05: The Short Eventful Life of Sovereign Money

Chapter Five of my book, How to Dismantle an Empire.

It begins Section Two called Two Ways to Make a Slave.

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They who would give up essential Liberty, 
to purchase a little temporary Safety, 
deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.

—BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, 
FOR THE PENNSYLVANIA ASSEMBLY 
REPLY TO THE GOVERNOR, 1755

What adds to the evil is that these states
are to be permitted to continue the inhuman
traffic of importing slaves until the year 1808
and for every cargo of these unhappy people
which unfeeling, unprincipled, barbarous, 
and avaricious wretches may tear from their 
country, friends, and tender connections 
and bring into those states, they are to be 
rewarded by having an increase of members 
in the general assembly.

—JUDGE ROBERT YATES 
TO THE CITIZENS OF THE STATE 
OF NEW YORK, WRITING AS THE 
“ANTI-FEDERALIST” BRUTUS, 1787

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Before we look at the long march of slavery through the ages, let’s look at a deviation point where everything could have gone another way.

The colonial years of the 18th century saw many experiments in sovereign money. European settlers of the “New World” were remote enough to have some autonomy, even if still dependent on their parent empires. But imperial money, backed by mass production and slavery, left those who wanted to provide for themselves unable to compete.

Great Britain controlled the American colonies through the economic system of mercantilism, which was government collusion with merchants and financiers to mutually increase their political power and personal wealth. The government protected the merchant class by using subsidies, tariffs, and trade barriers to prevent competition, although the planters were afforded no such luxury. The merchants brought in gold and silver, some of which was taxed but most of which was profit, forcing the kings to borrow from the bankers for wars and self-defense. This turned the merchant-bankers into the shadow government.

Under mercantilism the self-interest of the colonies was subservient to the interest of the empire. The colonies exported slave-grown specialty products and were a consumer destination for imperial exports. Since all trade to and from the colonies had to go through British ports to be taxed, the merchants could set their own price and the government could nab its percentage coming and going. This drained the gold and silver-backed money from the colonies, leaving them no currency for internal trade and forcing them to rely on the bankers. They also had no ability to favor local production through trade policies or currency exchange rates.

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a state of small-scale sovereignty

The goals of mercantilism were diametrically opposed to the colonies’ goal of self-reliance. A self-sufficient colony didn’t add to the political power of the empire or to the private wealth of the merchant-bankers. It didn’t foster exports or imports. And most of all, it didn’t create debt.

The colonists saw the key to their self-reliance in paper money that was not backed by precious metals. In the early 1700’s each colony considered itself to be a small republic with the power to create its own currency. Until this was challenged, it gave them a degree of freedom their fellow British citizens didn’t have at home.

How big were these small republics? By the time of the American Revolution there were about 2.4 million people in the 13 colonies or roughly 200,000 people per republic, which is comparable to a mid-sized county in the United States today. Like a county, it included urban and rural land, and inhabitants who were not of one mind. They were slaveowners and slaves, merchants and fur traders, smallholders and craftsmen, indigenous natives, and women. Sometimes they weren’t of one mind even within the same person; they were torn between what they felt was best for the country and their own economic interests.

In one of these small republics, the colony of Pennsylvania, a model for a different kind of economy that was not based on servitude developed. We’ll start by looking in depth at this exception.

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sinking or sailing the scrip

In the early 1700s the Pennsylvania committee of grievances was buried under hundreds of lawsuits, all of which stemmed from a shortage of cash to discharge debts. To keep the gold- and silver-backed money called specie in the colony, the governor was petitioned to enact protectionist measures on grains to recapture market share lost to the West Indies and keep hard money local. Some called for the export of gold and silver to be prohibited altogether. Others took a different approach to the problem of illiquidity and wanted to be independent of the tightly held specie. Purists thought that produce itself should be made a currency, but most settlers wanted the convenience of tradable bills.

It was common among the colonies to generate a scrip for public expenses that would then be “sunk” through taxes, meaning that it disappeared as it was collected. This method was commonly used to pay the colonial troops, which enabled the government to spend tax money in advance and then recover it. The scrip that paid the troops could have continued to circulate within the colony as payment for goods or debts. But, because it wasn’t backed by a set value, it depreciated rapidly. Controversial laws were enacted that made it illegal to turn it down for payments or debts. When these proved unworkable, the debtor often sold the scrip to speculators for a fraction of its worth in order to stay out of prison.

