[This is part 1 in a series on the temptation of Egypt. See part two, three, four, five]

Leaving Egypt Ministries, Obadiah D. Morris

States are nothing more than a gang of men who have successfully organized their plunder on a social-political scale and have managed to obtain legitimacy in the eyes of the people whom they rob. These organizations originate in robbery and subsist on continuous extortion of the tax slaves who they manage to gain control over. They do not produce any wealth themselves but operate by forcibly extracting wealth from those who do. They function as institutions of legalized robbery and coercion that live at the expense of other people. They are systems that “oppress the poor to increase their own wealth” (Proverbs 22:6). 

In essence, states are parasitic organizations that live off the productivity of the private economy, extorting populations under the guise of protecting them. They stifle economic progress, disrupt order, pervert justice, and cause a decline of civilized society for all those trapped within their reach.

Despite the expansive size of the American government, all which has been funded through theft, many people see little wrong with the current state of things. They assume that ongoing economic prosperity that remains despite the greatly destructive interventionist regime we live under is either causal to it or at least unhindered by it.

Whatever problems may be pointed out, a prevailing opinion is still that the U.S. is “the best country in the world” and that “if you don’t like it you can leave.” They suggest either that the government has contributed to our greatness, or that it hasn’t done much to hurt it. While some may claim that their “love of country” does not equate to a love of government, most often you see these same people attribute American success to the very plunderous institutions like the U.S. military who they cite as giving us everything we have today. They say that we are to “thank a veteran” for everything we have today, thereby confessing that they think squandering trillions of dollars of stolen taxpayer money on a military is in fact causal to prosperity and liberty. 

Though some people are beginning to see the problems today, still many think that all is good and well in Babylon and that you’re just an ingrate if you complain about the American way. They see things as going rather fine here and ignore the looming disasters that all governments always have waiting for their people. Men have always been willing and able to avoid the prevalent evils of society, so long as it’s their neighbor getting beat up by a law enforcement officer rather than themselves. They have always kept quiet about the evils of their statist societies, so long as they felt they could squeeze by in life without it affecting them too directly. As Aleksander Solzhenitsyn once wrote, “Everything…which does not threaten this very day to invade our threshold – with all its groans, its stifled cries, its destroyed lives, even if it involves millions of victims – this we consider on the whole to be perfectly bearable and of tolerable proportions.”

Since things have not completely fallen apart for now, many men still venerate the American system as “the best in the world,” even as it siphons-off trillions of dollars in resources from the people to fund its wasteful and destructive military operations and countless other endeavors. In fact, you should stop complaining about this plunder and “thank a vet” that you’re even standing here and able to complain today in English! “Without them you’d be speaking German or Arabic.” You shouldn’t be complaining about being robbed, because “taxation is the price we pay for civilization.”

As we see, men have made all sorts of justifications in their minds for the plunder system we live under, which enslaves men under the premise that they would have nothing at all without the tax-slavery. They are then able to think that these wealth-destroying actions—taxation, regulations, monetary inflation, thousands of legislative laws, thousands of bureaucracies—actually produce a net-benefit of freedom and prosperity, justifying the immoral means of robbing people and waging war in the name of “American freedom.” Revering the State as their god, they claim that we would have nothing if it were not for the vast robbery of tax-funded political systems, particularly the funds which go into its military. Rather than acknowledge that God creates wealth and does so supernaturally for those who follow His ways, they attribute the source of their “prosperity” and “freedom” to their god the State, falsely believing their empire’s ability to generate wealth through oppression will last forever.

Getting away with plunder 

So how is it that the American plunder system is so large and yet it has not yet collapsed of its own weight? Doesn’t economics tell us that intervention can only lead to destruction? How is it that the American system might appear to some to have defied God’s economic law that plundering men leads to impoverishment? 

While governments do not directly create wealth, we might concede that the power of an empire can sustain its disruptive activities for a time. Although taxes, regulations, and other interventions destroy wealth, the empire’s ability to control and exploit resources worldwide may contribute to American prosperity to some degree — or at the very least its dominant status keeps the plunder scheme from unraveling. 

This shouldn’t be that surprising that empires may bring temporary benefits even while simultaneously plundering and ultimately impoverishing its people. The reigning empires or superpowers of the world are typically able to enrich themselves at the expense of all other countries around the world during their existence as the top powers. 

