Social Credit Views

But what if there is another way by means of which Australia could fund the stimulus package without driving up the National Debt? What if the stimulus money, something which both the economy as a whole and individual consumers desperately need, could be issued not as a debt, but as a ‘debt-free’ credit, or, in other words, as money that never need to be repaid by its recipients to the issuer, in this case, to the government viafuture taxes? This would obviously provide the benefit without imposing the disadvantages associated with increased debt.

          If we examine the financial system in terms of one of its chief products, i.e., debt, we can easily come to understand the essence of the Social Credit analysis and remedial proposals. In sum, the problem with the existing financial system from a Douglas Social Credit point of view is that it functions after the pattern of a positive feedback loop, amplifying debt, whereas it should, in the interests of stability, functionality, and therefore human satisfaction, function after the pattern of a negative feedback loop, dynamically liquidating excess or surplus debt in the chain of production with debt-free credits. The Social Credit remedial proposals were designed to change the financial dynamic from a positive feedback loop to a negative feedback loop.[1]

The great danger, therefore, with a Coronavirus UBI is that, while it may be introduced sans conditions initially, the state, or rather the powers that control the state, might eventually decide to make all sorts of demands on UBI recipients. They may require vaccination, for example, as a condition of receiving it, or specific community services in exchange for it, or the surrender of privacy and other civil rights. The tying of any such stipulations to a UBI or a National Dividend would be completely at odds with the Douglas Social Credit vision for society and must be vehemently opposed on that basis by freedom-loving people everywhere. A conditional UBI would not lead to greater freedom in the long run, but only to less freedom, perhaps even to much less freedom than we enjoy at present, depending on the nature of the conditions the state imposes and their scope. In the limit, we can imagine a society in which a UBI is granted in exchange for total state-direction of people’s lives:

“The abolition of poverty in the midst of plenty, important as that is, is not the core of the problem. It is conceivable that people might be provided for as well-fed slaves.”[1]

 “… the primary characteristic of the slave is not bad treatment. It is that he is without any say in his own policy.”[2]

[1] C.H. Douglas, “The Approach to Reality”: http://socialcredit.com.au/uploads/6463625994.pdf.

[2] C.H. Douglas The “Land for the (Chosen) People” Racket: http://www.yamaguchy.com/library/douglas/land.html

We have been accustomed, in Social Credit circles, to describe Douglas Social Credit as ‘practical Christianity’, and I think that this is indeed correct. Nevertheless, for some time I have noticed various points of contact between Social Credit and the Zoroastrian religion. This, too, shouldn’t come as any surprise or be seen as a contradiction, since the particular vision of the world shared by the prophet Zoroaster exerted a heavy influence, especially during the Babylonian Captivity, on Old Testament Judaism and thereby on Christianity. The Persian Zoroastrian King, Cyrus, is recognized in the Bible as being anointed by God and inspired by Him to liberate the Jews in Babylon. Cyrus, for his part, appears to have recognized the God of Israel and his own God as being one and the same. Furthermore, there is a direct connection between Zoroastrianism and Christianity insofar as Zoroaster had predicted the coming of a Saoshyant, or world saviour, who would be born of a virgin … the three Magi who visited the Christ Child were, in fact, Zoroastrian priests who had correctly read the anticipated signs, both of the times and in the heavens, so as to be alerted to the timing of His birth.

Since MMT is receiving more and more press and would appear, in my view at any rate (and more on this shortly), to be the system’s answer to the neo-liberalism of the past 30-40 years, it is crucially important that Social Crediters become aware of what MMT claims and what it proposes and also what the due Social Credit response to MMT should be. In what follows, I will attempt to outline some of the more salient MMT propositions and policy-prescriptions and to indicate both the points of contact and commonality with Social Credit, as well as the key areas of disagreement where the two part ways.

Mark Anderson has Oliver Heydorn on his show "Stop the Presses" - February 10th, 2020.

Dr. Oliver Heydorn appears on Ameer Rosić's "Ameer Approved".

     In attempting to communicate Social Credit ideas to a wider public, one often encounters hindrances and barriers of various sorts. One of the difficulties that tends to be characteristic of the contemporary Christian milieu in particular, is the belief, more or less unconscious in most cases, that engaging with questions of money, economics, finance and so forth is ‘mundane’ and therefore of no interest to Christianity, which is ‘otherworldly’. There is, in the minds of some people, a strict separation between the religious/spiritual/supernatural sphere and that of profane concerns, a separation which is somewhat analogous to the liberal democratic principle of ‘separation between Church and State’.

This is the first professional animated presentation of one key aspect of the Douglas or British Social Credit case (not to be confused with Chinese 'Social Credit'): the folly of 'favourable' trade balances under the existing financial system, where physical loss and inefficiency are financially rewarded.

We are often told that people should not ‘live beyond their means’, that is, that no individual person, nor any corporate entity like a business or a government, should spend more money during a given period than they take in as income or as revenue. Doing so is judged to be profligate, irresponsible, and only setting oneself up for pain in the long run. For countless centuries, if not millennia, the balanced ‘budget’ has been regarded as the sine qua non of fiscal prudence and ‘sound’ finance.

And yet, if we look at our economies over any given period of time, it is quite normal for individual consumers, considered in the aggregate, to spend more than they receive in income, for governments at all levels to spend more than they take in viataxes, and even for businesses, considered again as a whole, to spend more money (thanks to long-term capital investments), than they simultaneously receive as revenue. How can this be? How can we explain the conflict between the common theory (i.e., what should be the case: balanced budgets) and what we observe as a fact in the real world (i.e., unbalanced budgets)? Is it the general tendency of human beings to be congenital spendthrifts? Are humans innately vicious when it comes to the getting and spending of money?

Quite irrespective of such questions concerning human nature, there is actually a technical economic reason why consumers, governments, and business typically spend, in the aggregate, more money than they receive and do not, therefore, ‘enjoy' balanced budgets.