The lack of liquidity forced farmers and craftsmen to do the work of producing the goods and then spend a significant portion of their time trying to get paid through the court system. Meanwhile, hard currency flowed out of the colony in torrents through payments to British merchants, who refused to accept anything but specie. Locally made goods were plentiful and the customers were eager but no money was left in circulation to foster local exchange.

In 1723, the Pennsylvania Assembly decided to try something different: they created an additional issue of paper money backed by land. They printed £15,000 worth of Pennsylvania scrip that landowners could borrow in exchange for an eight-year mortgage at five percent interest. To prevent monopolies by the rich, no one could borrow more than the equivalent of £100. To preserve the value of the scrip, the mortgage couldn’t exceed half of the property’s worth. As the money was repaid, it was retired or “sunk” from circulation.

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a modest inquiry

At the end of the 1720’s when the scrip came up for renewal, the merchants wanted a return to gold- and silver-backed specie while farmers and tradesmen wanted an increase in the paper currency. The upper hand seemed to be held by the merchants. But while the Act was before the assembly and all of Pennsylvania was debating the issue, an anonymous tract was published called, “A Modest Inquiry into the Nature and Necessity of a Paper Currency.” It argued persuasively for paper money as the means of achieving widespread grassroots prosperity based on industriousness, knowledge, and skills.

The author held that a plentiful currency with a low interest rate was beneficial to a society because, if money was scarce and could be loaned at high interest, no one would invest in land or trade. Husbandry and improvement of the land would be discouraged. Excess money would be used for speculation and usury, neither of which added to the overall good.

The alternative to paper money, it asserted, was not gold and silver if none was to be had. The alternative was barter, which didn’t profit the merchants and stunted production. So the merchants had nothing to lose by the addition of the colonial scrip, and stood to gain by the trade goods that a local currency would enable.

Gold and silver were not true measures of a stable value, it claimed, because they varied based on whether they were scarce or plentiful. The proper measure of the value of a currency was in labor. As long as the increase in currency was matched by an increase in production there would never be inflation. For instance, the colony of Pennsylvania had the materials and workmen to build ships rather than buying them from foreign countries or paying rent for freight. It would be advantageous to the merchants for Pennsylvania to generate the currency to build their own ships.

The author continued, saying that a plentiful currency encourages building and attracts “Labouring and Handicrafts Men” who “sensibly enliven Business in any Place.” He or she described how lack of money leads to frivolous consumption of foreign goods because export merchants pay producers in luxury imports rather than cash. Once the laborer is forced into finery for which they otherwise would have no use, the same merchants accuse them of “Pride and Prodigalty.”

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lovers of trade and widespread riches

Ample cash would increase local produce and exports, and with more people drawn to the area, the merchants need not worry about fewer imports being bought. In a clever tour de force, the article summed up those who could be expected to oppose the issuance of money: usurers, lawyers, and land-speculators. The latter, it added, would only oppose it until they had bought up vast amounts of property, after which they’d want more currency around in order to drive up the price.

Yet the subtle essayist left a way for people to change their minds without losing face: well-meaning gentlemen who hadn’t taken the time to consider the issue may have been swayed by their admiration for men of reputation. Now that they’d weighed the argument for themselves, they might join on the side of paper money with “lovers of trade and widespread riches, those who delight to see manufactures encouraged.”

The author termed this type of money “coined land” because it was backed, not by precious metals, but by property itself. He or she calculated that the natural level of interest was five percent because it was a rate comparable to rent. Property was the most secure investment, so the return on a loan of money should correspond to buying property over a twenty-year purchase. And the government could allow people to coin land they already owned at no risk, so four percent should be more than adequate for administering that process.

The value of land was more stable than gold or silver because there was a fixed amount to be had in any one territory. Also, land could not be carried off as the precious metals had been. Because the payment of both mortgages and taxes would return money to the local government, the amount of money in circulation would be self-correcting: if money was too scarce and too precious, it would lead people to borrow against their land and so put more into play. If this resulted in too much money and no private interest to be had from lending, it would lead people to pay down their mortgages instead, returning the currency to the government-owned bank where it could be retired. Inflation was thereby not seen as a natural process but instead indicated a design failure of the currency, whose primary function was to hold a stable value.

The circumspect writer ended by saying, “I sincerely desire to be acquainted with the Truth, and on that Account shall think myself obliged to any one, who will take the Pains to shew me, or the Publick, where I am mistaken in my Conclusions.”

