Trillion Dollar Coin vs Wampum

There has been some talk that the Federal government should settle the national debt by minting a platinum coin and arbitrarily give it a trillion dollar valuation. Native Americans did something similar when they gave great value to what they called wampum. Wampum was considered valuable because shells were difficult to find, did not exist everywhere and there was intensive labor involved. What we would consider trinkets were consider valuable by Native Americans. Other than just because we say it is what could make any coin worth a trillion dollars?

In early America there was the argument over how much profit a pious person should make on a given transaction called the "fair price" controversy in the Puritan communities. Our culture does not understand the question.  Free market theory dictates one motive in economic culture: getting the max. Early colonists combined piety and humility into their economic lives. Spiritual considerations. There is the story about the English merchant, Robert Keayne, who couldn't stop confessing the sin of overcharging. Keayne was a Puritan tradesman from London who made it big and set up trade over here and got caught up in overcharging.

He wrote of his remorse in his 50,000 word will, 158 pages, which explored the whole business of revaluing, of cheating, etc.  The question he addressed was could you be a Christian and make money.

Some argued that Protestants were driven to make money and create urban centers of wealth to display it because these were an external sign that one had been saved, chosen by God to enter into his grace and be redeemed. But in fact most of the Protestant heretics who settled America believed that salvation was a matter between God and the individual, no matter what their bank balance---and that too much wealth could signify the opposite of sanctification: greed and spiritual degradation. Thus the "fair price" controversy called the "Puritan "double bind." They were against exhibitionism. There were moral prohibitions against making as much as you possibly could---that's not good! You have to do it within constraints.  

Compare that with our wealth worshiping culture, our attitude toward the "1 percent"---envy and moral disapproval. Maybe judges should sentence insider traders to write a 50,000-word apology while in prison. 

 

 

John Jenkins
865-803-8179  cell
Gatlinburg, TN



Email: jrjenki@gmail.com
Blogs: http://littlepigeon.blogspot.com/
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"If stupidity got us into this mess, then why can't it get us out?" 

 

--- Will Rogers (1879-1935)

 

 

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