The Economic Underworld of Social Credit | Gary North

[batmanoo]

I swear this is like the 4th time me watching this lecture and I was there when he gave it. Gary North is an awesome speaker and makes you pay attention to everything he says.

[justcallmebookworm]

I've taken a brief look at North's book, "Salvation Through Inflation, " and found reference to his claim that Douglas pushed for the abolishment of private land ownership. He cites as his source, pg. 206 of John L. Finlay's, "Social Credit: The English Origins." Strangely enough, this seems to be his only source for that claim. He cites no primary (the writings of Douglas) sources for this.

The reason I bring this up is because I've read maybe 1 or 2 books from Douglas and also some descriptions of Social Credit where this abolishment of private land ownership is strangely absent.

He even goes on to say that Douglas also wanted to outlaw retirement funds. Same pattern here--his only source is pg. 206 of Finlay's book, and, despite reading through some Social Credit material and some of Douglas' work, I've never heard any mention of doing anything to retirement funds.

It's sort of unusual for academics to make mistakes such as this. Sometimes I wonder if he's purposely trying to confuse Social Credit with socialism.

**Edit, 4-26-2020: Actually, checking up on it again, a year later, I realize I mistook the which book North was referring to. He was actually citing CH Douglas' "Social Credit, " the 3rd edition--not Finlay's, "Social Credit."

Douglas actually did say something that sounds a lot like abolishing transfers of real estate in some kind of draft proposal for social credit:


This is not actually abolishment of private ownership of real estate, but only the transfer of it. I can't find any clarification of the proposal or reasoning behind it in any of his other works or by anyone commenting on his work, so I don't understand the reason for this proposal, tbh.

Still, in none of his other works does he discuss the abolition of private property, so it seems unreasonable to assume that that is what he meant.

[batmanoo]

The point of the lecture wasn't necessarily the economics of social credit but just an example of a underworld theory and its connection to Keynesianism. The first 15 minutes of in this lecture about public speaking actually explains this, he is speaking to a specific audience; a room of Austrian school students. These students fundamentally understand and oppose keynesianism. So to see its relation to social credit dims the credence of both doctrines to them.

[jow]

Reading its Books. Thanks man. Thanks for Biblical understanding you have. Opened my eyes in many things. Thanks.

[robertaklinck]

I am quite familiar with Major Douglas's writings and would challenge Dr. North to cite where the former excluded on principle any class of citizens (North says "the rich") from receipt of the National Dividend. Of course Douglas saw that power production, now vastly accelerated by robotic production, meant that the human factor in production was contracting and that this meant the potential for personal freedom and leisure were growing. His proposals were designed to realize this potential.

[justcallmebookworm]

37:08 As another commenter has pointed out, I'm not aware Douglas ever made the distinction that the rich should not receive any of the 'printed money.' Honestly, I think North is confusing Social Credit with socialism.

I'm also not certain Douglas was saying that workers are not getting paid what their labor is worth in the context of socialism (ie. making it out as a moral issue). Afaik, he was just saying that a business must necessarily pay its workers less than what the total price of its goods or services--for the simple reason that if they paid out more than their revenue, they would go out of business. This seems to be a hard and fast rule for businesses everywhere.

This would then mean that workers could not then afford to buy back all the goods/services in the country. (Again, not that it's some kind of moral issue, but just a shortfall in our means of accounting, which he thought could be solved.)

I took a brief look at North's book, "Salvation Through Inflation, " and it seems that North seems to interpret this as a criticism on capitalism, but I don't really think Douglas was criticizing capitalism.

North also mentioned something about Douglas wanting to abolish private land ownership. I don't ever recall abolishment of private land ownership as being a part of Social Credit.

Also, I don't think Social Creditors are quite the same as greenbackers. From what I understand, most other groups arguing for some kind of 'stimulus money printing' don't include price controls. Douglas included price controls to address price inflation. But he included it with the 'National Dividend' (money printing) so that a business could afford the price controls. Whereas, in other schemes of price control that have been attempted resulted in businesses going bankrupt. So, it seems to me that having both money creation and price controls together is essential to Social Credit--as opposed to other groups who only seem to be interested in just one or the other (money creation OR price controls).