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a basket of currencies

The 23-year-old Benjamin Franklin, as the author was revealed to be, was not “shewn to be mistaken” and the Act passed. In 1731 he was given the contract to print the new issue of paper money, to which he added the stern legend, “To counterfeit is death.” Response to the article had launched his career, enabling his purchase of a printing press and establishing his reputation in Pennsylvania. He became a lifetime advocate of local currency and government-owned banks.

Twenty-odd years later, Franklin was called on to defend the Pennsylvania scrip to the British Board of Trade and the British proprietor of the province. He stated that paper money provided the colony with “a medium of trade, and of a kind that could not, to any purpose, be exported” and that without paper money “the province will then be left without any currency, except that precarious one of silver, which cannot be depended on, being continually wanted to ship home [to England], as returns, to pay for the manufactures of Great Britain.”

He continued that the Rhode Island and Massachusetts currencies, which the Board of Trade disparaged, were based on different models. Where the Pennsylvania mortgage was repaid with interest over sixteen years, Rhode Island required neither payment nor interest for ten years. The balance was then due in full, which was later revised to payments over ten annual installments. Massachusetts went to the opposite extreme, requiring one-fifth of the principal plus five percent interest each year for five years. When this proved impractical, they abandoned repayment of the principal altogether and only required the interest. These wide swings of the pendulum failed and gave a bad name to colonial money.

In Franklin’s Pennsylvania model, only one-fifth of their total currency was issued for mortgages while the other four-fifths was spent into existence by the government but recovered and retired through taxation. The total issuance was so conservative that barter was still common. With the gradual introduction of new money, trade was allowed to keep pace, preventing inflation. These arguments satisfied the British Board of Trade and the proprietor of the province for another decade, enabling Pennsylvania to keep its scrip.

Through 1764 Franklin printed the equivalent of £770,000 of Pennsylvania money, along with Delaware’s and New Jersey’s scrips. In addition to the dire warning to counterfeiters, he invented a way to transfer the imprint of a sage leaf onto the back. Additional revisions proposed by John Webbe in 1744 and Governor Pownall in 1764 would have allowed “security boxes” for savings that gave three percent interest while charging four percent interest for loans against “good properties.”

By the time of Pownall’s suggestion, however, the Pennsylvania scrip had fallen victim to its own success. While the mercantile system aimed to give a few people power over everyone else, paper money had given small landowners and craftsmen power over their own lives. These were opposing forces steaming forward on an ultimate collision course—and the consequences would be far-reaching when the economic engines collided.

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the american discontent

In 1763 the now mature Franklin was again called before the British Board of Trade. Prior to his appearance, he had occasion to travel throughout Europe where he was shocked by the poverty and desperation. He advised the Board that Europe, like Pennsylvania, could become a model of egalitarian prosperity where every man was a property owner, “has a Vote in public Affairs, lives in a tidy, warm House, has plenty of good Food and Fuel, with whole clothes from Head to Foot, the Manufacture perhaps of his own family.”

In Pennsylvania, he continued, there were no poorhouses, and no one to put in them because every willing person was employed. Rather than creating a social welfare state, the scrip empowered families and neighborhoods to take responsibility for themselves. The scrip also organized labor for the common good, enabling two of Franklin’s social inventions: the postal service and the free library.

This had the opposite effect on the Board from Franklin’s intentions. Horrified by the implications, within the year the Virginia Company of London had pressured Parliament to outlaw all colonial scrips. The British Currency Act of 1764 forced the colonies to go back to gold and silver coins and specie. Their reserves were soon depleted, plunging them into foreclosures and economic depression. By 1771 the trade deficit with Britain had grown to £2.86 million. According to Franklin this was the real cause of “the American discontent,” not a trivial tax on tea or stamps. Franklin protested that:

On a frivolous complaint of a few Virginia Merchants, nine Colonies were restrained from making paper money, though ... absolutely necessary to their internal commerce, from the constant remittance of their gold and silver to Britain.

The result was the Revolutionary War, which tore apart families between those loyal to the British crown and those who saw no alternative to secession. Franklin’s own son was an outspoken and unrepentant Tory, who was imprisoned during the war and exiled after. Abolitionists were divided: their British compatriots had ended the transcontinental slave trade, yet the Currency Act forced the colonies back into dependence on slave-grown exports and debts to the merchant-bankers. This united slaveowners and subsistence farmers, although for opposite reasons. And so, for perhaps the first time in history, colonists went to war against their own parent empire.

