Georgic Economics: The Genesis of Liberty
August 18, 2008 by Hyrum Lefler · 5 Comments
What is meant by a “Georgic Economy?” It occurs when families plant seeds after preparing the ground; they then water, tend, protect, and eventually harvest. In our modern day, it is experienced by families who adopt Georgic Principles in their finances. It is compared to banking as well: Banks plant seeds (of capital) and harvests increase over time.
When America shifted from agriculture to industry they outsourced (unwittingly perhaps) the planting of seeds for their livelihood, to others. The professional farmers provided the food, and the professional financiers provided the capital.
We Americans now do the opposite of banks: We receive products first, then pay for them over time — providing bankers with a harvest. In essence, Americans began choosing material comforts over economic freedom. We lost the principles of Georgics.
The Georgic Economy is not a new concept or practice. It has peeked its perspiring head several times throughout history. Adam was taught this economy by God in the Bible. We see it again with Abraham. It was then forgotten by the Israelites in Egypt — and it took God forty years to revitalize it in the people! The Greeks had it early on; they cultivated it in their rocky soil, only to have the vine blossom in the Golden Age and wilt in the scorching heat of flamboyance and frivolity. The Romans built a powerhouse economy using Georgic principles, but eventually rejected Georgics for bread and circuses.
Virgil the Poet, coined the phrase to describe this economic genesis of liberty in The Georgics (29 BC) and had it read to Octavian, who continued his course for power, along with his people. He became Emperor in 27 BC, and the 800 year-old Republic continued imploding into the pompous Roman Empire.
Georgic economies found life in pockets and bore fruit in the Great Economic Revolution at the turn of the 1st Millennium (See Will Durant’s Story of Civilization Volume IV), in the Renaissance, and in Puritan England. Many of the Puritans, known for their work ethic and devotion to God, sailed to American (beginning in 1620) and on American soil this economy blossomed, birthing the greatest movement of freedom that has ever spread across the world.
As the British surrendered to Washington at Yorktown, their drummers played the march “The Day the World Turned Upside-Down.” (see Siege of Yorktown.) The world had turned upside-down; the Founding Era of our nation rested firmly upon the shoulders of a Georgic Revolution.
Every burst of liberty on the landscape of humanity has been preceded, fueled, tempered, and preserved by Georgic revolutions. We as Americans will not find and secure liberty by legislating it in Washington. It will not be securely founded if spurred on only by discussion, persuasion, rhetoric, and hype. Liberty is a consequence of work — of hard work, sacrifice, patience, and perseverance. Our government’s over-spending on social programs, subsidizing, and other fear-mongered policies, are symptoms of the real problem: We forgot, and eventually refused to admit, that we must first plant, before we can reap.
It is time, once again, to “turn the world upside-down.” YOU are an American! Experience a Georgic Revolution in your own life, for thus it must spread across our land if we are to succeed in moving the Cause of Liberty with any permanence and authenticity. We must do this as our Founding Fathers did. This must be pursued in the natural pattern: Georgic Revolution first, political revolution second. The Founders lived the Declaration long before they ever signed it…
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Copyright © 2008 by The Cause of Liberty. All rights reserved.
21st Century Georgics: An Introduction
July 29, 2008 by Hyrum Lefler · 4 Comments
A key factor in maintaining freedom is sustainable economic forms. Are you maintaining freedom through the financial principles and practices you are using? Have American families adopted the economic forms necessary for the preservation of a free people?
The average American household pays over 34.5% of every dollar earned to interest payments. Forget about the taxes — that is serious bondage! Our system has become top heavy, threatening our economic solvency as a nation and necessitating large government bailouts to offset their blunders. When a government is forced to tax its people heavily to keep economic centers of capital from collapsing, how can we expect it to reduce in size? To force such a thing is tantamount to economic collapse.
We have allowed our wealth to centralize and grow in the hands of OTHERS. We have given them our money and the control of it for the “magic of compound interest” and then turned around and borrowed from them with a price.
Families are the foundation of American stability and economic growth, and it is time for families to regain real control of the resources of the economy. What do I suggest? We obviously cannot steal all of the money and put it in our families’ accounts! No, I am suggesting that we have all of the resources we need, and they flow through our hands day after day, and we relinquish control of them day after day. This is because we do not understand money; or, more importantly, we do not understand economy.
The Roman Poet Virgil wrote The Georgics in 29 BC. The concept of “Georgics” that came out of this poem was widely debated and discussed in the founding era of our country. The word basically means “to work the land.”
In early spring-tide, when the icy drip
Melts from the mountains hoar, and Zephyr’s breath
Unbinds the crumbling clod, even then ’tis time;
Press deep your plough behind the groaning ox,
And teach the furrow-burnished share to shine.
That land the craving farmer’s prayer fulfils,
Which twice the sunshine, twice the frost has felt;
Ay, that’s the land whose boundless harvest-crops
Burst, see! the barns.
It was felt by many of our Founders that this connection to the land, to hard work, and the dependence on God that is pre-supposed when seeds are planted, had a profound effect of building an independent and free people — especially when coupled with the other Foundations of Freedom.
