From the tainted glory of baseball's home run chase to the ethical pitfalls of global capitalism, this article delves into the unsettling parallels between sports doping controversies and systemic moral decay in economic practices, highlighting how individuals and companies alike are ensnared in a relentless pursuit of lower prices and higher profits.
Capitalism’s Moral Crisis: Lessons from Baseball’s Steroid Era
In the summer of 1998, I watched, along with the rest of the world, as MLB baseball stars Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire pursued the league's longstanding and highly coveted single-season home run record of 61 set by Roger Maris in 1961. The season-long chase culminated on September 8, 1998, when McGwire, facing Sosa and the Cubs, hit his 62nd home run of the season to break the record. McGwire finished the season with 70 home runs, while Sosa finished with 66. The 1998 home run record chase, as well as the previous year's pursuit of the record, was widely credited by sports analysts with restoring interest in MLB among its fan base following the 1994 strike. McGwire's record was later broken in 2001 by Barry Bonds, who hit 73 home runs.
The Sosa-McGwire home run chase occurred during the steroid era. Bonds' record still stands, though the controversy over possible use of performance-enhancing drugs by McGwire and Sosa gained momentum when Bonds hit his 73 home runs, despite having never hit as many as 50 in any other season. In the Congressional Hearing on Steroids, McGwire stated that any answer he gave regarding his alleged steroid use would not be believed by the public at large anyway. Sosa seemed not to understand the questions.
As a baseball player myself who played through college, I remember feeling terribly conflicted by the fact that athletes were breaking records using steroids. It not only felt like they were cheating, but it also put pressure on me to either take these drugs or lose to those who did. If I wanted to be successful in sports, would I need to cheat too? What if we all took the drugs? Would the sport be better? Would the athletes be healthier? It seemed clear to me and to the general public that these drugs were not only risky; they created an unfair advantage between players. It seemed evident that the only reason anyone would take these drugs is because most other athletes wouldn’t, resulting in a consistent advantage that could be exploited, much to the delight of fans and the profit of programs. The only problem with this reasoning is that people don’t like to lose, and naturally, given enough time, everyone would be taking them.
I use this example from sports as an analogy to all systems that allow unfair advantages to perpetuate. The laws of economics are, as Ludwig Von Mises aptly observed, fundamentally laws of human action. What could have happened to Major League Baseball has actually happened to our society as a whole, resulting in a despotic world economy that rewards the worst and punishes the best without anyone directly choosing to do so.
What I mean is this: An immoral form of capitalism creates a positive feedback loop for criminal exploitation, resulting in the inevitable destruction of the society it supports. Here’s why.
In a capitalist society, price is the determining factor for decision-making. Lower prices increase demand for sales, and higher profits increase demand for investment. If morality is maintained, all income is earned morally, and all profits are secured morally—meaning voluntarily and without deceit or coercion. This morality creates a balance because anyone who decides to profit by deception or acquire by coercion is considered a fraud, a thief, and an inherent threat to the system as a whole. People and businesses that practice fraud and theft are punished and are therefore redeemed to being honest players in the system again.
Now, take this moral balance away and what happens? Consumers seeking low prices will support businesses that achieve those low prices through deceptive means, such as lowering the quality of goods, stealing supplies or information from competitors, or driving out honest competition. Investors seeking high profits will naturally only care about yield, not the consequences of backing an immoral business. Businesses that are honest will naturally not be as profitable as those that are dishonest, resulting in lower investment. Over time, the only people and businesses remaining in the system will be the most ruthless and the most dishonest. Consumers literally will not tolerate high prices, even if the products are delivered ethically, and investors will only seek high yield, even if the yield is delivered fraudulently. Short-term market incentives themselves accelerate the downfall of a society into degradation and immorality.
Take, for example, the case of Bernie Madoff. He started an investment firm that consistently generated 20% returns when the Wall Street average was 7%. He did this by fabricating profitable trades and paying off legacy investors with money from new investors. Why park your money for a 7% gain when you can get 20% with Madoff? Eventually, the game was exposed, and it was revealed that Madoff stole billions of dollars from his investors. Nevertheless, without morality and the enforcement of morality, such a market phenomenon is inevitable.
Also, consider the banking industry as a whole. Why risk your own capital on loans, which limits your returns to your capital base, when you can fabricate capital on your balance sheet, loan it out, and then collect payments from a larger pool of debtors? Moral banks that operate on full reserves will appear to be far less profitable than banks that operate on fabricated leverage. The stock price of moral banks will fall, and the stock price of immoral banks will rise. With increased investment, immoral banks will be able to offer higher salaries, purchase more impressive office buildings, and spend more extravagantly than moral banks.
