salary, wage, or pension is likely transferred into your bank account by EFT (Electronic Funds Transfer). You most likely do most of your banking online.
What this means is that we think there are many banks all competing with each other, but the reality is that there is one worldwide bank coordinated by the Bank for International Settlements. Banking is a highly regulated business with a number of different ownership models such as Stock Banks, Mutual Banks, Credit Unions, Cooperative Banks, etc., each with its own regulations. The too big to fail banks, the ones that have captured the government, and the ones that own the Federal Reserve System are all stock banks. Stock banks exist to make money for their stockholders.
Let us look in detail at the various ways in which we use banks, without resorting to any of the ideas that the popular culture or our educational institutions promote. This is where the gap is so important. The stimulus that our experience of banking gives us is explained by the mainstream concepts we use to understand our experience. Those mainstream concepts are not accurate. They are deceptive and the language used is deceptive. We think that we deposit our money in the bank, that it is our money the bank is safekeeping, and that the bank is using our money to make loans. What is indisputably true is that banks transfer money between bank accounts reliably. Everything else about banking is described deceptively.
The deception is based on the fact that we think of money as cash, i.e. coins and dollar bills with pictures of dead presidents on them, that say on them “In God we Trust” or “This note is legal tender for all debts public and private”. These are evidently issued by the Government, even if we don’t recognize the significance of them being Federal Reserve Notes and not United States Notes. So we think of money in the bank as the same as cash, just in the bank for safekeeping. Since we can withdraw cash from the bank any time we want to the term deposit seems appropriate. What we don’t suspect is that ‘cash in the bank’ is on the asset side of the bank’s balance sheet and the “deposits” are on the liability side of the bank’s balance sheet. The asset side of the bank’s balance sheet is what it owns and the liability side of the bank’s balance sheet is what it owes. So it owns cash and it owes what it calls deposits. This is described on the Bank of England website: https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/knowledgebank/how-is-money-created
It is not controversial. What is controversial is why you don’t know this and have never considered the consequences.
We can look at this from the point of view of our experience. Let us say that we got five $100 bills from selling a bedroom set on Craigslist. If we had accepted a check, we would worry about whether or not it would clear, and if we kept the cash, we may worry about it getting stolen or getting lost, and most cashiers at the store are suspicious of $100 bills and have to check if they are counterfeit. So, we decide to “deposit” the five $100 bills in our checking account. So we hand the bank teller the five $100 bills and she hands us a receipt that shows our bank balance went up by $500. Who is the owner of the cash? Did we give the cash to the bank? If we did, why would the bank put $500 into our bank account? Did the bank steal the $500? No, they put $500 in our account. And why is the $500 on the liability side of the bank’s balance sheet? The only answer that corresponds to what I observe happening is that we lent the $500 to the bank. The bank now owes us $500. It was a demand loan that we made to the bank. The bank has to pay us back whenever we demand it. They even pay us a little interest. The idea that you made a demand loan to the bank explains your experience better than making a ‘deposit’ because it includes the reason for the little bit of interest you get. Just a reminder that the money in your bank account which is sometimes called “checkbook” money is what the bank owes you. This is true whether they call it a deposit or not. All the money in bank accounts is bank credit, the liability of the bank, what it owes to the people and companies it calls its “depositors”.
Why is this important? It doesn’t particularly matter whether it is called a deposit or bank credit or a demand loan or “checkbook” money; it amounts to the same thing. If that were the case, why the deception, why call it a deposit instead of a demand loan? The reason is very simple. When you “borrow” money from the bank and the bank makes a “deposit” into your bank account or issues a check for you for the amount of the loan, it does not occur to you that the bank “lent'' you what it owes you. The bank owes you what they call a “loan” and instead of paying you interest, it charges you interest on it. While there is a flood of concepts from the culture that deny this could be true, we can, however, verify the truth of this idea.
We can look at this from the point of view of our experience, and use concepts that more accurately describe what we experience. The first experience is that we are not confident that we understand who issues the dollar and what it is issued for. If Congress or our Government issues the money, why do they borrow it? If the government issues the money, why is there a Federal Debt, a debt that just keeps growing and has not been paid off since Andrew Jackson paid it off and called the bankers a den of vipers? If Congress borrows from both the public and the Federal Reserve Bank the money that it needs, who issues it so that people and the Federal Reserve Bank has it to lend? Why is finance so complicated and why are the financial wizards of Wall Street so well paid? Is it likely that they are hiding something or taking advantage of something nefarious?
Let us use accurate concepts to understand our experience of borrowing from a bank. First off, why do we borrow from banks? What other sources are there for getting the capital or credit (money) we need to buy something like a car or a house or to finance the startup or expansion of a business. Most of us do not have a rich family member or any other source from whom we can borrow. The Government doesn’t lend money to us. At most, it guarantees bank loans to our company. The most obvious place to get money from is the bank since lending money is their business. In fact, we do not ever have the experience that a bank does not have money to lend, only that we don’t qualify. Banks never tell you they have run out of money to lend, only that your credit is good enough or not good enough to satisfy their lending criteria. When you go to the bank to borrow money, they check you out to find out how creditworthy you are. You have a credit score. The bank knows how reliable you will be in making the monthly payments.