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the devil’s due

In order to pay for soldiers and weapons, however, Congress and the States needed money. Alexander Hamilton negotiated loans from his employer Robert Morris, who was the leading financier of the Revolutionary War. Other loans were from France and Spain or war bonds redeemable only if the colonies won. But two-thirds of the funding was issued as fiat currency by the newly formed states (39%) or the Continental Congress (28%). The latter were known as Continentals and were bills declaring their exchange value in the Spanish milled coins that neither the Congress nor the individual States actually possessed.

The reach of the Continentals throughout the 13 colonies destroyed the accountability of locally issued scrip, making them more vulnerable to counterfeiting. This was used as a weapon of war by British-occupied New York where newspaper advertisements offered to supply any person going into the colonies with unlimited high-quality counterfeits for the price of the paper. By 1777 a Continental was worth a third of its stated value and by 1781 it took 167 Continentals to buy one silver dollar.

The hyperinflation was not just from counterfeiting or overprinting, however, but because the foreign loans were denominated in foreign currencies rather than the sovereign currency of the Continental. If France, for instance, had bought “Continental futures” by generating fiat francs to pay for French soldiers and military supplies, it would have protected the economies of both countries. After the war, France would have used the Continentals to buy American exports, supporting American veterans back on their farms. The import goods, sold on the French market, would have replenished the French treasury and strengthened the trade value of the franc. Instead, Congress was required to extract the repayment in specie from the very people who’d given up the most to win the war: the farmers and veterans. When, in 1795, the loan was assumed by a US banker, the money never benefited the French people but went straight to the European merchant-bankers who financed the French throne and may have been the instigation for the war.

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the difference a day makes

By 1781, Robert Morris stepped into the newly created role of Superintendent of Finance. First he devalued the Continental and then extracted $2 million in specie from the States. Finally he suspended all pay to enlisted soldiers and officers, declaring that they would be paid when a peace treaty was signed. The Paris Treaty was signed in 1783 and ratified in 1784, but pay was not forthcoming. Meanwhile, veterans owed back taxes on their farms for the time they had been away fighting. Adding injury to injury, the bankers were rushing tax foreclosures through a complicit court and evicting families from the homes and farms for which they’d fought.

It would have made sense for the newly formed states to issue their own scrip to pay the soldiers. They would have collected some of it back in taxes and left the rest in circulation so that patriots could buy land and goods. If the National assessment had been proportional to property and exports, it would have broken up monopolies in the North and plantations in the South, rewarded veterans with land, and paid foreign backers in products of the land. This is what ex-soldiers in Massachusetts wanted, but this wasn’t what happened.

In 1786 Western Massachusetts farmers and veterans, led by Daniel Shays and Luke Day, surrounded the court to stop tax foreclosures. They demanded that an issue of liberty money be created by the state to pay the back wages promised veterans. A militia was sent to disperse the rebellion, but the militia also consisted of farmers and veterans, who ended up joining the protest. The angry crowd grew to 800 militia and 1200 protesters before the frightened court finally adjourned without a single foreclosure.

Shaken to his core, Samuel Adams drew up the Riot Act, immediately suspending habeas corpus and proposing execution for rebellion. George Washington wrote, “Commotions of this sort, like snow-balls, gather strength as they roll, if there is no opposition in the way to divide and crumble them.” Shays and Day planned to keep the snowball rolling by raiding the federal armory. While they were gathering men, Governor Bowdoin and the Boston merchants put in £6000 of their own money to hire 3000 mercenary militiamen from counties in Eastern Massachusetts.

On the day prior to the planned attack, Luke Day sent Shays a note postponing for 24 hours. Bowdoin’s men, however, intercepted the note. When Shays reached the armory, the forewarned militia easily defeated his solitary troops, having fortified the armory’s defenses. Few examples in history have shown what a difference a Day makes.

Yet even at the arsenal skirmish,

... supposedly loyal militia men joined the ranks of the insurgents... Militia officers discouraged their companies from taking the field, prevented the distribution of powder and supplies, and actively recruited their subordinates for service with the insurgents.

Seeing the popularity of the resistance, the merchant-bankers in the Massachusetts legislature wasted no time in passing the Disqualification Act barring anyone who had participated in the rebellion from voting or running for office. Four thousand people signed confessions in exchange for amnesty, and the financiers were reimbursed for the expense of the mercenary militia.

