[ExI] Money and Human Nature (was Re: Capitalism, anti capitalism, emotional arousal)

[Stefano Vaj]

On 14 November 2011 02:34, Kelly Anderson <kellycoinguy at gmail.com> wrote:

> Wasn't this because the ruling class in Sparta were warriors? And
> weren't they due a living by the rest of society? So, in effect, they
> owned whatever they needed... whenever they needed it... right? They
> were the elites.
>

They certainly were the élite, but could not legally by any means become
owners of anything. But the idea that an élite may be poorer that the
people they rule on is certainly not unheard of. Think of Jesuites, for
instance. Even at the acme of their influence, no matter how powerful they
were individually or as an order, their vows (povery, obedience, chastity)
prevented them from having any property at all in their name.

This is not a legal fiction. It actually means you cannot inherit, you
cannot sell or buy anything, you cannot have heirs, you cannot prevent the
order from taking away anything you may be using. And in principle (albeit
not always in practice) it means that your lifestyle should be, well,...
spartan.

European aristocracies, OTOH, used certainly to have a more lavish
lifestyle. But even there, at the origins of feodalism, you were not the
owner of the land you ruled on, and the king (or the higher vassal) could
take it away at any moment if you did not perform the duties for which it
was entrusted to you: military protection, economic production, enforcement
of laws, administration of justice, resolution of conflicts, collection of
taxes... Paradoxically, it was the new ideas brought by capitalism that
achieved to make them essentially parasitic classes, especially in
continental Europe.

Moreover, the idea is still widespread in the West that those who (at least
officially) rule a country need not be the richest people in that country,
or even that they should forfeit the control of any significant assets they
may have during office.

What many consider a distortion is the fact that today poorer, albeit
theoretically more powerful, rulers are in fact over-influenced by richer
private citizens, or much more often headless, self-referential
institutions, cartels and circles, such as bankers and speculators,
without any office or answeerability or visibility, through corruption,
lobbying, campaign financing, media control, etc.

Mr. Berlusconi's rule in Italy was an exception in that he was essentially
accused of being a corruptor rather than a corruptee... :-)

Even the Spartan warriors could not exist without the money that was
> exchanged by the underclasses.
>

Sure. In the broadest sense, a symbolic accounting system has never been
abandoned anywhere it has ever been adopted.

-- 
Stefano Vaj
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