Or consider this headline from this month detailing how John Deere plans to slash jobs and move them to Mexico in search for lower prices and higher profits. The same society who would damn John Deere for being greedy for profits would praise John Deere for being incompetent for not pursuing those profits. The same customers who would be a competitors cheaper product also want to invest in the most profitable companies. This is the endless and vicious feedback loop of capital market untethered from morality with a fraudulent money machine at its head.
The reason this will lead to the collapse of the system is obvious. The value of a society is dependent on honest production. Someone has to produce the goods we all want and quality is a factor of that productivity. As goods and services drop in quality, they also drop in reliability and effectiveness. Since the market mechanisms are rewarding unproductive activities and punishing productive activities, it becomes impossible for the market to discover and reward those who wish to provide quality products and services. In such an environment, the unreliable products are cheaper, the unproductive activities pay more, and the immoral societies attract more investment. All the while people who would have benefited from innovative medical treatments go without options, people who would have otherwise lived healthy lives become obese from cheap sugar filled industrial sludge, people who would have otherwise had promising careers overdose on opioids, and countries who would have otherwise invented new ways to serve one another build world destroying weapons. Overtime everyone in society gets the memo: Crime and unproductive activity pays.
Consider simply the rise of pornography and the popularity of sites like OnlyFans where women are offered the promise of enormous payouts if they would record and post themselves as sexual objects for consumption. What benefit is this to society? Would women do this without payment? Yet in a word where rent is high and productive jobs pay little, people who would have otherwise retained their dignity willingly offer themselves to anonymous strangers online. If you have children, do you really want to hand them over to a world where these are the incentives?
If for any reason you think this line of reasoning is conspiratorial, outlandish, or really far off, please watch this analysis of the 5 stages of denial by Taylor Kennedy of ITM Trading.
https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZPREPKBVF/
https://youtu.be/9TkvQcGKQWM?si=rzFpPQ0DrogF1_l_
Immoral Capitalism is the Modern Ouroboros
Thus, immoral capitalism turns our own natural desire for low prices and high yield against us and creates a system of economic cannibalism. Immoral capitalism creates a self-reinforcing positive feedback loop where the greatest investment goes to those most creative and capable of exploiting others for profit. Immoral capitalism is the modern image of the Ouroboros, the mythological snake eating its own tail. Immoral capitalism is like a man who elevates his own escape from pain above wisdom and common sense, resulting in pleasure by narcotics and other easily obtainable synthetic substitutes. True pleasure is the result of achievement and the effective pursuit of noble goals, which is a product of thinking and self-affirmation, not just the momentary sensation of dopamine or seratonin, which is a mindless process and negates the self.
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| Ouroboros: A circular symbol that depicts a snake devouring its own tail. |
The only solution to this immoral capitalism is to return to morality by neutralizing cheaters and realizing that accommodating immorality betrays everything we love in the end.
Keep Digging: For a story of how I taught my son to neutralize a cheater without violence or complaining, check out this article: All Above or All Below The Law: A Case Against Fraud. Our goal is not to hurt anyone or shame anyone but to have every play by the same rules or not play at all.
Smith’s Invisible Hand of Profit Used for Keynes’ Unobserved Confiscation
Since Adam Smith penned The Wealth of Nations in 1776, the prevailing sentiment in America and throughout the West has been to let capitalism run free without any consideration of its moral or philosophical underpinnings. The belief was that an invisible hand of profit seeking and price signals operating without restraint was the key to the wealth of nations, a mystery that worked well compared to the world of tyrannical kings and controlled economies..
“Every individual necessarily labours to render the annual revenue of society as great as he can. He generally neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it. He intends only his own gain, and he is, in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention.” (Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations)
We now know through painful experience that capitalism depends on a moral and philosophical framework, not simply individual gain. When people are pushed to starvation and fear, the desire to avoid pain and death can override the valid pursuit of happiness which requires philosophy and morality. Just like every person is right to seek happiness but must do so with wisdom and discipline lest they slip in the hedonic short term pleasure seeking of degenerate addicts, Capitalism built solely on escape from poverty cannot justify nor support itself. In fact, without a moral framework, capitalism’s own Pavlovian signals of price and profit will and in fact inevitably must destroy itself from within. As the scriptures warn:
Proverbs 10:2-3
Ill-gotten treasures have no lasting value
but righteousness delivers from death.