Up until 100 years ago, 97% of Americans worked the land with plows — they were farmers. Short of a massive catastrophe, that isn’t going to happen in our time. What can be done in our day to bring the Family Farm — or at least its principles — back to life?
We must first understand Georgics. In the coming weeks I will be posting several articles outlining the basic tenets of Georgic Economics, with links to sites where you can learn how to establish a rebirth of freedom in your family through Georgic principles and forms.
American families must become independent centers of the U.S. economy if our liberties are to be preserved. I am calling for a regeneration of organic, financial systems centered in and controlled by America’s families.
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Question #10: What are the connections between liberty and property?
July 12, 2008 by Stephen Palmer · 2 Comments
| 10 Foundational Questions | Introduction | Question #1 | Question #2 | Question #3 | Question #4 | Question #5 | Question #6 | Question #7 | Question #8 | Question #9 |
“…power over a man’s subsistence amounts to a power over his will.” -Alexander Hamilton in Federalist Paper #79
A malignant idea exists in socialistic thought that societies can have political freedom with limited economic freedom. More precisely, this dangerous idea is that political and economic freedom are separate and distinct freedoms and that one can survive without the other.
Furthermore, in democratic socialism the theory is that wealth can be forcefully redistributed through the government, or in other words that society has a right to the economic labor of all individuals. At the heart of this destructive ideology is that economic freedom is unnecessary and that a society can still be free without it. Europe has embraced this ideology to a large extent, and America is not that far behind.
However, there is an inseparable connection between liberty and property, a connection that, if severed, leads to the loss of both liberty and private property.
Why It Matters
It is your unalienable right to work, to labor, and to enjoy the fruits of your labor. Freedom means the ability to control your destiny through your own effort–if the government takes the fruit of your labor (your property) for anything other than taxes to support its proper role, it reduces your ability to create the life of your choice.
“The moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the laws of God, and that there is no force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence. Property must be secured or liberty cannot exist.” -John Adams
Furthermore, property is a tool to express your unique contribution to the world. Bill Gates shares his vision and business skills by creating computers. Ray Kroc shared his drive and innovation through real estate and hamburgers. Without private property rights, these men and others like them would have no outlet to express their individuality. If a person wishes to pursue their happiness by creating a business, that happiness will be deterred if they do not have access to create a physical manifestation of the business through property.
John Locke wrote extensively about this topic in his Second Treatise on Government. He wrote, “[E]very man has a property in his own person. This nobody has any right to but himself. The labour of his body and the work of his hands, we may say, are properly his. Whatsoever then he removes out of the state that nature hath provided, and left it in, he hath mixed his labour with, and joined to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his property. It being by him removed from the common state nature placed it in, it hath by this labour something annexed to it that excludes the common right of other men. For this labour being the unquestionable property of the labourer; no man but he can have a right to what that is once joined to….
“He that is nourished by the acorns he picked up under an oak, or the apples he gathered from the trees in the wood, has certainly appropriated them to himself. Nobody can deny but the nourishment is his. I ask then when did they begin to be his? And ’tis plain, if the first gathering made them not his, nothing else could. That labour put a distinction between them and common. That added something to them more than nature, the common mother of all, had done: and so they become his private right. And will any one say he had no right to those acorns or apples he thus appropriated, because he had not the consent of all mankind to make them his? … If such a consent as that was necessary man had starved, notwithstanding the plenty God had given him. We see in commons, which remain so by compact, that ’tis the taking part of what is common, and removing it out of the state Nature leaves it in, which begins the property; without which the common is of no use.”
Without economic freedom all other freedoms are obsolete. With freedom comes the responsibility to use your hands, your mind, and your strength to care for yourself, to provide you and your family with economic necessities and desires. With responsibility comes opportunity to create your own destiny. Unless your private property rights are protected your ability to determine your life is severely limited.
Recommended Reading:
The Mainspring of Human Progress by H.G. Weaver
The Virginian by Owen Wister
Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt
Move the Cause of Liberty by (1) subscribing to the Sentinel, a free weekly newsletter boldly illuminating the principles of freedom in a darkening nation, and (2) pledging your Life, Liberty, and Sacred Honor to the Cause by signing the Declaration of Dependence.
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The Deception of Consumption
January 25, 2008 by Stephen Palmer · Leave a Comment
If anyone ever tries to tell you that the economy is driven by consumer spending, I have one piece of advice–RUN! This one fallacy alone has arguably caused more damage to our nation than any other, and a person who believes it is either deceived, or is using it to be deceptive, or both.
I walked out of an investing seminar recently because the speaker used this fallacy–that consumer spending is the basis of the economy–as a foundational argument for his thesis. His thesis was that America is headed toward a serious economic downturn based on future reduction of consumer spending, and that if we want to survive the rough times ahead then we need to amass as much money as possible, because money is what will save us.