We can use a typical example of a mortgage for a house to look at this. In May of 2022, the median value of a home in Massachusetts is around $500,000, the median household income is around $84,000 a year, and a typical 30-year mortgage interest rate is around 5.5% so we can use those figures for our example. Also, let us assume that we borrow the minimum down payment of $20,000 from our rich uncle on the same terms as the mortgage. Using a typical mortgage calculator, we find that the monthly payment is $2,838.95, which is 41% of the monthly income. The amortization schedule shows that $1,022,020.20 will be paid over the term of the mortgage.
Let us look at what happens at the closing. The bank manager and the bank’s lawyer, and you and your lawyer are there, and maybe the realtor or the realtor's lawyer, maybe the seller, or the seller's lawyer, etc. After the introductions, you are presented with a Promissory Note to sign. It includes the terms of the “loan” in which you are agreeing to faithfully pay the monthly amount, maintain the house in good condition, keep the homeowners’ insurance current, etc. It also includes the amortization schedule so that you can see that in the first 15 years of the mortgage, you are paying mostly interest, and in the last 15 years of the mortgage, you are paying mostly principal. It may occur to you that you are paying the bank more than the cost of your house in interest-, and you may notice that interest is mostly in present value dollars and the principle 15 to 30 years down the road is in inflated dollars. You ask your lawyer if this is fair and he agrees with you that it is not, but also that there is nothing you can do about it, and he may mention that the bank is required by law to give full disclosure. You have to sign in order to get the house. The next paper that you sign is the Mortgage (literal meaning is “death pledge”) which says that the title for the house, the document that proves ownership, will be held in the name of the bank until the mortgage is paid in full. The Promissory Note and the Mortgage are registered with the Registry of Deeds in the Court House. Your lawyer and the lawyer for the Bank make sure that all this is done correctly.
Now that you have signed the documents, what does the banker have? Does he have something valuable that he could sell? Can he sell it for more than $500,000 because it includes interest? Is it, perhaps, even more valuable than cash? Where do you think it goes on the Balance Sheet of the Bank? Does it become an asset of the bank? Does the bank own Promissory Notes and the titles to houses and call them “loans” on the asset side of its balance sheet? Is this any different from what we saw when you made a demand loan to the bank by “depositing” cash? What do you think the bank “deposits” in your bank account that you use to buy the house? When you deposit cash, the bank writes that amount into your bank account, and when you give the bank a Promissory Note, the same thing happens, the bank writes into your bank account the face amount of your Promise to Pay.
This is where we need to be vigilant in our thinking. The bank issued the money it leads you to believe it is lending you by doing the same thing it does when you lend the bank legal tender. It writes the amount into your bank account, it is an accounting entry, the corresponding liability to the asset you gave the bank. Is this what you would do when you lend someone money? Wouldn’t it be wonderful if you could “lend” people money with an accounting entry? And, by the way, if you are still inclined to think that the bank lends its depositors money, ask yourself if the bank ever told you that you can’t withdraw the money in your account because it was lent to someone else.
Banks are the primary source of loans, but insurance companies also lend money. Where does the insurance company get the money it lends? Obviously, it is lending the money it gets in premiums, on terms calculated to put it in a position to pay the claims it expects to pay. The money that it lends is money that it earned in the normal course of its business. This is true for all businesses - except banks - and it is true for us, the people. The money you have to lend (savings) is based on tieing up actual money of real value; the money banks have to lend is based on deception.
The deception is that “borrowing” from the bank is not what we do when we “borrow”, and “lending” is not what banks do when they “lend”. Instead, when the bank so-called “lends” money, it creates a so-called “deposit” into our bank account with an accounting entry on their balance sheet; the bank does not actually deposit into our bank account money of real value. The bank does this when we (the “borrower”) agree to make the money the bank creates as a “deposit” valuable with our promissory note, our promise to pay the bank money of real value, plus interest. In effect, our promissory note payments are in exchange for a bank accounting entry!
If the bank made an actual deposit, it likewise would be a demand loan to the “borrower”. Instead, a “deposit” by a bank is on the liability side of the bank’s balance sheet because it is based on what it owes us. In effect, the bank issues so-called “credit” as an accounting entry into the “borrower's” account, as the bank’s liability, its promise to pay the “borrower” money in exchange for the “borrower’s” promise to pay the bank money. In other words, the bank “lends” the “borrower” the money the “borrower” created with its promise to pay, as what the bank owes the “borrower”, but never pays the “borrower”; like lending the promise of a car, not the car itself! The “borrower” is thereby the creditor! Wow, that can’t be – but it is.
In effect, we dedicate our lives to the economy the banks manipulate.
How do the banks get away with this deception and control of the economy?
Evidently, the elite bankers have funded a culture in which we think the Government or an agency of the Government is issuing the money. This deception is necessary because issuing the money is way too important to be given to a private company to do. After all, money is not gold or silver, it is created by law, it is an abstract social technology, and it is what we have to use to settle our debts. Even if you offer something other than money to settle your debt, it will be valued by its worth expressed in money when sold.
If a prudent percentage of income for housing is 25%, then the median family cannot afford the median house. Has the banking system organized things so that most people are paying way too much for housing? What about your car loan, your credit card debt, or your student loans? Why are we drowning in debt? Here again, we need to use accurate concepts to understand why this is and how it works. And again, let us use our ability to reason to see through the fog of finance.
