{"id":997,"date":"2013-01-31T00:31:03","date_gmt":"2013-01-31T00:31:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/beta.dminlgp.com\/making-no-n-sense-of-the-gold-standard\/"},"modified":"2013-01-31T00:31:03","modified_gmt":"2013-01-31T00:31:03","slug":"making-no-n-sense-of-the-gold-standard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/making-no-n-sense-of-the-gold-standard\/","title":{"rendered":"Making No(n)Sense of the Gold Standard"},"content":{"rendered":"

Karl Polanyi’s\u00a0The Great Transformation<\/span> presses the idea that market economy is reliant upon the social dynamics of politics, religion, and social relations. \u00a0In fact, he contends that if the market economy were really free that labor and indeed humans would become commodiities and would self destruct. \u00a0The book takes these basic ideas and sets them into the context of the 19th century and the development of the Industrial Revolution, WWI, and WWII.<\/p>\n

In the process of fleshing out his economic theory and research, he points out the important historical role of the Gold Standard. \u00a0The Gold Standard was put into place to provide a climate of economic steadiness thru stable currency and free trade. \u00a0I found it interesting that both the socialists and orthodox economists embraced the Gold Standard. \u00a0They supported it for different reasons, nevertheless, from Marx to Coolidge to Trotsky, from Hoover to Lenin to Churchill to Mussolini they all supported it. \u00a0They all got behind it because of their mutual desire for economic (power) gain. \u00a0This is very near the saying that “politics makes strange bedfellows!”<\/p>\n

I never realized how important the Gold Standard was to the global dynamics of the 19th century. \u00a0Many of the early international conferences and even the League of Nations took actions to facilitate the viability of the Gold Standard. \u00a0However, the more actions that were taken to press the Standard, the worse the economic situations for individuals and countries became. \u00a0Currencies were out of sync and free trade became impossible. \u00a0The resulting economic turmoil allowed fascism to exert power and then WWII took place. \u00a0<\/p>\n

This is the way I make sense of the Gold Standard. \u00a0It claimed to provide a level playing field, but that was a false assumption. \u00a0Every participating country had to make different and more dire sacrifices for the benefit of other countries. \u00a0When the local currencies exhausted the gold, other countries were called to help until they too were at risk. \u00a0When it became apparent that the Gold Standard limited economic appetites it was abandoned! \u00a0This is raw capitalism devoid of Biblical ethics at work! \u00a0<\/p>\n

My takeaways from this book:<\/p>\n

\u2022 economic gain is a reflection of the lost nature when it becomes a unifying principle in one’s life
\u2022 capitalism apart from Biblical ethics is most cruel and creates more poverty than beneficiaries
\u2022 the Gold Standard could not bear the weight of the greed of the nations who adopted it<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Karl Polanyi’s\u00a0The Great Transformation presses the idea that market economy is reliant upon the social dynamics of politics, religion, and social relations. \u00a0In fact, he contends that if the market economy were really free that labor and indeed humans would become commodiities and would self destruct. \u00a0The book takes these basic ideas and sets them […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":47,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2,4],"class_list":["post-997","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-dminlgp","tag-polanyi","cohort-lgp3"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/997","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/47"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=997"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/997\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=997"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=997"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=997"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}