Erle Frayne D. Argonza / Ra
Magandang gabi sa iyo Kapatid! Good evening to you Brother/Sister!
To continue on the Orion/Empire theme, let me discourse on Orion’s money economy. The world music group Gypsy King’s wonderful guitar + vocals renditions are accompanying my writing, so relax as you visualize flowing with me & Latin music along the way.
To begin with, Orion’s legacy for many eons has been the money economy. The money economy has already been recycled time and again, dying with the end of civilizations and then revived again as civilizations are re-born in the aftermath of catastrophes. There’s nothing new with it, only its manifest forms varied across time.
The last sub-cycle of 5,200 years saw the revival of the money economy. This period is important, as one should note, for it marks the period called the Kali Yuga or Dark Age phase of the grand cycle of 26,000 years approximately (rounded off). The cycle will end on 2012, as per calculations of the Mayan scientists of antiquity, though the money economy itself already ended earlier in 2007 (see http://www.salrachele.com).
Among all economists in the West, it was the late Andre Gunder Frank, formulator of Dependency Theory of development, who was able to intuit on a long cycle of 5,000 years in economics. To his own surprise, in his process of investigating on the roots of capitalism, he was brought back to the time approximating 5,000 Before Present or BP (3,000 BC for the old Gregorian calendar).
Thus, the last quarter of the 20th century witnessed the convergence of Western science of economics and mystical science of cycles to trace and explain the rise and decline of the money economy. Capitalism as we know it today—‘late’ capitalism in the language of Frankfurt school thinkers—is the terminal or last phase of the very long period of money economy that began 5,000 BP.
It will be hard to pinpoint which part of the world did start the trend. We can only surmise that the Chaldeans-Sumerians-Phoenicians could have begun experimentations in the economy. However, nothing can stop us from recognizing Mongol communities in the East and the Incas of meso-America experimenting on the same epochal economy.
As to my own backyard, Southeast Asia, the period 5,000 down to 1,500 BP saw the advent of the Age of Metals and agricultural revolution. Manifestly, all the important metals—gold, silver, bronze, brass, iron—were already innovated on in the region, metals that induced the production of rice on a simple commodity production scale. It is so easy to intrapolate that precious metal was used as a means of exchange in the region as early as 3,000 BC, aside from using the same for making tools and shifting from horticulture to agriculture as metals were harnessed into cattle, carabao and elephant.
So as not to be lost, do think that what I’m trying to show to you is that the money economy evolved simultaneously in all the known civilizational centers across the globe around the time 5,000 BP. Thus, no one single civilization can claim exclusive rights to developing the money economy. We can even extend that a little bit backwards to 5,200 BP and end up with the same result.
Founded on (a) the principle of hoarding and (b) premised on scarcity, the money economy reached its doctrinal perfection only around the last 1000 years though. Mercantilism and physiocracy were largely accountable for the doctrinal articulation via the science of political economy. No doubt, economics has become a very complex science, intended to articulate the money economy as a whole.
As already articulated by me in my social blogsites, the money economy cannot hold water for long. It cannot be sustained for very long, as its basic principles of hoarding, scarcity, and competition are terribly flawed (see http://erleargonza.blogspot.com, http://unladtau.wordpress.com). By 2007, the money system crashed down, and no amount of effort would ever be able to put it back on course again.
Orion’s legacy of money economy can only be sustained using an empire as a context. When the empire crashes down, likewise will the economy that sustained the empire go spiraling down.
The British Empire, which is but a cover up for the Orion-Draco Empire, perfected the system of (a) free market and (b) free trade precisely because it had the muscle to force its commodities on colonized territories. Absent the Empire structure and the system can’t be sustained for long.
The last ditch attempt to extend the empire is through international agreements notably the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade or GATT. The Uruguay Round of the GATT gave rise to the institution of World Trade Organization or WTO. It works together with the World Bank-IMF Group to enforce free market and free trade on member nations. The borderless global economy was thus born from out of the treaties as a last attempt to conserve free market and free trade principles and agreements.
As I contended in my previous articles, the money economy is dead. Herculean efforts won’t be able to bring it back. Orion’s hoarding economics has been in crisis for so long, and people are looking for a way out of the system. And that way out will come as Earth ascends to 4th dimension, with a new context making possible new economic ideas to prosper.
On hindsight, Orion economics did highlight the significance of individual enterprise. This somehow seems to reveal that the Orion mindset is a more individuated type than that of its Empire partner Draco whose mindset is collectivist. The last 5,200 years ushered an epoch that was ripe for a rapid march to the individuated psyche, a march that could have been somehow fueled by Orion propensity for individual enterprise.
We can thus inductively infer that, on a galactic scale, Orions created enabling measures to foster trade among lower-density worlds. It had the military muscle to impose fiats on an imperial domain, true. But it should likewise be highlighted that individual rational decision-making could have been, to a great extent, synchronous with such developments, for conducting trade on galactic scale requires a calculative mind afforded by an individuated psyche.
The same calculative mind, gelling among Terrans at particular historic junctures, was responsible for the rebirth of industry, trade and commerce. The calculative-rational mind, if not guided by moral philosophy, can surely turn out as predatory, and any economic system built out of it will, in the end, transmogrify into a predatory system as well. Such a predatory state characterized Orion money economy during the entire period since after the signing of the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648.
Orion economics will be a bygone system after 2012, though some principles of management fomented by the system can overflow into the New Earth. Management science celebrated efficiency and efficacy, and no one will ever argue that such principles are inapplicable to the evolving context. And, lastly, political economy will continue to be studied and taught in academes post-2012, albeit in a recast form to make it appropriate to the new context.
[Philippines, 25 October 2010]
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Social Blogs:
IKONOKLAST: http://erleargonza.blogspot.com
UNLADTAU: http://unladtau.wordpress.com
Wisdom/Spiritual Blogs:
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@SOULCAST: http://www.soulcast.com/efdargon
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