If the banks are issuing money with an accounting entry as a so-called loan, what happens when you make a payment? According to the amortization table, you are making a payment that consists of interest and principal. Obviously, the interest is income for the bank and goes on its Profit and Loss Statement. What happens with the principal payment? It reduces the amount you owe, so it reduces the Asset of the bank which was the basis for creating the deposit (the Liability) and it therefore also reduces the liability of the bank. Bank liabilities, which the banks deceptively call deposits, is the money in circulation. The money created with an accounting entry is also extinguished with an accounting entry. This is not controversial, it is simply a fact of accounting. This is true in the bank we “borrowed” from, but also in the banking system as a whole because the banks borrow and lend to each other overnight in order to balance their books!
Now for one of those obvious ideas that rock your world. If all bank loans were paid off there would be no money. Let that sink in. Why is that? Because all the money is issued with an accounting entry with every bank loan and is extinguished with an accounting entry with every payment of principal on that “loan”. Actually, there would still be coins because coins are not issued by banks, but by the United States Treasury and produced by the United States Mint. As it says in the Constitution Article I, Section 8, Clause 5: “[The Congress shall have Power . . . ] To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures; . . .” So the Federal Reserve System is issuing the dollars as Federal Reserve Notes and the mint is printing them as per their instructions and the Fed is paying for the printing and reaping the benefit of the difference between the cost of printing and the face value of the notes. This is called seigniorage. It is the prerogative of the Sovereign. If Congress were issuing the money to pay for what the people want, it would be Sovereign and it would enjoy the benefits of seigniorage, but since that is not the case, it is not sovereign. A little deductive reasoning will allow you to see that the Federal Reserve System is the sovereign, just because it is regulating the issuing of the money we need to live.
Now it gets even worse, and the accurate concepts to understand the banking and law cartel come into view. If the money is created with an accounting entry as the principal of a loan and extinguished with an accounting entry with every payment of principal, when was the money to pay the interest created? Remember that the promise to pay includes the principal plus interest. Where will the money to pay the interest come from? There is only one possibility, and that is obvious once you see it. It has to come from the principal which is never paid down. In fact, in order for the banking system to work as it does, there must be a debt that is never paid off or even paid down. And the principal always owing (never extinguished) has to be big enough so that all the interest on all the bank loans can be paid! Is there such a debt, a really huge debt, in the many trillions of dollars, that is never paid down? Gee, give yourself a pat on the back if you know what it is or a kick in the pants if you don’t. The debt that is big enough to be the permanent money supply is the Federal Debt! It is the permanent money supply just because it is not extinguished with any principal payments.
The monetary system of the world, regulated by the Bank for International Settlements, makes money scarce because all the money is issued by banks as “loans” for what will be profitable to the banks. This means that all the things that require money but would not be profitable to banks do not get funded. The so-called charities that pay for the unprofitable things are all designed to either give the impression that the problem is being solved or are designed to increase the profits of the for-profit businesses that benefit from what the charitable money creates such as the educational system that keeps the people dumbed down or promotes the lies about who rules. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is a perfect example. What it gives money for benefits the for-profit companies the Foundation is invested in. An article in the Los Angeles Times from January 7, 2007 says it very succinctly: “In a contradiction between its grants and its endowment holdings, a Times investigation has found, the foundation reaps vast financial gains every year from investments that contravene its good works.”
Henry Ford once quoted Andrew Jackson when he said that if the American people ever understood the monetary system, there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning. And Andrew Jackson said the bankers were a den of vipers and that he would rout them out!
Just to give a different perspective on this, here is an article from the New York Times:
Henry Ford and the inventor Thomas Edison visited the Muscle Shoals nitrate and water power projects near Florence, Alabama. They used the opportunity to articulate at length upon their alternative money theories, which were published in 2 reports, which appeared in The New York Times on December 4, 1921, and December 6, 1921.
Objecting to the fact that the Government planned, as usual, to raise the money by issuing bonds which would be bought by the banking and non-banking sector -- which would then have to be paid back with money raised from taxes, and with interest added -- they proposed instead that the Government simply create the currency it required and spend it into society through this public project.
Thomas Edison made it plain in the following excerpt from The New York Times, December 6, 1921 issue ("Ford Sees Wealth In Muscle Shoals"). Here, the reporter is quoting Edison:
"That is to say, under the old way any time we wish to add to the national wealth we are compelled to add to the national debt.
"Now, that is what Henry Ford wants to prevent. He thinks it is stupid, and so do I, that for the loan of $30,000,000 of their own money the people of the United States should be compelled to pay $66,000,000 -- that is what it amounts to, with interest. People who will not turn a shovelful of dirt nor contribute a pound of material will collect more money from the United States than will the people who supply the material and do the work. That is the terrible thing about interest. In all our great bond issues the interest is always greater than the principal. All of the great public works cost more than twice the actual cost, on that account. Under the present system of doing business, we simply add 120 to 150 per cent to the stated cost.
"But here is the point: If our nation can issue a dollar bond, it can issue a dollar bill. The element that makes the bond good makes the bill good. The difference between the bond and the bill is that the bond lets the money brokers collect twice the amount of the bond and an additional 20 percent, whereas the currency pays nobody but those who directly contribute to Muscle Shoals in some useful way.
" ... if the Government issues currency, it provides itself with enough money to increase the national wealth at Muscles Shoals without disturbing the business of the rest of the country. And in doing this it increases its income without adding a penny to its debt.
