Economy
HEGE Series
Seeing the Wood for the Trees The ‘salvation’ of the natural environment falls to man. He alone has the power to determine not only his own fate but also that of the natural environment. Far from Christianity being the one that surrenders nature to the arbitrary will and power of humanity, it is the non-Christian view that does this with astounding self-righteousness. — Archimandrite Vassilios Papavassiliou If you can control a people’s economy, you don’t need to worry about its politics; its politics have become irrelevant. If you control people’s choices as to whether or not they will work, and where they will work, and what they will do, and how well they will do it, and what they will eat and wear, and the genetic makeup of their crops and animals, and what they will do for amusement, then why should you worry about freedom of speech? In a totalitarian economy, any “political liberties” that the people might retain would simply cease to matter. If, as is often the case already, nobody can be elected who is not wealthy, and if nobody can be wealthy without dependence on the corporate economy, then what is your vote worth? — Wendell Berry "Conserving Forest Communities", Another Turn of the Crank (1996)
See — The Thing, Free Market Fundamentalism. The Machine
The fundamental, underlying issue of economy is whether or not it will be a system that serves the people (labor) or if the people will be treated as a commodity that exists solely for the purpose of serving business (management). It is the latter not the former that has always been the case in Modernity, which is in direct conflict with claimed Christian nature of Western society — selfless service of others instead of self, love of neighbor, and doing unto others as one would have others do unto you, not to mention loving and serving God instead of Mammon, love of money (the root of all evil). The "profit motive" is nothing more than love of money (the root of all evil, and therefore of all Western woes), which can only be reconciled with Christianity by way of contortionist Propaganda that appeals to emotion rather than reason, which might see through such for the ruse that it is.
Human economic utopia is a lie, a fake imitation of Paradise (the Kingdom of Heaven), wrought materially (not spiritually) by man (not God) from the material Earth.
There is no salvation in material prosperity, only self-worship, which is Mammon worship (worship of matter, of man (not God), Love of Money (the root of all evil) not Love of God). Economic “growth“, or “progress“ is nothing but satanic-demonic inspired delusion, diabolical intentional destruction of Creation (especially humanity), of all the works of God’s hand.
And what is such secular materialism but self-love, love of man firstly (instead of Love of God), Love of Mammon (money, materialism), which in a word is nothing but idolatry.
For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness; Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath shewed it unto them. For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse: Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things. Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonour their own bodies between themselves: Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen. For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature: And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet. And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient; Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers, Backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, Without understanding, covenantbreakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful: Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them. — Romans 1:18-32
Development As Colonialism — Edward Goldsmith
Edward Goldsmith, The Way: An Ecological Worldview | Google Books
Economic Imperialism
John Atkinson Hobson | Wikipedia
Economic Imperialism from 1750 to 1900
The Concept of Economic Imperialism
John Maynard Keynes, Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren (1930)
Third Ways: How Bulgarian Greens, Swedish Housewives, and Beer-Swilling Englishmen Created Family-Centered Economies—and Why They Disappeared — Allan C. Carlson, May 10, 2022
Distributism: a Primer for Orthodox Christians 24 Nov 2010 In Communion
The task of people in positions of authority is not to create a “Christian state” or “Christian corporation” or “Christian theater.” Only people can be Christian. Christ came to make people partakers of the divine nature, not institutions, agencies or businesses. The task is to do all that is possible to create an environment that will help people to see Christ, seek Christ, and find Christ.
Free-rider problem | Wikipedia — touted by right wing “conservatives” as their greatest fear, that anyone should get a free-ride, not pull their weight or do their share, which amounts to little more than a Propaganda ploy for Capitalist Consumerism, a distortion of what the Free-rider problem actually is
Inflation
“Greedflation” (euphemism for business profiteering) — the latest shill by which the oligarchy transfer wealth into its pocket from the people
The Pundits Were Wrong: Corporate Greed Stoked Inflation
How Pundits’ Inflation Myth Crushed The Working Class
“As with the WMD lies used to justify the deadly Iraq war, and financial deregulation triumphalism leading to the 2008 financial crisis and bank bailouts, the fake media narrative about inflation became conventional wisdom, was echoed by lawmakers, and justified specific policies. In this case, the narrative provided government officials justification to cut off pandemic aid, block new spending, abandon any push for a minimum wage increase, and raise interest rates with the express goal of driving down workers’ wages.”
Gross Domestic Product (GDP)
The Problem with GDP
GDP Is the Wrong Tool for Measuring What Matters
5 ways GDP gets it totally wrong as a measure of our success
The trouble with GDP
GDP never was intended to show economic health, so why do Americans obsess over it?