The LORD does not let the righteous go hungry,
But he thwarts the craving of the wicked.
“Like the partridge that gathers a brood that she did not hatch, so is he who gets riches but not by justice; in the midst of his days they will leave him, and at his end he will be a fool.”
While it is possible to exploit our natural desires to be avoid suffering and seek personal gain, any such exploitation inevitably leads to societal collapse.
As Martin Luther King once noted,
“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.” (Martin Luther King)
With this understanding, let me then advocate for three demands of capitalism, myself, and my neighbor that I personally make to protect myself from poverty, disputation, and foolishnes while pursuing genuine happiness.
- Don’t steal from each other.
- Don’t lie to each other.
- Don’t commit fraud against each other. (ie. stealing by lying.)
Practically in our current era this means we must stop the practice of fractional reserve lending. We must default on debts made this way and remove the perceived value of dollars from our lives and communities by refusing to work for dollars or buy and sell using dollars. In the short period of time between now and the collapse of the immoral capitalism system, it is permissible to use borrowed money for buying and selling since borrowed money does not become destructive until it is used to pay back loans.
The source of all corruption in our current capitalist society is monetary fraud. We have permitted and encouraged central banking institutions to fabricate credit and create more currency than money available through the issuing of debt. In our own greed we have invested in corporations and people who have proven themselves to be best at acquiring these tokens of fraud, rarely if ever questioning the means of the acquisition so long as we get paid and our investment portfolios continue to increase. We have celebrated the most corrupt among us and allowed the finance industries and its preferred allies have the best real-estate, the choicest works of art, and the most honored positions of leadership in our communities. By this method of credit creation, we have allowed banks to profit from the population by means of deception. Contrast, for instance, the sentiment of Adam Smith’s invisible hand to his counterpart John Maynard Keynes, the father of modern banking and fractional reserve lending only 140 years later.
“By this means, fractional reserve banking, the government may secretly and unobserved confiscate the wealth of nations, and not one man in a million will detects its theft.” (John Maynard Keynes)
By 1913, Adam Smith’s invisible hand of profit and price was in the hands of John Maynard Keynes and finance to commit unobservable confiscation. It turns out the goodness of the invisible hand depends on whose hand it is!
I personally do not permit this kind of fraud. I will not honor the dishonorable nor admire those who have the most bank tokens. I have therefore taken out $1.25M in loans from various lending institutions for the sole purpose of challenging the fairness and validity of those very loan contracts. Affectively I am saying that banks have no right to acquire assets like properties, automobiles, or promissory notes from people when they themselves have put up none of their own property to secure the loan. The consequence of my challenge against the banks will be the nullification of the contracts and the denial of the lending institutions from repossessing any property unless they prove their loans to be legitimate, that is originating from existing capital reserves. My ultimate goal is to convince the public to systematically reject fractional reserve banking and all other forms of counterfeit currency. The result will be the complete rejection of the US dollar and a return to productive barter where money is simply the regions most liquid asset and currency is merely a tokenized receipt of money redeemable to the holder of the note on demand.
For a fuller explanation for why money is just the most liquid commodity, check out this article by Rafi Farber on substack: https://open.substack.com/pub/endgameinvestor/p/money-is-not-an-invention-its-just?r=ep8i7&utm_medium=ios
Of course, we should reject all forms of theft and fraud and honor those who have integrity and tell the truth in their personal and professional lives. Fractional reserve lending is by no means the only crime existing in the world today but it is the primary source of incentivizing crime. Central banking and the institutionalization of credit creation is in fact what makes crime pay. That is why eliminating the Federal Reserve and fractional reserve lending will have the single greatest redemptive value for society and capitalism.
As I said earlier, my path to doing ending this system of fraud is engaging in a practice of maximizing supposed debt obligations and challenging their validity by defaulting on those loans. The defaults will impose systematic risk to the banking system that depends on ever increasing amounts of liquidity to fund its pyramid scheme and will trigger a cascade of derivative losses resulting in complete implosion of this fraud. I encourage everyone to do the same. With enough pressure, we can break this corrosive practice in short order and get to work to restoring the integrity of our society.
Q&A
Q1. Why is debt default the only way to stop this fraudulent banking practice?
A1: Consider the alternatives. Any attempt to our punish or out legislate criminals necessarily results in the criminals using ill-gotten gains to protect against such attacks by corrupting the systems of greatest threat. The very fact that ill-gotten gains are an additive source of strength “good guys” don’t have access to makes this process of logical necessity. If the good guys were to fight ill-gotten gains with ill-gotten gains, the good guys would at once become the bad guys. Such is the case now with the United States of America who used the power of having the world reserve currency to fight the Soviet Union. By using theft and fraud to fight what they understood to be an evil force, the United States itself has become the epicenter of global terrorism and corruption.