"It is absurd to say that our country can issue $30,000,000 in bonds and not $30,000,000 in currency. Both are promises to pay; but one promise fattens the usurer, and the other helps the people. If the currency issued by the Government were no good, then the bonds issued would be no good either. It is a terrible situation when the Government, to increase the national wealth, must go into debt and submit to ruinous interest charges at the hands of men who control the fictitious values of gold.
"Look at it another way. If the Government issues bonds, the brokers will sell them. The bonds will be negotiable; they will be considered as gilt-edged paper. Why? Because the government is behind them, but who is behind the Government? The people. Therefore it is the people who constitute the basis of Government credit. Why then cannot the people have the benefit of their own gilt-edged credit by receiving non-interest bearing currency on Muscle Shoals, instead of the bankers receiving the benefit of the people's credit in interest-bearing bonds?”
What is particularly interesting about the article is that if you read the whole thing (on the NY Times archive website) you come away with the impression that it is about whether Henry Ford should manage Muscle Shoals because he could do it better than the government. The article does not emphasize the monetary issue and somehow one is given the impression that the monetary issue is irrelevant. I find it fascinating that this continues to this day. Why does the news media continue to obfuscate the obvious?
Bank Loans and Interest or Usury
There is an aspect of a bank loan and interest that is inherently problematic. An appreciation of this problem is necessary in order to understand the circumstances in which we find ourselves. The amortization schedule includes principal and interest in one monthly payment which must be paid regardless of the circumstances of one's life. The Promissory Note together with the Mortgage or the title to the car, etc. makes it very clear that if the payments stop for any reason, the bank will foreclose and the house will be sold or the car repossessed. This is a fact of life that is in the back of the mind of everyone who buys a house or car with a bank loan. With a student loan, where there is no collateral, the loan is due and payable even if you declare bankruptcy, and you can’t qualify for a bank loan if you are delinquent in your student loan payments.
The banks are the obvious sovereign because the foundation of your life, the house, the car, and the basis for your career are all dependent on bank “loans”. This is, in the way the powers-that-be represent it, the natural order of things. But what you do not know is that the economic profession falsely maintains that money is neutral in the economy, that banks are intermediaries, and that everything that is “credit worthy” gets funded. This is a lie because the banking system creates the business cycle, the booms, the recessions, and the great depressions. The word goes out from on high (Wall Street Gurus) to the too big to fail banks, not your local bank, and they make credit easy by doing such things as lowering mortgage rates and giving NINJAs mortgages in order to create a housing bubble, which they can then burst and foreclose on the hapless homeowners. What is a NINJA? No Income No Job or Assets, that’s right, they gave liars loans (internally the bankers even called them LiarLoans) so they could buy houses and flip them in the rising housing market the banks created. Then the word went out from the Wall Street Gurus that this was unsustainable and the too big to fail banks tightened credit and crashed the economy. Then the too big to fail (TBTF) bankers went to Congress and told Congress to bail them out. Congress genuflected and socialized their losses, and although it was obvious that numerous laws were broken, not one TBTF banker was tried and Elizabeth Warren, who headed up the Congressional bailout, said that the TBTF bankers were also too big to jail. As you may be aware, the crash of 2008-09 saw unprecedented devastation of Mainstreet and none of the bailout money that went to banks was used to rescue Mainstreet, even though that is how the bailout was represented. The bailout money and the subsequent quantitative easing went onto the balance sheet of the too big to fail banks, ostensibly to compensate them for the “loans” that were defaulted. The houses were repossessed and sold and somehow the official story is not that the offending banks got paid twice (by the government and then by the foreclosure), but rather that the banking system was rescued from a massive bankruptcy and the system was saved. I recently read that Blackrock is now the largest owner of single-family homes and therefore the largest landlord.
And, by the way, there is a huge body of evidence that all the wars are engineered by the banking elite. You can know this is true without resorting to conspiracy theories by using an accurate concept: What were the bankers in so-called “neutral” Switzerland doing in their Bank for International Settlements, the Central Bankers Bank? Were they funding both sides of both World Wars? Did you ever wonder why the country with the Swiss banking laws and Swiss bank accounts is neutral? Of course, that is where the bankers from the Bank of England, the Federal Reserve Bank, the Bundesbank, the Banca d’Italia and the Japanese Central Bank meet frequently to coordinate their rule! War is the most lucrative business for big banks, when you fund both sides you can’t lose. And why do you not know that the banker father and grandfather of two presidents was convicted of trading with the enemy? Why don’t you know that Wall Street and Swiss Bankers funded the Allies and the Axis and Prescott Bush was caught and convicted of funding the Nazis?