The New Liberalism
January 25, 2008 by Stephen Palmer · 1 Comment
America faces serious economic challenges. We all know that socialism means to take from the rich to give to the poor. But our nation is faced with a more complex problem than this customary type of wealth redistribution. Our problem is what I refer to as reverse socialism. If we wish our nation to be free for future generations then We the People must fix this problem.
Free enterprise is, among other things, a legal structure that treats all individuals and business entities equally before the law. The proper role of a free enterprise-promoting government is to simply protect unalienable rights — not to favor one man over another through benefits and entitlements.
Our national political debate has become convoluted between two sides with equally flawed premises and goals. The liberals want social programs to benefit the poor, while most mainstream conservatives want the government to serve and protect “big” business, even if it means to favor a large corporation over a small start-up. What neither side seems to recognize is that both are equally as dangerous and detrimental to freedom and prosperity. They both lead to the exact same result, and that is the concentration of too much power in the hands of too few.
Favoring the “Haves”
Most people who believe that wealth redistribution programs are wrong see only the government taking from the “haves” to give to the “have-nots.” But what has been lost in the shuffle of “progressive” social policy is the fact that our legal structure has also has evolved into favoring those with capital over those with little or none. Those who recognize the problem of taxing the wealthy to give to the poor seem to be virtually unaware of the dangers of favoring large corporations over small businesses.
Here are two examples of this reverse socialism. 1. In Cedar City, Utah, when Wal-Mart decided that they wanted to open a store here, the city council waived most of the fees and gave them about 5 acres of land. But the individual citizen who wishes to open a small retail store is subject to all of the mandated regulation and fees, and a land grant to them wouldn’t even be considered. 2. A friend of mine is an owner/operator of his own tractor-trailer. He told me that the biggest trucking companies in the country pay almost half as much for fuel as do the small companies or individual truckers.
Whether you take from the rich to give to the poor, or if you favor the rich over the poor, the effect is the same. In both scenarios you wind up with an unnatural and inequitable economic system with the majority of the wealth concentrated in the hands of a few people.
Here are some statistics to illustrate the state of the American economic system: According to the U.S. Census Bureau, in 2001 the bottom quarter of families in the United States had zero net worth. The bottom 90% of families had less than 20% of the net wealth, and the top 10% owned 80.7% of all the net wealth. Federal Reserve research in 1995 found that the wealth of the top one percent of Americans was greater than that of the bottom 95% and that the net worth of the top one percent was 2.4 times the combined wealth of the poorest 80%.
It hasn’t always been this way. In 1800, census information showed that over 90% of our population were owners of the means of production — mostly small business owners and farmers. In 1900 that statistic was the same — over 90% of us were owners. In 2000, those numbers were exactly reversed — less than 10% of our population are now owners.
Economic power in many cases equates political power. So what we have arrived at is precisely the same thing that has caused all nations throughout history to fall, and that is too much power in the hands of too few. Aristotle wrote that, “The only stable state is the one in which all men are treated equally before the law.” Our nation is unstable because our forms of law have been corrupted.
The Solutions
The first step to solve the problem of these large discrepancies in wealth distribution is to identify the cause of the inequity. The cause is two-fold, but both aspects of the cause spring from the same root. One reason is that the majority of our citizens have bought into the dependence model of employeeship and government entitlements. The other cause is that we have changed the forms of our Constitution to allow for illegitimate wealth redistribution. This redistribution is allowed by our legal structure in two ways: Taxing the rich to give to the poor, and also by favoring those with capital over those with little or none.
Both of these causes spring from the same root, and that is that we as individual citizens have failed to take personal responsibility both in our individual financial lives and in our public duty to maintain a strong and free Democratic Republic.
Identifying the cause of the problem now leads us to the solution. First of all, we as individuals must take the responsibility to start being a “have,” as opposed to a “have-not.” Taking from the rich and distributing down will simply mean that we all lose, because no wealth is being created; it simply leads to an impoverished mediocrity. But if the 80% of us that were mentioned in those Census Bureau statistics would simply create wealth from the bottom up, then everyone rises together. Those of us who have little capital must employ our mental resources to create wealth. The problem of economic inequity can only be solved from the bottom up — not the top down.
There is one other thing that must be fixed in our political structure if we wish America to remain free. We must renovate our Constitutional forms so that our legal structure will again — as it was created by the Founders in the original Constitution — treat all individuals and entities equally before the law.
It is an improper and dangerous use of government to take from one person to give to another, or to favor one business over another. The proper role of government is to treat everyone equally in the defense of their unalienable rights. When the government steps out of that realm it concentrates too much power in the hands of too few.
Conclusion
We are at a critical point in our nation’s history. History has shown repeatedly that the 200-year mark is where nations must either reinvent and reform themselves, or fall because of their inability to check and balance power. Our chance for an American renaissance is now or never, and We the People have the inescapable responsibility for that rebirth.
We must all, individually, create our own financial freedom and become owners of the means of production. And we must educate ourselves to gain the power to fix our bent governmental forms. Our government must treat all individuals and businesses equally before the law and stop all forms of unnatural, forced redistribution.
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Copyright © 2008 by The Cause of Liberty. All rights reserved.
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