{"id":998,"date":"2013-01-30T22:13:13","date_gmt":"2013-01-30T22:13:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/beta.dminlgp.com\/making-no-n-sense-of-the-gold-standard-2\/"},"modified":"2013-01-30T22:13:13","modified_gmt":"2013-01-30T22:13:13","slug":"making-no-n-sense-of-the-gold-standard-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/making-no-n-sense-of-the-gold-standard-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Making No(N)Sense of The Gold Standard"},"content":{"rendered":"
Karl Polanyi, in his book\u00a0The Great Transformation<\/u>, theorizes that market economy is never autonomous but is influenced, if not driven, by a nation’s politics, religion, and social relations. \u00a0He calls this his concept of “embeddedness.” \u00a0He contends that if the economy were autonomous that humans would become commodities which would assure their destruction. \u00a0So powerful is the economic dynamic left to its own devices.<\/div>\n
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He writes about the transformation from an economic theory whose purpose was not gain but the sustaining of life to an economic theory wholly focused on gain. \u00a0This transformation takes place during the 19th century and is rooted in Western Europe and England. \u00a0It facilitated the industrial revolution and the expansion of western culture throughout the world. \u00a0A key ingredient of this transformation, which I thought was particularly interesting, was the development and demise of the Gold Standard.<\/div>\n
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The saying that politics makes for strange bedfellows could not be more applicable. \u00a0From Marx to Coolidge to Trotsky, and from Hoover to Lenin to Churchill to Mussolini, both capitalists and socialists, embraced the Gold Standard. \u00a0In the face of economic stress, the Gold Standard was put into place to provide economic stability and free trade among nations. \u00a0The socialist saw it as representing labor while the capitalist saw it as being useful and scarce, both saw it as valuable. \u00a0Global conferences took place to agree to conditions to govern currency stability and the League of Nations exerted influence on behalf of free trade. \u00a0However, the more that actions were taken to protect the Gold Standard the worse became the economies represented! \u00a0Wealth redistribution worked until there was less wealth to distribute. \u00a0Countries were called upon to make sacrifices on behalf of other countries that far outstretched their comfort zone. \u00a0Inflation resulted while greed and gain outstripped the value of Gold on hand. \u00a0<\/div>\n
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The Gold Standard is but a historical sentence in economics today. \u00a0Polanyi is hard on England, placing the\u00a0market economy idea, free trade, gold standard, and the industrial revolution at their doorstep. \u00a0Whether or not that is completely true, it is a haunting piece of history to track the development of free market ideas that have created more poverty than beneficiaries. \u00a0He may well be right in saying that the socio-economic idea of gain had never been reflected in a “self-regulating market” and that it resulted in the idea of capitalism which expresses a religious passion. \u00a0<\/div>\n
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Polanyi leaves a haunting question, “What would happen if labor were taken out of the market?” \u00a0<\/div>\n
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My takeaways from the book:<\/div>\n
\u2022 An economic system must reflect and collaborate with other social systems to survive and benefit society<\/div>\n
\u2022 No economic system can flourish for the good of people apart from a Biblical based economic ethic\u00a0<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Karl Polanyi, in his book\u00a0The Great Transformation, theorizes that market economy is never autonomous but is influenced, if not driven, by a nation’s politics, religion, and social relations. \u00a0He calls this his concept of “embeddedness.” \u00a0He contends that if the economy were autonomous that humans would become commodities which would assure their destruction. \u00a0So powerful […]<\/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-998","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\/998","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=998"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/998\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=998"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=998"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=998"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}