And just to drive the point home, we can understand the nature of money and how a government of the people, by the people, and for the people would issue money and regulate the money supply. Properly understood, money should not create reality, it should always just represent the reality created by the people and their activity to satisfy the needs and desires of their compatriots. - There are two aspects to the reality that money should represent. The first is the exchange of goods and services. Money, as a unit of value, represents the value of the goods and services being exchanged. Everything with a price is commensurate, comparable so that we can be sure that we understand the relative values. Money, as a means of exchange, is either issued in proper proportion to reflect the reality of the existing goods and services in demand (consumption) or the potential to create new values (production). Money issued as debt by deception to profit bank shareholders, creates reality, because you now have to sell your labor to someone who has money and do what they want you to do to acquire the money that you created. You created the money to do what you feel called to do, not to profit the bank. Does a house that belongs to the bank until you have paid twice what it cost put you in a position to do what you love, or does it put you in a position where you pay tribute to the hidden sovereign? Just to be clear, we, the people, could come up with the criteria for giving, not lending, people, the money to buy a house and car, etc. so that they are in a position to participate in society and the economy as full human beings divinely inspired to put their life in the service of the transcendent purpose they choose to serve, the way they want to do it and with the opportunity to develop their mastery in doing it. As President Lincoln said, in essence, when his administration issued debt and interest-free money: “The people can and will be furnished with a currency as safe as their own Government. Money will cease to be master and become the servant of humanity. Democracy will rise superior to the money power.”
If we were issuing the money in order to create the conditions in which we want to live, we would issue money with an accounting entry, just as the banks do. But we would be looking at the Income Statement and Balance Sheet for our township, county, State and Nation to make sure that the right amount of money was circulating. We would know how much to raise or lower the dividend that funds the people’s dividend income and we would know how profitable our funding of people's capacities was. Lincoln pointed out that managing the money supply of the nation is a practical science. Managing the money supply so that there is no inflation or deflation, no booms or busts, is a matter of transparently keeping track of three things which are the money issued, the rate at which it circulates and how much is not circulating because it is being saved, and add or subtract from the money supply in order to keep the price level stable.. For example, if the rate at which people are saving goes up, there would be less money circulating, and so it may be necessary to issue more money so that there is the right amount of money in circulation to properly represent the value of the goods and services in demand.
JUSTICE
Banking and Law go together like a hand and glove. The glove, Law, protects the hand, Banking. This essay is all about understanding banking and law but without conspiracy theories. Therefore, it is necessary to look at our sense of justice, what we know in our hearts is just, to understand the law. So, for example: Is it just that banks use deceptive terms to describe banking so that we don’t understand that banks lend us the money we created, as what they owe us? How is it possible that this remains hidden? Could it be that the law works for the banks? If most of us are paying most of our income to banks because banking is deceptive then it follows that the law and our government are not just. So let us examine this issue of justice. How do we know if something is just? How do we recognize injustice?
Just as our childhood teaches us about what it is like when everything is provided for us free of charge, our childhood also teaches us what justice is. You may remember learning that hitting your sibling and taking what you wanted by force got you into a heap of trouble. You may remember how often you used the phrase “that’s not fair”. You may remember negotiating with your friends to get an agreement on what game to play, and you may remember the disapproval of your friends when you didn’t honor what you said you would do. You may also remember that it was sometimes necessary to disobey your parents in order to do what was right for you or someone you loved, and you may have learned that you have a conscience that reliably knows right from wrong whether or not you obey it. You may also remember how satisfying it was to do something that was appreciated without being told, i.e. voluntarily. And, you may remember that you always evaluated what your friends were wanting you to do before agreeing to do it, just because just doing it without thinking could get you in a lot of trouble. As you grew older, you may also remember learning how to recognize and deal with manipulation, or lies and deceit.
As adults, we all have a similar sense of justice and injustice. We recognize an injustice when we see it, and we may also have a hard time coming to an agreement about what to do about it. We likely do not want anyone to tell us what to do, and we likely have a tendency to want to tell other people what to do. These two aspects of human nature are what we see being played out in the culture in ways that continually grab our attention. For example, even the wealthy agree that the extreme wealth disparity between the poorest and wealthiest is unjust. Every effort to address it raises issues that run afoul of our desire for autonomy (don’t tell me what to do!) or our desire for fairness (take from the rich and give to the poor). What would be helpful is to look at our own sense of justice and compare that to the social conditions we find ourselves in.
“No Justice No Peace” was a chant at many of the anti-war and social justice demonstrations that I participated in over the decades. Justice is very important to our sense of well-being. We tend to experience our situation as just when we feel that we are in the right relationship with our community. When the community or the government or other authority imposes its will in ways that limit our freedom, and when the distribution of the rights and privileges of society are not equitable, we tend to think of that as unjust. In order to understand ourselves better, we can distinguish distributive justice, procedural justice, retributive justice, and restorative justice.
Distributive Justice
Often referred to as economic justice, this is the crucial issue for determining if our governance is just, i.e. serving We, the people, or if it is unjust because it disadvantages the people and unduly benefits the already wealthy special interests. The powers-that-be may represent the extreme wealth discrepancy as inevitable, but we know that it is a result of the power of money to corrupt the lawmakers. We also know that money is a matter of law, and if the lawmakers (Congress) are borrowing money from privately owned too big to fail or jail banks, it is not sovereign. This is one of those things that we could all know since it is well known that Mayer Amshel Rothschild, the founder of the Rothschild Banking Dynasty said: “Permit me to issue the currency of a nation and I care not who makes its laws.” Why don’t you know that every significant Wall Street Banking or Investment Banking firm is run by a CEO approved by the Rothschilds? They know this and they will tell you as much if you ask.
