COMMENT: Marty,
I just had to reach out and thank you for putting on this conference and sharing what you’ve learned over the course of your career. I know which university asked you to teach—and that you turned them down. I couldn’t help but notice that one chapter will be titled “All Governments Are the Same.” I also understand this is a break-even event for you, and that you decided against live streaming due to the cost.
Even though I won’t be able to see you in person this time, my son and daughter will be attending, and I wanted to express my gratitude. So many of us at the WECs have been urging you to do this for a long time. I know you call yourself the “accidental economist”—and that’s exactly what makes you so one of a kind. An FX trader, drafted into the world of geopolitics because theory alone just doesn’t cut it.
Thank you for doing this.
BP
REPLY: You all have made me stop and think: how the hell did I end up here? Life shapes us through experience, turning us into the people we were maybe always meant to become. This was never a path I imagined for myself, but we play the hand we’re dealt.
I’m dedicating this event to Milton Friedman. I was speaking at a trading conference in Chicago about how the world is interconnected, and how currency made that possible. Milton had heard about me and came to listen. After I finished, he walked up, shook my hand, and told me I was doing what he had only ever dreamed of. He had written back in 1953 about how a floating exchange rate system would impose checks and balances on governments—and here I was, traveling the world, dealing with governments over exactly what Milton had envisioned more than thirty years earlier. He then said what I was doing was deeply important, and that I should document it for society.
I have indeed run around the world and dealt with perhaps more governments than anyone. I honestly see no difference. Justice peaks, because as Thrasymachus tried to warn Socrates that justice is the same no matter what form of government exists. It is always their self-interest about retaining power. As they say, you can vote your way into socialism/communism, but you have to shoot your way out. That is the real risk of Mandami in NYC when his ideas fails as they always have.
Plato records the debate between Thrasymachus and Socrates. Thrasymachus didn’t frame his argument as a “warning” to Socrates so much as a cynical confrontation. His core claim, that rulers simply make laws to serve their own interests, inherently applies to any form of government, including a democracy.
Thrasymachus explicitly includes democracy in his analysis. He doesn’t single it out; he gives it as one of the prime examples of his theory in action. He states that in a democracy, the “ruling masses” (the democratic majority) pass and enforce laws that are to their own advantage.
Thrasymachus was saying there was “no difference in justice” under a democracy, the answer is yes. For Thrasymachus, the only thing that changes is who is exploiting the system for their own benefit. In a tyranny, it’s the tyrant; in an aristocracy, it’s the aristocrats; and in a democracy, it’s the democratic majority. The fundamental principle, that “justice” is a tool used by the powerful to justify their own advantage—remains exactly the same.
Thucydides (the Melian Dialogue) also informed us that “The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.” To a large extent, the Marxists did come to argue that justice is seen as a tool of the ruling class. On that point, I cannot disagree. Law has always been used for political purposes.
Jacob Coxey was arrested for walking on the grass of the U.S. Capitol. This arrest occurred on May 1, 1894, after he led a protest march of unemployed workers known as “Coxey’s Army” to Washington D.C. to demand government jobs to alleviate the Panic of 1893 depression.
The arrest was based on a law that forbade public assemblies and processions on the Capitol grounds, and Coxey was charged with the specific violation of “walking on the grass.” Along with Coxey, two of his lieutenants, Carl Browne and Christopher Columbus Jones, were also arrested.
The United States has more people in prison than Europe, Russia, or China, yet we pretend to be the land of liberty and justice for all. Either Americans harbor more criminals than any other society, or we imprison people for political purposes while pretending it is about justice.
I even went through the Berlin Wall in the late ’70s and saw communism first hand. What I am passing on is not theory. It is what Milton came to listen to me deliver at a trading conference in Chicago. How the world is all interconnected. This has huge ramifications for everything from economics to politics.