Lesson summary: The limitations of GDP
GDP alternatives: 8 ways of measuring economic health (updated for 2023)
Alternatives to GDP in Measuring Countries
Alternatives to GDP
Franklin D. Roosevelt
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the New Deal
Franklin D. Roosevelt: Impact and Legacy
Guess What? The New Deal Worked!
The Mythology of Roosevelt and the New Deal — Libertarian Propaganda at its “best”, all dressed up as Independent Institute while attacking its favorite target FDR, a usual tactic of right wing Republican Party cronyism on behalf of Corporate America
Did FDR Create the Middle Class? — Of course not, but he helped it grow
New Deal policies built middle class
James Kalb
What built the West and why it's sick | YouTube KnowlandKnows
The Tyranny of Liberalism: Understanding and Overcoming Administered Freedom, Inquisitorial Tolerance, and Equality by Command
The triumph of liberalism means the tyranny of liberalism, explains James Kalb in this illuminating book, for liberalism is the extension into the sociopolitical realm of modern scientific thought and technological rationality. These modes of thinking are regarded by nearly everyone today as uniquely authoritative; those institutions and beliefs which do not conform are regarded at best as annoyances, and at worst as evil. Furthermore, Kalb shows how liberalism is an expression of the interests and outlook of commercial and managerial elites, who are suspicious of less rationalized and controllable forms of social organization like the family.
Michael J. Sandel
What Money Can't Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets | Google Books
What Money Can't Buy by Michael Sandel – review
Labour conference 2012: a cerebral address on moral limits of markets
Amoral (Immoral) Economy
Amoral (Immoral) Economy = Mammon Economics
It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society. — Krishnamurti
Babylon in The Apocalypse is code name for Rome; 'western' civilization is the heir of Roman Empire (and Roman Catholicism), and the USA is the reigning superpower of that legacy, the latest lineage, begotten of the British Empire and potentially doomed, destined for final destruction of human civilization at the end of time. All in this lineage of Babylon have fornicated with The Whore of Babylon.
Archimandrite Athansios stated in his lectures on Revelation that there would be no other civilization after “Western” (European, American global) civilization, that The Beast (Antichrist) would arise from within Western civilization, preceded by many types of antichrist before that (e.g. fascists, Bolsheviks, communists, globalists — tyrants and totalitarians one and all).
Whore of Babylon | Wikipedia
Apocalypse as Critique of Political Economy: Some Notes On Revelation 18
God’s Avenger, Whore of Babylon: Political Power in the Bible
The Final Babylon: America and the Coming of Antichrist This view I spoke about for the first time in 2013 when my co-authors and I released the book, The Final Babylon. There we argued that the United States is most certainly in Bible prophecy. The prophecies concerning the daughter of Babylon, spoken of primarily in Jeremiah 50-51, can be fulfilled by no other country or empire than the USA or what is often called the “Anglo-American” alliance – the US and the UK. There isn’t enough time in this short talk to cover all of this information. ...However, I will just point out a few of the key phrases Jeremiah uses to describe us. The daughter of Babylon is ‘the hammer of the whole earth’. (Jeremiah 50:23) We are ‘the hinder-most of nations.’ (Jeremiah 50:12) ‘All the world streams unto us.’ (Jeremiah 51:44) We are ‘a nation on many waters.’ (Jeremiah 51:13) God’s people are told to ‘flee Babylon.’(Jeremiah 50:8, 28; 51:6, 51:45) We were once ‘a golden cup in the Lord’s hands.’ (Jeremiah 51:7) What other nation except for Israel could make this claim? And that is only the beginning of the assertions that identify the US in Bible Prophecy. — Douglas Woodward [The wild and wacky world of Evangelical Protestant prophecy. What part could be true, and what part not? It's hard to tell because the heterodox are "christians" most likely to be deceived by Antichrist because they're already deceived by antichristian beliefs, such as Augustinianism, Filioque, Satisfaction View of Atonement, (and Reformed Protestants by) Rapture—Millenialism (Chiliasm), confusion of Old and New Testaments (obsession with the State of Israel as if it's the continuation of the Old Covenant). But the part pointing to America is compelling and supportive of an Orthodox Christian POV like that of Archimandrite Athansios Mitilinaios.
See — Modernity, Capitalism, Consumerism, Propaganda, Advertising
The Apocalypse
Revelation 11: 18 And the nations were wroth, and thy wrath came, and the time of the dead to be judged, and the time to give their reward to thy servants the prophets, and to the saints, and to them that fear thy name, the small and the great; and to destroy them that destroy the earth.
Revelation 18: 3 For by the wine of the wrath of her fornication all the nations are fallen; and the kings of the earth committed fornication with her, and the merchants of the earth waxed rich by the power of her wantonness. ... 11 And the merchants of the earth weep and mourn over her, for no man buyeth their merchandise any more; ... 15 The merchants of these things, who were made rich by her, shall stand afar off for the fear of her torment, weeping and mourning; ... 23 and the light of a lamp shall shine no more at all in thee; and the voice of the bridegroom and of the bride shall be heard no more at all in thee: for thy merchants were the princes of the earth; for with thy sorcery were all the nations deceived.