How can we have a just distribution of the wealth we all create together, both as producers and consumers? Generally speaking, if we have a healthy sense of ourselves as capable of making a meaningful contribution to our society and economy, we may feel that it is just to enjoy a standard of living based on our merit, the value we contribute. We also may feel that it would be just to make sure that all those people who, for reasons of disability or circumstance, are unable to make a meaningful contribution should nevertheless receive what they need to live. Are people poor because they are lazy and stupid? Or are they poor because they don’t have enough money? It is most interesting to discover in conversations I have had that just about everyone I know personally believes that it would be just to give everyone what they need to live so that they are at liberty to pursue happiness. This idea is something that you may discover in conversation as well. It is supported by the numerous advocates of a basic income. If we distributed the money supply equitably according to criteria we establish out of our sense of justice so that everyone has what they need to live, then the fear for one’s existence goes away and the feeling of freedom, being at liberty, means that the question: “What shall I dedicate my life to accomplishing?” becomes highly motivating and real. What shall I dedicate my life to? is the question that we all have at various points in our life. If we recognize accomplishing our purpose in life is the most reliable source of happiness, then we will know that we also need to have a right to the capital (money) our capacities warrant. We could have a real meritocracy based on our sense of justice if we recognized that as consumers, we all have a right to the money we need to live, and as producers, we have a right to the capital our capacities warrant.
The powers-that-be provide the ready-made concept that if people did not have to earn their living, no one would do all the menial jobs that make the economy run. That is exactly the point, if the people did not have to earn their living, then the economy and society would be serving the people, not sociopathic companies that treat their labor as human resources to be exploited, that externalize their costs onto the environment and society, that profit from all the subsidies the corrupt legislatures provide them, and that reward their stockholders who are less than 60% of the population, all of whom are either business owners, independently wealthy, or work for a company with a pension or 401K plan.
Regarding addressing any necessary menial jobs, wouldn’t you volunteer a few hours per week to help make your community function? Wouldn’t you like to participate in designing commerce so there is no garbage, rather than participating in cleaning it up? What if every waste product were utilized in new production? All of that is possible, is already designed, just look it up. It is called the circular economy!
The distributive justice issue must reconcile the desire we have to make sure that everyone has what they need to live, just because they are fellow human beings, and the desire to have our merit recognized and to enjoy a commensurate standard of living. This distributive justice ideal can be realized if everyone has a dividend income (unearned income), based on the overall productivity of the economy in which everyone participates, and if everyone is a part-owner of the company they work for and is responsible for the capital their capacities warrant. If you have a right to an equitable share of the wealth we all create together, and you have a right to the capital your capacities warrant, then it is the play between those rights that create distributive justice.
Procedural Justice
This is the idea that everyone is treated fairly in how the law is applied. Procedural justice has its origins in Common Law and the Magna Carta of 1215 in England when King John accepted the demands of the nobles that he be subject to law in the administration of justice. Even the King has to treat the people fairly! The British Empire, which stretched around the world, has left this legacy everywhere (except in China) that the government has a primary obligation to manage a justice system that treats its citizens fairly. However, the powers-that-be keep us from understanding that the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights are based on Nature’s law and espouse the principles of common law. Because you may not be familiar with the Bill of Rights here it is:
The Bill of Rights
Amendment I
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Amendment II
A well-regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
Amendment III
No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.
Amendment IV
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Amendment V
No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.
Amendment VI
In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defense.
Amendment VII
In Suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise re-examined in any Court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law.
Amendment VIII
Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.
Amendment IX
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
Amendment X
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
Commentary on the Bill of Rights
In the First Amendment, we can notice that every one of the rights is breached by current events. Take the idea that there is to be no establishment of religion and wonder why the Government is so intent on declaring its reliance on science for imposing medical mandates and then censoring the expression of opposing views. Is scientism or materialistic consensus science, the established religion? It certainly has all the trappings of a religion, including ignoring inconvenient truths, such as the quantum science that demonstrates that consciousness precedes matter, and proclaiming heretics, as in “anti-vaxxers” and “climate deniers”.
What about a free press? Have you noticed that the Television Stations, the Radio Stations, the Newspapers, Time Magazine, etc. are all promoting the same official story, doing no investigative reporting, and suppressing all the interesting opposing views? Did the mainstream media ever say in any detailed, honest way, what the evidence for the so-called ‘Conspiracy Theories’ is? Did the mainstream media address all the evidence that demonstrates that the 2020 election was stolen? Or, did the mainstream media just say that there was no evidence?
What about the right to assemble? Have you ever been herded into a fenced-in ‘free speech zone’ at a demonstration? I have.
What about petitioning for redress of grievances? Are you aware that - depending on how the question was put - between 67% and 95% of the population want Congress to reform campaign spending? Did you know that the Fair Elections Law, which was an initiative petition in Massachusetts, passed with a supermajority, but the Massachusetts legislature refused to implement it, and the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts required the Governor to sell State assets to fund the campaigns of candidates who were relying on the implementation? I participated in a campaign to amend the Massachusetts State Constitution to make it clear that Corporations are not People, and Money is not Speech. The Attorney General would not certify it because the United States Supreme Court had ruled that corporations are people and that money is speech. So much for the redress of grievances.
The Second Amendment is all about a well-regulated militia which is necessary for the security of a free State. The militia the amendment is referring to is not the National Guard or any other branch of the military, it is the right of the people to come together to defend their rights against the State itself. The Second Amendment redresses the power imbalance that could arise between the State and the people. If the people are also armed, there is much less chance that they will acquiesce to the loss of fundamental rights, and more likely that they will have the power to establish a new government to protect their unalienable rights and secure their happiness and prosperity.