[SEA-O]

I had high hopes for an unbiased critique by the self proclaimed expert on Douglas' Social Credit. Sadly he misleads his audience several times in the first few minutes, starting with "money was to be distributed to all but the wealthy" ...social credit gives every single citizen of society an equal amount to cover the basics of food, clothes and shelter.

Very sad.

[jeanlabrek]

The only leader on Social-Credit is CliffordHughDouglas, (his books available on the net) and a good lecturer about it is Jeremy Lee ____ This G. North is shure more competent on anything else

[justcallmebookworm]

After watching through 53 min of the vid and briefly checking through North's book, it seems to me that while North has some understanding of what Social Credit is, his grasp seems kinda shaky. He seems to spend more time mistakenly conflating Social Credit with socialism and movements like the Greenback movement, then discrediting the socialists and greenbackers than actually explaining what Social Credit is and refuting Social Credit.

All-in-all, this is just strange.

[robertaklinck]

Considering the energy North invests in refuting (with mischievous selectivity and distortion) Social Credit, he clearly regards it as a serious threat.  And he's right:  SC is the most serious threat to the puritanical axioms of the financial monopolists who govern our society, apparently quite to North's satisfaction.

[williamcrawford]

I think the characterization of Douglas' position was a bit misleading. It wasn't that Douglas believed labor was overcompensated, but rather that consumers collectively lack the capital to purchase all the goods and services in an economy. You can check annual statistics to confirm this is true. Net income is always less than GDP. This is from a couple of factors, such as overhead costs and maintenance. Therefore, there will always be overproduction in any industrial economy and the only way to consume all goods and services is through consumer debt, hence the explosion of credit cards. Debt money was the Keynsian solution to this problem. Douglas suggested we simply reform them monetary system by distributing the difference between net income and gdp to everyone in the form of a "national dividend" so that money supply will always be sufficient for consumers to consume the net goods and services in an economy. This is good for both producers and consumers. Note also that the dividend is distributed to everyone, so it isn't just laborers who receive it.

[travisbrewer]

Removal of laws against price cutting and price floors leads to reduction of worker pay which defeats the whole purpose.

[robertaklinck]

To view a relatively in-depth discussion of the history, analysis and principles of Social Credit, search "Social Credit table talk" on Youtube.

[travisbrewer]

“It may be said that effective and rational economic policies can be implemented only by a superior leader of the philosopher-statesman type under powerful autocracy.” -Friedrich Von Hayek

[erickleefeld]

This speech drastically overstates Keynes's opinions of Douglas — thus leveraging the discrediting of Douglas, in an effort to tear down Keynes. And it is highly dishonest.

Keynes gave Douglas credit for recognizing the economic problems of the time, relating to under-consumption and a lack of purchasing power by individuals. But then he basically said that Douglas had gotten so much else wrong in his method of analysis and the prescription to solve it:

"The strength of Major Douglas’s advocacy has, of course, largely depended on orthodoxy having no valid reply to much of his destructive criticism. On the other hand, the detail of his diagnosis, in particular the so-called A + B theorem, includes much mere mystification."

After briefly explaining some of the problems with Douglas, Keynes went on to dub him, "a private, perhaps, but not a major in the brave army of heretics."

And this is all from the same section of Keynes's book that North quotes above. So he must know about it — even as he makes it look like Keynes regarded Douglas as a venerable figure.

[travisbrewer]

Why did Fritz Maklupp abandon the gold standard as unreasonable? Is it possible that the gold standard is unreasonable?

[MabusZero]

Gary North has the same kind of quiet confidence that one of my best college professors had. You can tell by listening to him and looking at him that he knows what he's talking about and can do everything he'll claim he can do.

[robertbirtle]

The solutions are in the Money Masters by Bill Still & endorsed by Professor Milton Friedman.

[GeoffBosco]

I just feel so warm and fuzzy when I listen to Gary North speak.

[travisbrewer]

Why did Lionel Robbins make the 180 turn, was it possibly because the Great Depression revealed to him that the Austrian school was wrong? 😑