Moral Economy
Yes, Economy can be Moral, and doesn't have to be Amoral (Immoral)
Moral Economy | Wikipedia
Moral economy: What’s in a name — James G. Carrier
The Moral Economy of the Peasant — James C. Scott
Gleaning
The Story of Ruth and Boaz: A Paradigm for Today’s CEO
The Book of Ruth Can Transform the Way We Do Business Today
What Does Gleaning Mean In The Book Of Ruth?
The Gleaners | Wikipedia
Pe'ah | Wikipedia
A Closer Look At "Pe'ah" - Ruth's Gleaning of the Field
Gleaning While She Waits
Using the Gleaning Principle to Help the Poor
Sabbath Economics
Sabbath economics | Wikipedia — Godly economics (sharing & justice), Christian resistance to Mammon economics (Amoral (Immoral) Economy)
Ched Myers | Wikipedia
Bartimaeus Cooperative Ministries
ChedMyers.org
Mammon or Manna? I. An Introduction to Sabbath Economics
Mammon or Manna? II. Torah and the Prophets
Mammon or Manna? III. Jesus and Sabbath Economics
Mammon or Manna? IV. Paul and Sabbath Economics
Mammon or Manna? V. A Biblical Call to Community Investing
Mammon to Manna: Sabbath Economics and Community Investing DVD
From Mammon to Manna: Sabbath Economics and Community Investing Study Guide<
Experimenting with a Household Sabbath Economics Covenant
The Biblical Vision of Sabbath Economics | Amazon
Sabbath Economics: Household Practices | Amazon
Sabbath as Resistance | Amazon
Sabbath Economics Collaborative
Sabbath Economics Collaborative P2PF Wiki
Sabbath: The Theological Roots of Sustainable Development
The Liturgy of Abundance, The Myth of Scarcity
Practicing Sabbath economics: how to live in the light of God's abundance and provision
“Pay Attention to the Great Economy!” — Reflections on Luke 12:13-34, Earth Cosmology and Sabbath Economics
Sabbath Economics | Radical Discipleship
Kenneth Rexroth 1905-1982
Kenneth Rexroth | Wikipedia
Essays and Reviews by Kenneth Rexroth
Kenneth Rexroth Archive — Bureau of Public Secrets
Kenneth Rexroth — libcom.org
Communalism: from its origins to the Twentieth Century
The Social Lie Since all society is organized in the interest of exploiting classes and since if men knew this they would cease to work and society would fall apart, it has been necessary, at least since the urban revolutions, for societies to be governed ideologically by a system of fraud. Chapter 11. Who Is Alienated From What? in The Alternative Society 1967 [A]nyone who tries to model his life on Christ and his apostles is by definition alienated from a predatory society.... An American theory of alienation significantly has come from practical clinicians, confronted every day in their practices with patients made profoundly sick by a scale of values which has for its summit the reduction of all things and all men to commodities. It is the treatment of the mentally ill with manifest moral lesions which has shifted the bases of psychoanalysis in America from the Sixth to the Tenth Commandment. The besetting sin of modern society is certainly not adultery—it is covetousness. In modern America it is so besetting that the average educated person encountering the word [covetousness] in the Bible believes it is some ritual violtation peculiar to the ancient Herbrews, like eating crayfish.
Edwin Curtin
Seeking Truth in a Country of Lies
[W]e live in the era of massive fraud where the transnational wealthy elites, led by the American war and propaganda machine, continue to try to convince the gullible that they are saviors of humanity even as they lie and cheat and murder by the millions.
John Ikerd
JohnIkerd.com
All Presentation Papers on University of Missouri Website
How the Economy Stole Democracy
From a political perspective, Americans are losing, or have lost, control of both their economy and their government. The U.S. economy is [no] longer capitalism; it is corporatism—an economy controlled by corporations. The U.S. government is no longer a democracy, it is a corpocracy—a government controlled by corporations. Our economy has stolen our democracy.
David Korten
David C. Korten | Wikipeda
Living Economies Forum
A New Economy: The System
Ray Dalio
Ray Dalio | Wikipedia
Billionaire Hedge Fund Icon Ray Dalio Predicts 'Big Cycle Debt Crisis’
Principles for Dealing with The Changing World Order: The Big Cycles Over The Last 500 Years | Amazon
Understanding the Archetypical Big Cycle of the Rises and Declines of Empires
Ray Dalio: US at Beginning of Late Big-Cycle Debt Crisis | YouTube
Bridgewater’s Ray Dalio Talks Money, Debt, and US Political Landscape
Credit cycle | Wikipedia