The Third Amendment is to assure the government will not quarter troops in private homes as the King of England had done.
The Fourth Amendment through the Eighth Amendment is about procedural justice based on the venerable tradition of Common Law. The amendments describe Common Law well and how it protects the people from a capricious government. It does not mention that a Grand Jury is 24 jurors and a petit jury is 12 and that both require unanimous consent since that was so well known. Also the difference between civil and criminal law is not spelled out, also because it was well known.
The Ninth and Tenth Amendments make it clear that the source of our rights is We, the People. It is not the States or the United States that determines what our rights are, but We, the People, determine what our rights are.
Retributive and Restorative Justice
Shall we punish people convicted of a crime or shall we restore the pre-crime conditions? If we punish the criminal, then it may seem that justice is done, but the harm done by the crime lives on. Retributive Justice is the norm and in the US we have a higher per capita rate of incarceration than any other country. It could be a result of two abrogations of common law, namely plea bargains and victimless crimes, as well as the privatization of the prison system.
If we aim to heal or repair the tear in the fabric of the community caused by a crime, then we are acting out of the angels of our better nature. If you are unaware of the power of restorative justice, please recognize that just hearing about it in this paragraph opens up a whole new world of possibility in our understanding of justice. A good website to pursue restorative justice is: https://restorativejustice.org/. Be prepared to be inspired.
To summarize, Restorative Justice is a different way of thinking about an offense or crime, and our response to an offense or crime. It is a contemporary expression of timeless standards of justice that repairs the harm caused by an offense or crime, and, through prevention, reduces future harm. It emphasizes accountability, making amends, and — if they are interested — facilitated meetings between victims, offenders, and members of the community in which the harm happened.
It offers offenders the opportunity to take responsibility for their actions and for the harm they have caused. It seeks redress for victims, recompense by offenders, and reintegration of both the victim and the offender within the community. It also requires a cooperative effort by communities as well as the “body of governance”.
Restorative Justice is best accomplished through cooperative processes that allow all willing stakeholders to meet. When victims, offenders, and community members meet to decide how to repair harm, the results can be transformational.
COMMON LAW
The law of the land, or common law, is based on common sense and our ability to reason together. Common Law relies on the good judgment of a Grand Jury and a Petit Jury to reason together to determine a course of action that will give a just result. Common Law prescribes a rigid set of procedures that assure equal protection of the laws and fairness and complete reliance on people being able to come to a consensus about the facts of the matter at hand and a just remedy. For example, a complaint by a person or company against another person or company cannot proceed until a Grand Jury (24 people from the public at large) agrees that there is probable cause based on an affidavit and oath for an indictment or a presentment. The Grand Jury does not consider anything except whether there appears to be probable cause to issue an indictment or that there is a need for an investigation of public wrongdoing with a presentment. The Grand Jury is independent of the Judicial Branch of Government, what Justice Scalia called the people's branch of the government of a republic. Under Common Law, one cannot even be accused of a crime without due process.
Due Process is the bedrock of a fair judicial system. It assures that everyone is treated the same, at least when followed as designed. The other aspect of Common Law is the complete reliance on the ability of twelve people from your neighborhood who may know you or know of you, to come to a unanimous decision about the facts of the case and then, in a separate proceeding, agree on the just remedy.
Some of that sounds like what we have today and some of it does not. The fourth through eighth amendments are about the common law, but none of the terms used are defined. There were legal dictionaries back then that do define the words as they were used then. Johnson’s dictionary of 1755 was particularly relied on. Lysander Spooner wrote a famous book in 1852, in which he pointed out that when the jury is selected by lot in the county in which the crime was committed, it is reliably representative of the people of the county and even of the whole country. Such a jury, when it passes a unanimous verdict as to the facts as well as to the justice of the law, is the people’s effective check on the government. However, when the Government controls the selection of the jury and the jury does not understand its role, it is an instrument of Governmental power, not a check on it.
To understand why this is so important, imagine for a moment that you joined the team at a startup company and you mortgaged your house to provide your share of the capital needed. You did this in spite of knowing that borrowing to invest is not a good idea, but the prospects for the economy were looking good, consumer confidence was high, interest rates were at a record low, and you had confidence in the product which appeals to the aging boomer generation. Before the company was profitable, and its product became established in the marketplace, the housing market crashed and a recession/depression set in. Your company's product was no longer ‘affordable’ and your income reduced to the point where you couldn’t afford your mortgage payments. So you put your house on the market, but the housing market was very cool and no one was making any realistic offers for your house. The bank that gave you the mortgage wouldn’t modify the terms of your loan, they had sold it into the ‘mortgage backed securities market’ and so you stopped paying and the ‘servicer’ foreclosed on you.
