July 29, 2024 | DEI the Hidden “REAL” Global Agenda
attitude towards politics, and a deeper understanding of social life
in general, must be based upon a contemplation and interpretation
of human history. While the ordinary man takes the setting of his
life and the importance of his personal experiences and petty
struggles for granted, it is said that the social scientist or
philosopher has to survey things from a higher plane. He sees the
individual as a pawn, as a somewhat insignificant instrument in the
general development of mankind. And he finds that the really
important actors on the Stage of History are either the Great
Nations and their Great Leaders, or perhaps the Great Classes, or
the Great Ideas. However this may be, he will try to understand the
meaning of the play which is performed on the Historical Stage; he
will try to understand the laws of historical development. If he
succeeds in this, he will, of course, be able to predict future
developments. He might then put politics upon a solid basis, and
give us practical advice by telling us which political actions are
likely to succeed or likely to fail.
Popper became caught up in these claims of destiny, which blinded him to the actual driving forces behind society throughout the centuries and why kingdoms, empires, nations, and city-states always rise from nothing, reach a climax, and then disintegrate to dust, only to be buried in a common grave dug by history. In Edward Gibbon’s (1737-1794) Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776), his final chapter tells us about two attendants to Pope Eugenius IV (1431-1447) who are sitting on top of the Capitoline Hill in Rome overlooking the Roman Forum. Poggius then comments upon the vicissitudes of fortune, which spares nothing and nobody while it buries empires, nations, and city-states in a common grave.
“Her primeval state, such as she -might–appear in a remote age, when Evander entertained the stranger of Troy, has been delineated by the fancy of Virgil. This Tarpeian rock was then a savage and solitary thicket; in the time of the poet, it was crowned with the golden roofs of a temple, the temple is overthrown, the gold has been pillaged, the wheel of Fortune has accomplished her revolution, and the sacred ground is again disfigured with thorns and brambles. The hill of the Capitol, on which we sit, was formerly the head of the Roman Empire, the citadel of the earth, the terror of kings; illustrated by the footsteps of so many triumphs, enriched with the spoils and tributes of so many nations. This spectacle of the world, how is it fallen! how changed! how defaced! The path of victory is obliterated by vines, and the benches of the senators are concealed by a dunghill. Cast your eyes on the Palatine hill, and seek among the shapeless and enormous fragments the marble theatre, the obelisks, the colossal statues, the porticos of Nero’s palace: survey the other hills of the city, the vacant space is interrupted only by ruins and gardens. The forum of the Roman people where they assembled to enact their laws and elect their magistrates, is now enclosed for the cultivation of pot-herbs, or thrown open for the reception of swine and buffaloes. The public and private edifices that were founded for eternity lie prostrate, naked, and broken, like the limbs of a mighty giant, and the ruin is the more visible from the stupendous relics that have survived the injuries of time and fortune.”
This was Popper’s great mistake in focusing on this claim of destiny, which was really a great sales slogan rather than a true economic trend. Popper may have wanted to improve the methods of the social sciences to promote peace, freedom, and prosperity, emulating the function of the natural sciences and technology to increase the earth’s productive capacity. However, his book’s central theme is his critique of the myth of historical destiny and historical determinism, that is, the idea that history is beyond human control.
There have been those who have recognized that the individual plays a key role, and this idea of government possessing the power to manipulate society, championed by Marx and Keynes, remains the very core of understanding the true nature of the economy. Carl Menger (1840-1921) is the founding father of the Austrian School of Economics, with his landmark “Principles of Economics,” published in 1871. There, Menger laid the intellectual framework for the subsequent Austrian scholars who followed him.
One of the book’s main themes is that the value of a good is not determined by factors that can be objectively determined (e.g., labor or material costs) but by subjective valuations of the object in question by individuals. As I explained to China when I was invited to help them transition to Capitalism, they were monitoring 249 varieties of tea. The question was, why is this one tea selling for about $5 in one place but $1 in another? I asked where its origin was, and that is where it happened to be $1. I elaborated that there were transportation costs first and secondly that someone would pay more for one tea than another because of personal preference.
In this sense, Carl Menger, Leon Walras, and William Stanley Jevons saw that economics has a human element that goes beyond supply and demand. ‘Marginalist Revolution’ with Menger and Jevons was added to with elements by Walras, who proposed that the commodities’ relative marginal utilities determined relative prices of commodities and thus explained the discrepancy in the value of goods and services by reference to their secondary, or marginal, utility.
So much for Soros & Popper’s Theory of an Open Society
It is not antisemitic to criticize this theory.
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Martin Armstrong July 29th, 2024
Posted In: Armstrong Economics
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