I was on my ladder today in a business that lends money to farmers. Looking around and about, I was struck with how nice and new everything was, and how comfortable everyone looked. If you watch them, most people in banks don’t ever move with much of a sense of urgency. They have time. They can open at 9 and close at 5, most of them, and do just fine.
In my mind, I was contrasting this with the many farmers out there. I take little trips through “God’s Country” on occasion, and you see them by the dozens. People like that are normally up before dawn, and work until the sun goes down. For that, they keep their land, and most years are able to pay off the loan they took out from the Farmer’s Bank to buy seed and fertilizer. If they have several really bad years, they lose the farm. If they have really good years, they get a new truck.
As I have analyzed it, the core of leftism is a sense of emotional detachment and regret, that weak people seek to channelize through hatred and resentment. The emotional predisposition towards hate precedes the actual choosing of a target, but once the fight is begun, this becomes less than clear. It seems like they are making valid moral claims, when in fact if that is ever the case, it is purely accidental.
Yet, look at banks, which do nothing but leverage a place in the system–where, for example, they can get money very cheap from the Federal Reserve, then loan it at a markup. If it gets paid back, they pocket they profit, and if it doesn’t, they seize the real assets with which the loans are collateralized. Farmers grow the food we need to survive. Which is more important?
So I got to thinking about loans, and capital. You need money to invest to reap the rewards of the growth that comes from successful investing. If it doesn’t come from banks, where does it come from? As I thought about it, it occurred to me I have already answered this question: it comes from the farmer’s themselves. As I have argued in my series on our financial system (http://www.goodnessmovement.com/Page14.html ), if the value of money is not continually diluted, then wealth–buying power, to be clear–is generalized, such that farmers have the money in the BANK to buy the seeds for next years crops.
Now, leftists always want to get rid of the “rentier” class, which is to say those people who make money off of other people who make things. This would of course include the very banks leftists like Keynes did so much to support. This is just one of many patent contradictions at the heart of the evil he wrought.
Yet, what is the crime of the rentiers? Is it not depending on the actually productive for their livelihood? Would this not apply doubly to the intellectual class, to those people who write books, but don’t DO anything, or understand business?
Leftists don’t want to abolish the rentier class–they want to coopt it, into their own sphere. The moral indignities that attend making slaves of men do not disappear with the change in ownership. A slave does not stop being a slave when he is sold. This should be obvious.
The only possible means of ameliorating the inequalities of opportunity in our society is to fix our money, such that it retains its value. All sincere socialists should be in unison as to the desirability of this goal, as should all conservatives, libertarians, and other decent people.