The methods of imperialist benefits

So how do they do it? Why is the U.S. still apparently prosperous despite its great size and intervention? Are we to think this is proof that socialism actually works?

There are many reasons why the American system can get away with its plunder for the time being. But perhaps the primary method is monetary. The global supremacy of the U.S. dollar, which gained “world reserve” status after World War II, has been a key instrument for maintaining an exploitative global economic order. In the postwar period, global elites conspired to establish a new international monetary system and institutions like the IMF and World Bank to help make this possible. This process continued further after the last vestiges of the “gold standard” were abandoned in the 1970s when Nixon closed the “gold window.” By that time, the long and deliberate corruption of money was complete, leaving a global “monetary” system of fluctuating fiat currencies disconnected to any gold reserve. The “U.S. dollar” emerged as the dominant currency around the world. 

When your currency that you create on command is the primary “money” used around the world, great benefits are able to flow to your kingdom despite the destructive policies that are carried out on the other hand. With its phony fiat money dominating global exchange around the world, the American system has been able to inflate its currency with great impunity. An increase in the supply of money always means an increase in prices in economic theory. Rising prices are explained by monetary inflation. When many others demand your currency outside your own economic system, however, the value of this depreciated currency is held up higher than it would be without it. 

That this increased supply of dollars is used worldwide helps to prop up their value and prevent rapid increases of domestic prices that would occur if they were confined to the American economy. This has artificially inflated the wealth of the American system beyond what it would be if the effects of monetary inflation were more immediately felt (though, of course, we would be much richer without such inflation at all). If the effects were more immediate, as they would be without this “world reserve” status, the American government would be forced to cut its budgets, curb its inflation, and pay higher interest rates on its debt. Instead, they have been able to do the opposite: print money to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars, expand their budgets, and keep the cost of their own borrowing down by having foreigners purchase government debt, which pushes interest rates down and further perpetuates the debt-fueled economy. 

By “printing money” out of thin air in a world where everyone uses its fiat currency, the American system is able to draw resources into itself, maintain government spending, keep growing its debts, and avoid economic trouble. This allows the U.S. to “export” inflation by flooding the global economy with dollars, rather than just the domestic market. The inflated supply of dollars is then absorbed by foreign central banks and others willing to hold them, which keeps local prices from rapidly rising, as the inflationary pressure is diffused worldwide instead of concentrated within the U.S. economy.

While it’s true that governments are drains on production, being that they exist by taxing productive people, the global status of the American system has allowed it to avoid disaster for the time being. It has allowed men to think that everything is going great here, despite the destructive policies being carried out on the other hand. Though a world without any government or intervention is always preferable, the destructive effects of government intervention, tax plunder, central banks, and fiat currency expansion have been somewhat mitigated by America’s position as the global “superpower.” The imperialist position of the American state has made it possible that the plunderous acts of the empire have not been immediately punished. It has enabled the regime to flood the world with dollars and finance its own spending without an immediate threat of those dollars flooding back and crashing the domestic economy. This has allowed for vast credit expansion and debt monetization without an immediate reckoning. 

Delaying the reckoning 

In short, the unique privileges afforded to the American system as the world’s dominant power have, for now, shielded it from the full consequences of its own statist policies and debt-fueled economy — an insulation that cannot last indefinitely.

Though governments only destroy wealth, such things as enjoying “world reserve” status for its fiat paper money has allowed the American regime to engage in great evils without the chickens coming home to roost. It has been able to perpetrate its schemes and maintain an illusion of prosperity due to its status as a global power, and will be able to continue to do so until domestic price inflation finally inflicts pain upon the people who tolerated these systems. Until then, the devilish temptation to try and enrich oneself through monetary inflation continues. 

Despite the view that all is well in America because the system has so far avoided collapse, there is little cause for celebration or advocacy of the methods used to achieve such “prosperity.” Even if empires can temporarily enrich their people relative to others around the world, such imperialist approaches to prosperity are unsustainable and come with great consequences. They do not create lasting wealth, only the illusion of riches at the expense of others. A truly free economy, not one based on plunder, violence, credit expansion, and debt, is the only sustainable approach. Ultimately, the actions of governments only destroy everything and everyone. The prosperous days of the empires become just a memory. 