The only way to beat a cheater is to use the cheater’s rules against them so that there is no more opportunity for exploitation. This is why defaulting on debt is the perfect tool to undoing attempted bank fraud.
Side Note: This phenomena is also why the solution to a positive feedback problem like immoral capitalism necessarily has to come from a humble and weak origin. Any origin that is well established and well funded is by definition fully within the grip of the price / profit trap and cannot escape without destroying its place in the system. Companies that even stumble involuntarily towards morality and thus fewer profits are immediately goaded into correcting course. How much strong does the whip lash against those who intentionally rebel!
Q2: Why aren’t more people talking about this?
A2: Consider the sources of what we might consider a public consciousness. This week 50 million people witnessed the first presidential debate of 2024. This debate was hosted by CNN and served the interest of a political machine that spends millions of dollars to get people elected to office. Do you think it is in the interest of immoral capitalism to have ideas opposed to its promotion promoted? How would someone who is opposed to ill-gotten gains convince those who have worked for ill-gotten gains all their life to provide the capital needed to buy media ads, donate to political campaigns, and fund university lecture courses? Immoral capitalism controls the means of communication, the media, the education system, the judicial system, the legislative system, and the communicators themselves. Because the system of immoral capitalism is caught in a positive feedback loop of corruption, the solution necessarily has to come from outside all these system. Those who take out debt and default are by nature working outside of the system. Their actions contradict the legal system, the financial system, the economic system, and the political system.
Q3: What is the incentive for me to default on debt? Isn’t this going to result in my credit score tanking, the banks repossessing my property, and my life being ruined?
A3: I get some version of this question almost everyday I am out talking to people about this. I keep going back to the alternative. If you see that we are in a positive feedback loop that leads to a place analogous to hell on earth and it is a version of hell on earth you want to avoid, what are you going to do to avoid it? I never tell people that breaking this loop is without risk. My credit score went from 760 in December of 2023 to 330 by June of 2024. I chose to sacrifice making $550,000 a year for this and was divorced because of my choices. I don’t see my kids as often as I’d like and my life is generally much more stressful since I decided to default on my debt. Why did I do it? Because the alternative is far far worse, because the benefit of winning is unimaginable, and because the logic of what I am doing is rock solid. All it takes is faith in that logic and courage to keep going to gain the real benefit, a world of unrestrained productivity, free trade, and ever increasing prosperity and joy. Not only is that a compelling incentive for me, the risk of not pursuing that world is unbearable to me.
Q4: If this plan is so great, how come everyone isn’t doing it?
A4: Those who aren’t defaulting on debt are blinded by the immoral price and profit system. They are ignorant to the cause of their misery and in their ignorance they reach for bad solutions. They aren’t self-aware enough to realize they are in a positive feedback loop and that every market incentive reinforces the system of immoral price and immoral profit. With a positive example of rebellion however and people around them expressing genuine happiness, those who are caught in the loop can see the contrast between their life and the life of those who are living in moral abundance (if not physical abundance yet). This witness to something outside the system is how people become aware of the system they are in. In fact, it is proper I think to consider those caught inside the system as trapped and desperately in need of us to rebel against it. Some may think that we are jealous of their success and only want to end the system because a few people have “won”. Let’s be sure to tell them that this is not the case. We pity them and see they are engaged in self-destructive behavior. Like an alcoholic who covers over her pain with the substance, we see that these people are in pain and fear losing power and wealth, partly because they know they don’t deserve it, partly because they believe this fact means they are damned. We need to let them know there is a better way and that we have found a way to end this game of power possession forever.
If you are reading this and have an opportunity to make the move to default on your debt, you have a great gift. You are aware of the system. If you make the move and someone becomes aware of their trap because of you, you have redeemed another person. Do it boldly and do it proudly and you will bring many people into the new world.
Q5: What do you propose we do with everyone who has committed fraud? Everyone seems to be implicated!