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a centralizing tendency

Later that year twelve commissioners were to join in Annapolis for a “Meeting to Remedy Defects in the Federal Government.” These were merchants and bankers representing five states, including James Madison and Alexander Hamilton. Hamilton had been orphaned at a young age and sent to apprentice at a counting house for the Dutch Kruger family of bankers. He advanced quickly and was left in charge even at fourteen. Sent to America, he became General Washington’s aide de camp and married into a prominent Dutch family in New York. After his war service he became a lawyer assisting Robert Morris, and founded the Bank of New York.

Although the committee’s official agenda was limited to trade and commerce, their report, drafted by Hamilton, named the date for a future convention in Philadelphia with a broader scope to address “the embarrassments which characterize the present State of our national affairs, foreign and domestic” but it “declin[ed] an enumeration [as] an useless intrusion of facts and observations.” However, Hamilton had written 2,300 words on this very subject in 1783 in a “Resolution Calling for a Convention to Amend the Articles of Confederation.”

Of his twelve essential defects and remedies:

• the first was that the power of the Federal Government was too limited

• second that it involved too many people in deciding how big and well-funded the army and navy should be, and how they would be used—for which he proposed an executive branch separate from Congress.

• Third, a judicial branch should make sure the interests of foreign nations and their subjects couldn’t be overruled by regulations of the states.

• Fourth and fifth, the Federal Government needed the power of general taxation, particularly for the military, and to decide how taxes from the states would be apportioned.

• Sixth, it insisted that Federal debts be backed by funds, meaning specie or precious metals, and not mere paper.

• The seventh defect was that there was no standing military, ‘for interior or exterior defence,’ but that states in peacetime determined their own militias.

• Eight and nine objected that the states set the taxes on their own imports and exports, and that the Federal Government could not enter into commerce treaties (with foreign or native nations) that violated those of the states.

• Although the Articles gave Congress the right to set the value of its own coins and those of the states, number ten required that they should also set the value of foreign coins, so they could not trade freely.

• In eleven, Hamilton complained that needing nine states to pass “matters of principal importance” and seven in all others except adjournment forced government into “a spirit of compromise and expedient rather than of system and energy.”

• Finally, the Federal Government must have the ability to pass national laws to aid and support the laws of foreign nations, so that its international reputation would not be sullied.

In Hamilton’s conclusion, his chief concern is “doing justice to those who have been [the war’s] principal supporters—to an army which has bravely fought and patiently suffered [and] to citizens who have chearfully lent their money.” But if justice to the soldiers was his primary motive, he should have happily answered their demands to issue their back pay in a currency good for paying their taxes. Instead, in reward for their sacrifice and bravery, veterans lost their farms and Robert Morris still lost his shirt, ending up in debtor’s prison.

Although each of these defects had been worded much more subtly, there was so little support in Congress that Hamilton never even submitted the Resolution. But by using an end-run of a handful of unelected commissioners, setting that date with destiny became a fait accompli.

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within these walls they were born, and here die

At the Constitutional Convention six merchants represented Massachusetts but the four thousand citizens who had fought for a state currency were banned. Benjamin Franklin, the father of sovereign money, might have chaired the convention. However he missed the first day due to illness and so George Washington was chosen. Again the difference of a day would have far-reaching consequences for the newly united—but precariously sovereign—states. On the last day of the Convention, Franklin gave this ambiguous address:

I confess that there are several parts of this constitution which I do not at present approve, but I am not sure I shall never approve them: For having lived long, I have experienced many instances of being obliged by better information, or fuller consideration, to change opinions even on important subjects, which I once thought right, but found to be otherwise. It is therefore that the older I grow, the more apt I am to doubt my own judgment, and to pay more respect to the judgment of others. ...

In these sentiments, Sir, I agree to this Constitution with all its faults, if they are such; because I think a general Government necessary for us, and there is no form of Government but what may be a blessing to the people if well administered, and believe farther that this is likely to be well administered for a course of years, and can only end in Despotism, as other forms have done before it, when the people shall become so corrupted as to need despotic Government, being incapable of any other.

I doubt too whether any other Convention we can obtain, may be able to make a better Constitution. For when you assemble a number of men to have the advantage of their joint wisdom, you inevitably assemble with those men, all their prejudices, their passions, their errors of opinion, their local interests, and their selfish views. From such an assembly can a perfect production be expected? . . .

The opinions I have had of its errors, I sacrifice to the public good. I have never whispered a syllable of them abroad. Within these walls they were born, and here they shall die.

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CHAPTER FIVE EXERCISES

Using examples from the book, or from your own research, logic, and experience, comment on the following and what it means today:

Paradigm Shift #5A

The Constitution was a coup against democracy by the people and against the existing constitution of a federal government between sovereign states. The colonies had greater economic sovereignty under the British Empire than the States were given under the new Constitution that negated the monetary independence for which the Revolution was fought.