You decided to challenge the legality of the foreclosure and you found an ambitious young lawyer who wanted to challenge the legality of the mortgage backed securities scheme. He insisted on a jury trial (not a trial by jury since he didn’t know that was what he really wanted). The Jury selection process ended up excluding all the jurors who had experienced a foreclosure. After hearing the arguments from the bank’s lawyers, which amounted to the terms of the promissory note you signed, and hearing the arguments from your lawyer that the mortgage backed securities scheme that was created by Wall Street lawyers was the reason for the housing market crash and recession/depression, and that the bank provided no consideration since the bank created the money with an accounting entry, so there was no consideration and therefore the Promissory Note you signed was fraudulent and null and void. The Judge instructed the Jury to limit its considerations to whether the promissory note you signed was clear and that you knew the consequences of not paying; and he pointed out your lawyer’s arguments were irrelevant since the only issue was whether the Promissory Note was a contract you knowingly signed. The Jury quickly realized that all the revelations about banking they had heard in the trial would, if true, totally change banking, the economy, and society. They could not agree on a not guilty verdict and so, after deliberating for two days, they came round to guilty and upheld the legitimacy of the Promissory Note.
Now contrast that with what would have happened if the trial by jury were according to Common Law. The jury was selected by lot and so may very well have included people who had been foreclosed on. The Jury members would know that they had a duty to rule on the facts as well as the justice of the law. They would know that their verdict could not be overturned if it were well reasoned and based on the facts they determined to be true. They would know that they were being relied on by the whole country to be a check on their Government. Their verdict would bring down the banking system and the legal system that protected the banks, it would restore Common Law, and make way for the building of a just economy.
So, now you know, just on the strength of your ability to use accurate concepts and apply your reason to them, that there is indeed a banking and law cartel that have created the conditions in which we live.
The banking system creates the conditions in which we live because banks determine what will get funded. The law profession, the BAR (British Accredited Registry (law association)), that protects the banking system, must manage the Federal Government so that any challenge to the Federal Reserve system is not taken seriously.
HOW I LEARNED ABOUT THIS
I learned about this in 2000 when I discovered that both Kerry and Bush belonged to Skull & Bones and that Antony Sutton had written a book, America’s Secret Establishment, about what all the members of Skull & Bones had done in their lives since it was founded in 1832. A substantial number of them were involved in establishing public education in America. Since education is primarily the value inculcating process, as is religion, public education is the establishment of a religion, called Secular Humanism, or materialistic science (scientism). Currently, all the textbook companies are owned by members of Skull & Bones because they buy up whatever textbook company becomes popular and then they make sure the textbook tells the official story. I have learned over the years that the official story is not only questionable but oftentimes a lie, which I have been able to verify with logic and research.
During the 2004 election cycle, both Dennis Kucinich and Ron Paul were handing out copies of the Constitution and both had their sights set on changing the Federal Reserve System and reclaiming the money power. I worked hard for both campaigns in the Berkshires where I lived. When Dennis Kucinich was asked who he wanted as his vice president he said: Ron Paul, and when Ron Paul was told about that he responded that Dennis Kucinich would make an excellent vice president for him. Kucinich and Paul are at opposite ends of the fake left-right divide. Why would they recognize each other that way? They were both the only Representatives not beholden to special interests!
CONSENT-BASED GOVERNANCE AND COMMUNITY-CREATED CREDIT
So now we want to know what we can do about all this. I trust that it is obvious to you that we will never have the society we know in our hearts is possible unless we create it ourselves. We will use our understanding of ourselves as responsible members of our community to assure that everyone’s life is secure so that they are at liberty to pursue their calling in life which is the only reliable source of true happiness. We will determine together that we want to realize the promise of the Declaration of Independence and we will know that we are doing this for the whole world.
We are very fortunate because all of the tools we need to realize the promise of the Declaration of Independence exist and are available free of charge. There is a learning curve, and we will need to spend time learning new ways of doing things. We will learn how to self-govern by active consent and how to issue debt and interest-free money to fund production – the money we need to produce things we need and desire – and to support consumption – the money we need to live. When we learn how to self-govern bottom-up, from the ward to the town, to the city, to the county, to the State, to the Federal, by active consent, and when we understand how to implement the community’s credit, we will be creating together the world we know in our hearts is possible. If you know how to listen to your angel, and many of us do, you will be able to imagine and be inspired by your vision of the ideal social future and you will know what to do to implement it.
Sociocracy is a well-developed way to realize consent-based self-governance. It is both a protocol for meeting so that we can always get to active consent and never have to create winners and losers by voting; and it is an organizational structure that assures that we, the people, are the sovereign. The best community-created credit system is called Common Good. It is an implemented community-created monetary system based on understanding money as the primary tool of the sovereign. It is integrated into the existing banking system and yet allows us to issue money for all the things that we consent to as being good and furthering the common good. Sociocracy is best represented by SociocracyforAll.org and CommonGood.earth is the website for the Common Good payment system.
To conclude, here is the quote from the Declaration of Independence that we all need to take seriously if we want to live in a Just and Sustainable Abundance.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”
CONCLUSION
It is my sincere hope that those of us who know that we are on a path of self-actualization will recognize in this brief explanation that we can create the world we know in our hearts is possible, the ideal social future. We can all imagine it, be inspired by what we imagine, and do something effective to bring it about.
Please answer the call when you hear it to come together to form a Jural Assembly Community and implement active consent-based self-governance and community-created credit. When the only law we recognize is ‘do no harm’, and we understand due process and administer it in the context of a Grand Jury and Trial by Jury in the sense of Lysander Spooner, we can have deep and profound confidence that we will be implementing the promise of the Declaration of Independence and are on our way to a Just Abundance.
Websites to learn more:
has a bibliography and numerous references to the source materials for the claims in this essay. This essay is also posted there.