A5: Nothing. I don’t think bankers should go to jail, be punished, or even be forced to pay retributions. The simple fact of the matter is that we have become a society of self-inflicted torture where even the bankers were forced to commit crimes or suffer the pain of loss and punishment. If we are to judge, let him who has not obeyed signals of price and profit pass judgement. How can we put Jerome Powell or Janet Yellen or Jamie Dimon in prison if we ourselves would have shorted their stock or voted them out of office for tanking their companies? Can’t you see that fear of punishment for doing good and fear of destruction for doing bad has caught us all in this feedback loop? The only thing I want is for people to get out of the way of those who want to be productive and to stop stealing from others. That goes for everyone, including those who work for dollars and require dollars as payment for their services. They have committed the same crime. Yes, all will inevitably experience the need to live by their own moral character instead of mooching off the productivity of others. Is this a punishment or a reward? This is true for the Wall Street hedge fund manager and the drug addict on the corner street. This is also true for the billions of people who have grown accustomed to buying food at grocery stores and filling up cars at gas pumps. Everyone will have to face nature and nature’s God equipped with nothing but their commitment to reason and purpose. That will be a kind of restorative discipline that will redeem some and destroy others. We do not need to be the sword of God’s vengeance in this matter.
35 Vengeance is Mine, and recompense;
Their foot shall slip in due time;
For the day of their calamity is at hand,
And the things to come hasten upon them.’ (Deuteronomy 32:35)
Q6: Where do you see all this going?
A6: I believe I have tapped into the plot of the story of humanity which has roots and symbols as deep and even deeper than written language itself. In making a prediction, I am merely trying to read these sundry symbols and stories the best I can. The savior of the world, Jesus Christ, predicted many things about how this story will end and the final judgement day of God. He said it would be a swift and urged people to buy gold and silver. He predicted that some people would suffer and perish while others would have faith and persevere. Images of the phoenix rising from the ashes, the ring of power being destroyed, and the ultimate triumph of light over darkness also suggest a kind of grand victory for justice and truth which would eliminate all forms of fraud and theft such as fractional reserve banking and currency counterfeiting. The book of Revelation is full of images of currency debasement, economic power, and economic destruction (Revelation 13 and Revelation 18).
I believe for myself that I have been given the gift of the tongue, a gift of intelligent articulation. Unlike wars of swords and guns, fraud and deception must be fought in the spirit with the mind and embodied in the voice. There are many who are fighting this battle and they are certainly winning.
I believe that before the US election in November 2024, perhaps as soon as this summer, the first currency to fail will be the Japanese Yen. Since the Japanese Yen owns the most US treasuries as any other country, their need to sell their treasuries to save their currency will incentivize all other countries to do the same flooding the bond market with low priced bonds. These low priced bonds will compete with new bonds being sold at par, forcing the US market to raise their interest rates which will put further pressure on all current holders of government debt, since raising interest rates discounts the value of bonds that were sold at a lower rate. Market participants will realize that the Federal Reserve is caught in a cycle of ever increasing interest rates, meaning people will only be willing to by the bonds with the shortest debt maturities. 30 year, 20 year, 10 year, and even 1 year treasuries will be sold for pennies on the dollar as only 1 month and even 1 day loans from the Federal Reserve will have any demand. Meanwhile, the price of hard assets, gold and silver especially, will rise incentivizing investors to buy physical metals instead of other forms of savings. This moment is when the market signals start working for wealth and not against it. Similar to how an addict hits rock bottom and the pain of that crash awakens them from the delusion of their addiction, so to will this death spiral awaken market actors to real value, tangible productive assets. My prediction is that right now, before any of the extra crazy spending of the final days of the death spiral, an ounce of gold will buy the equivalent of $667,000 worth of goods and services and an ounce of silver will buy the equivalent of $45,000 worth of goods and services. This factors in not only the global debt of $315T but also the global derivatives exposure on the debt of at least $4 Quadrillion. In other words, for the price of $10.20 or .34 ounces of silver, a person will be able to feed a family of 4 for a year assuming $300 a week for groceries. Here are some other price predictions that would be in alignment with this calculation.
- Cost of Electricity for family of 4 for 12 months: $1.06 | $10.64 (0.035 ounces)
- Porsche 911 Turbo: $110,000 in 2024 | $73 in silver (2.44 ounces)
- $1 million home anywhere in 2024 : $666 in silver (22.22 ounces)
https://www.apmex.com/product/189172/american-silver-eagles-random-year-20-coin-mintdirect-tube
I have bought most of my silver and gold from APMEX and have never had an issue with their delivery. I have no affiliation with APMEX.
Keep Digging
For those who are interested, you can follow me on TikTok or read a few other relevant articles on this subject at the links below.
How to get a $107,000 Porsche 911 Turbo for $15,000:
Call for a Nationwide Debt Strike:
All Above or All Below The Law: A Case Against Fraud
Primer into Understanding the Federal Reserve System
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