Paradigm Shift #5B

Whenever union is forced, someone is being raped. The states had joined the union under terms that were then changed without their consent, like a marriage contract revised after the wedding to forbid divorce. If a community can’t decide for itself whether a union serves its interests, that community is not sovereign but a colony.

LEXICON

What are modern examples of each definition? Are there contemporary words that have the same meaning today? How does this concept change the dialogue around social problems? How does this affect the potential solutions?

sovereign money: a form of currency or credit created by a government that has the sole authority to claim ownership of the wealth that backs it. Only that government can control how much is issued, can collect it back in taxes, fees, or debt payments (including mortgages and student loans), and can set its exchange rate.

mercantilism: government collusion with merchants and financiers to mutually increase their political power and personal wealth. Merchants and financiers were two roles of the same people, who today would be the Board members of multinational corporations and banks and financial speculators such as hedge funds and venture capitalists.

specie: a paper bill that can be theoretically exchanged for a precious metal—such as gold or silver—but rarely is, giving the owner of the asset the ability to issue more paper than can be redeemed. It gives the holders of the monopolized asset limitless control over labor and resources without ever putting their assets at risk.

scrip: a paper bill representing sovereign money issued by British colonies in 18th century North America, backed by land and property and collected back in debt repayments, fees, and taxes, it favored local exchange without depleting their international trade currency.

federal government: the organizing body of a voluntary union of sovereign states, each of which can issue their own credit or currency, set their own trade policies, enter into alliances, collect their own taxes, and manage their own internal affairs without interference. Members can also secede if the union no longer serves their interests.

centralized government: a top-down hierarchical structure from which secession is not allowed. Lower layers are subservient to those above in a parent-child relationship. Trade, militarism, immigration, currency, commerce, and alliances are centrally controlled, along with many internal policies such as education and public services.

QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION AND DISCUSSION

Does the US government protect the “merchant class” today? Does the corporate merchant class scratch the backs of politicians? Is there a way to break up that collusion once power becomes centralized?

Who is the shadow government today? Has your opinion of the country’s founding changed and does that affect your view of current problems?

In Franklin’s time, the colonial banks were able to issue currency as “coined land,” which we would call equity or mortgage loans. The government then spent money into existence at a ratio of four times the debt, so there would be enough to repay both the loans and interest, leaving enough in circulation to stimulate economic activity. Does it benefit society for private banks to issue the debt (credit) against houses? What could you do in your community if your government could spend into existence twice the mortgage and student loan debt?

Should there be a #MeTooCatalonia movement?

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Ch 4 of How to Dismantle an Empire debunks the triangular slave trade as neither triangular nor trade. It looks at how small merchants were all invested in slave ships and small farmers were unable to compete with large plantations. Quotes from Eric Williams in 'Capitalism & Slavery' and Adam Hochschild's Bury the Chains, telling how 12 men ended the slave trade. Ending the system where the financiers own all of us is yet to be done.

Chapter Three of my book, How to Dismantle an Empire, shows how slavery subjugated whites before it subjugated blacks. Slavery was not about race but about economics. Racism was a result of slavery, slavery was not a result of racism. I look at the 1600's with the 'kid nabbing' of Irish children, and 'transportation' of rebels. I quote from Derrick Jensen, Eric Williams, David Graeber, Don Jordan & Michael Walsh, John Isbister and Kate McCafferty.

read Ch 2 of my book, How to Dismantle an Empire, on the origin of money. Citing David Graeber's Debt, I look at the military-coinage-slavery complex and the myth of barter. I explain the gift economy that preceded money, in which relationships were valued above a bargain/ barter-gain. Religions of altruism are seen as a reaction to market-based greed. I conclude that money, from its inception, was trade in pieces of slave and that coinage coopted us into being shareholders in conquest.

"Humanity is divided into two: the masters and the slaves; or, if one prefers it, the Greeks and the Barbarians--those who have the right to command; and those who are born to obey." Aristotle

I read Chapter One of my book, How to Dismantle an Empire. I describe the origins of democracy in ancient Greece as a shrewd move by the archons to quell rebellion. Greek democracy was a pretty word laid over systemic violence. When debt and slavery had reached a boiling point and commoners threatened to unite, this was a concession that divided farmers against the landless, soldiers against the colonized, and citizens against the enslaved.