- Money and culture can’t be divorced…
- Like politics, money is downstream from culture
- A Multi-Billionaire and Early Open AI Investor just made a stunning prediction. He just laid out his full research in a free presentation. For the time being, you can watch it here.
Dear Reader,
Today I advance a hypothesis:
A high and ascending culture merits a currency equal to its excellences.
For example: Golden Age Athens. Here is author Freeman Tilden, from his 1935 masterwork A World in Debt:
- The Athenians… never, as free men, indulged in the final madness of debasing their currency: They never became swindlers… Athens rose in trade by means of establishing good credit and by safeguarding the honor of her coin.
- In the most terrible years of her history, when the treasury was empty… she was indeed obliged to strike emergency coins of gold and bronze, but never consented to debase her coinage.
Meantime, the gold solidus of the Byzantine Empire endured some 700 non-debased years — seven centuries.
Contrarily, a low and declining culture suffers the currency it deserves. That is, a low-culture currency is worth scarcely the “paper” upon which it is printed.
Examples — infinite examples — crowd the annals.
The Degenerate Dollar
Now take in hand the United States dollar. Does it reflect a high and ascending culture… or a low and descending culture?
I am a proud citizen of the United States. Thus I loathe to concede the possibility.
Yet today I propose that America’s is a low and descending culture, an increasingly degenerate culture.
It is only proper that this degenerating culture merits a degenerating currency — the degenerating dollar.
Then
I recently took in the rebroadcast of a 1950s baseball contest. The battle occurred in daytime, in high summer, New York City’s season of heat and humidity.
Nearly all male spectators turned out in sport jackets, ties and fedoras. Women donned elegant dresses and fashionable headwear.
Both men and women dressed, in one word — tastefully — despite insufferable conditions.
To my knowledge, these were not men and women hanging from society’s higher rungs. And this was not the opera but a blue-collared affair of the laboring classes.
Yet their turnout shames much of today’s “higher” society.
Now
Now come home. Today’s spectator often arrives at the ballyard with half a shirt upon his back. Flip-flopped shoewear adorns his feet and a backward-facing cap crowns his head.
Tattoos often festoon his features — or hers.
He is better girded for the torturing heat of summer than his 1950s predecessor, it is true.
Yet what he gains in comfort he loses in dignity. Contrast this downdressed fellow with his updressed predecessor.
The Golden Age of Flying
Likewise, air travel. In the golden age of air travel, both men and women boarded airplanes in high sartorial style.
Stewardesses (pardon — flight attendants) were images of grand and gracious elegance.
And now?
The Barbaric Age of Flying
Is this progress? Many would argue it is progress. The past was too “stuffy.” And perhaps it is progress… of a sort. It is more relaxed.
It is certainly more “democratic.”
What Would Rockefeller Think of Today’s Titans?
Even our supposed elites appear hostile to elitism:
All Signs of a Degenerating Culture
In dress, in manner, in speech, in ways large and small, I have come to conclude that ours is a degenerating culture.
Please understand: It is not my purpose to call anyone or any group into contempt or ridicule. Here I do not judge. I merely observe.
And let it go into the record: Your correspondent does not sport spats to baseball contests. Nor does he wear ascots on airplanes.
As well wear a tuxedo to the beach.
He likewise employs foul language should circumstances warrant. What is more, he munches hamburgers and swills beer.
I do not always distinguish between the salad fork and the dinner fork.
And do I always wash behind the ears? No, I do not.
That is, I am in many ways as degenerate as the times I inhabit… by my own admission.
Let us now turn to our degenerate paper dollar. How does it influence our culture?
Money and Culture
“It has a very important impact on our culture,” writes economist Jörg Guido Hülsmann.
Mr. Hülsmann contrasts paper money with “natural money” — gold. Unlike the casual paper dollar, gold dresses in style.
It is all class.
The debt-soaked society with its paper money loses something of the human face perhaps. It yields a certain coarsening of culture.
Mr. Hülsmann:
- You can imagine, then, how this inflation- and debt-based system, over time, will begin to change the culture of a society and its behavior.
- We become more materialistic than under a natural monetary system.
Money Is Downstream From Culture
Yet perhaps I stretch the facts to fit my theory. I concede the possibility that I sketch illusory connections where none truly exists.
I may simply manifest a nostalgia for what I perceive as simpler days.
And I do not argue that the restoration of sound money would equal the restoration of culture, of manners, of civility.
Nor do I argue that American culture was high and glorious before monetary debasement tugged it down.
Yet I cling to the theory that a nation’s money is tethered to its culture. Thus we suffer the degraded currency worthy of a degraded culture.
It is said that politics is downstream from culture.
In my telling, so is money.
Regards,
Brian Maher
for Freedom Financial News