While there may be some temporary “benefits” to living under an empire, this is not to say that things like the dollar being the “world reserve” currency are actually benefits to Americans. Nor does it mean that empires truly make men prosper, do not destroy wealth, or are sustainable means of having a prosperous society. It only means that such systems are able to do things like run up great debts and inflate the supply of money without suffering immediate consequences for doing so. Americans would, of course, still be better off without any monetary inflation or government spending whatever, and any pain that will come from an end of the currency’s world reserve status—dollars flowing back in and driving up domestic prices—would ultimately be an issue of the original inflation and not the loss of this status. Those who are more focused on maintaining this “world reserve” status should worry more about the amount of monetary inflation the regime engages in. 

For now the circumstances of the Empire—everyone around the world accepts its dollars—permit it to keep up these policies that eventually spell its decline. The inflationists realize that the expanded money supply will not immediately result in depreciation on global markets. The deliberate devaluation of their fake, forced, fiat paper currency can be delayed and postponed. The U.S. government’s “world reserve” status creates artificial demand for their wicked currency, which helps offset the inflationary pressure that would normally accompany an increased money supply. Without these factors, the failures of American statism would be more quickly exposed.

A system built on plunder

None of these plunderous ways can last forever, though. It is built on the back of credit expansion and the ability to purchase goods in the present at the cost of future poverty, future price increases, and future taxation. This is a system built on theft and credit and debt. The American Empire is a system that “tramples the needy,” that “cheats with dishonest scales,” and “buys the needy for a pair of sandals” (Amos 8:4-8). It is a system that “devours the vineyard,” “plunders the poor,” “crushes people,” and “grinds the faces of the poor” (Isaiah 3:14-15). This is a system that “covets fields and seizes them,” “takes away houses,” “deprives a man of his home and of his inheritance” (Micah 2:2). 

This system has been built up by robbing and exploiting its own domesticated tax-cattle as well as other hapless victims around the world, which may well be allowing Americans to live better than other people around the world, or least better than they would be if such policies were carried out at the same rate without the temporary benefits of empire. 

For now, the empire has been able to saddle future generations with debt and borrow at the expense of the future, giving the appearance of great prosperity in the present and leading men to maintain their confidence and faith in these systems of men. 

At any rate, the false prosperity of the American Empire existing alongside greatly destructive acts of intervention cannot last forever. All such statist systems must come under judgment for their evils, and God always allows them to destroy themselves. 

What has remained of “American prosperity” has allowed Americans to grow comfortable and complacent under it, not seeing that these systems must pay the price for any unjust and unrighteous gains they once got away with. The illusion of prosperity here makes men imagine that the ways of the empire can go on forever — that we can afford to slap tariffs, economic sanctions, and embargoes on foreigners and even go to war with them to have our way. The American system has been able to look prosperous by borrowing against the future, which eventually exposes its utter lack of real wealth, savings, and production.

Conclusion

While the empire has been successful at kicking the can down the road a few more decades or generations, whenever the day comes that foreigners realize the U.S. dollar is not a viable “reserve currency,” or that an alternative to it is presented, the American economy is in for a rude awakening. The government will no longer be able to keep the empire running on the devil’s money printer. 

Until the day of reckoning, the delayed negative effects of the American State’s destructive acts has allowed men to keep their faith in such systems to maintain prosperity for them. They believe that the ways of the empire are not actually destructive, and that the American way of bullying people around the world and spending trillions of dollars to maintain a military is actually a genuine path of peace and prosperity. Thus, many have been suckered into apologizing for this system, not seeing what it will eventually mean for them. Even today, as prices of nearly all domestic goods are beginning to rise, Americans can’t believe that it could be happening to them. They thought they could champion trillion-dollar wars in the Middle East and trillion-dollar “stimulus” programs without paying the price for it — and for some time it has been the case.

But the day of reckoning is coming. Those who continue to trust in men to keep providing for them are in for a surprise. It turns out that “the American way” can’t last forever. Will people see the need to abandon the political means of securing liberty and prosperity once it becomes more evident it could never work in the long run? Will they wake up and abandon these ways? Will they see the need to walk out of Egypt and follow God? Who knows. Most often, men beg for more of the same destructive policies once the initial ones failed to work. Most often, men fail to heed the words of the prophets coming to them telling them that Egyptian societies always fall apart and take everyone down with them.