For whatever reason, Douglas Social Credit seems to exhibit an unusually high informational “barrier to entry” and yet it is vital that as many people as possible would come to understand it as quickly as possible because the financial analysis and remedial proposals of Major C.H. Douglas (1879-1952) are the solution to 90% or more of our financial, economic, political, cultural, environmental, and international problems. In what follows, I will focus on the monetary dimensions of Douglas Social Credit, though the reader should be aware that DSC constitutes a much broader body of thought which incorporates a social philosophy, a political theory, and also a theory of history. Since the easiest way to grasp something new and therefore unknown is to approach it by means of the known, this article relies heavily on metaphors to communicate the truth of Douglas’ vision.
On January 3rd, 2024 and again on January 10th, 2024, Dr. Oliver Heydorn appeared as a guest of Journalist Mark Anderson on the Republican Broadcasting Network. The interviews can be accessed under "read more".
If the inflation we are witnessing is cost-push, instead of demand-pull, or insofar as it is cost-push, there is another way of dealing with the problem which governments and their central banks should seriously consider: compensated price discounts. Instead of increasing wages across the board (which will only further increase prices), the same amount of money required for the wage increases could be spent on reducing prices through a universally applied discount (a kind of reverse sales tax). Retailers would be compensated to the extent of the discount (enabling them to meet their costs in full), while consumers would see the purchasing power of their current wages, savings, etc., correspondingly increased. The cost-push inflation would be neutralized and everyone would benefit.
Now, if we can agree that inflation is a bad thing and that we need to address it, i.e., to neutralise it, it is likewise crucial that we can accurately discern what it is, in fact, that is causing the inflation. For there are two basic forms that inflation may take: 1) demand-pull and 2) cost-push. Just as in medicine, successful treatment most likely presupposes a correct diagnosis.
I hate haggling. I have always hated haggling. Why do I dislike it so? In the first place, haggling seems like a tremendous waste of time, energy, and resources that could have been better spent on other things. It seems horribly inefficient. Beyond that, and even more fundamentally, haggling tacitly presupposes as a distinct possibility (if not probability) that there is a threat of rapacious hostility on the part of the seller. To defend himself from this threat, the buyer is coerced into haggling himself as it is his only means of countering it. For me, the underlying antagonism robs the experience of shopping of whatever pleasure it might otherwise possess.
A few months ago I visited a friend of a friend at the new home he had recently purchased. The house itself was a suburban stand-alone dwelling in a quiet and, by all impressions, pleasant neighbourhood. As we entered through the front door, there, on the ground, stood a computer, or rather a series of computers, all hooked up together with countless wires. The main screen revealed that these computers were busy, feverishly busy, engaged as they were in all sorts of apparently endless computations. In an instant, I realized what I was witnessing: a mining operation, as in “mining for cryptocurrency”[1]. And, sure enough, this friend of a friend was “mining” Ethereum, a cryptocurrency that was introduced in 2015.
While there are significant differences between Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) and Douglas Social Credit, Professor Kelton’s talk allows us to turn our attention, for a change, on some of the points of commonality.
Over the past year and a half, twenty-two new videos - all professionally animated - have recently been made available. These videos explore various key aspects of Douglas Social Credit. Please subscribe, like, and pass these videos on to anyone who may be interested.