http://www.allanmunger.org
Last
edited 10th January 2010
Welcome
to
the web site of
Allan Henry Munger,
now semi-retired, living Magaliesburg,
born Johannesburg 10th September 1941,
South African citizen of many generations
of English, Norwegian,
Irish and Afrikaans (Flemish) descent.
The
most recently arrived ancestor & first Munger in South
Africa swam to this country in 1852 from the shipwrecked H.M.S.
Birkenhead
(the biggest shipping disaster of it’s time - 450 men stood to
attention singing God Save the Queen while the ship went down)
bringing with him his infantry battalion Captain Lucas, who
could not swim, for which Sergeant Munger,
rather than being shot for desertion, was awarded a VC for having saved
the life of an officer.
This site is intended to serve as
a family historical information record and also serves
temporarily as a
repository for some selected articles from the writings of it’s owner.
The first of such selected
articles follows
and is of profound interest to all those thinking people who are
concerned
about the mess humanity is now in...
the foolish injustices, the lunatic inhumanity of man towards his
fellow
man and the uncertain future of humanity
..........if indeed humanity does have any future.
It has far reaching effects because once widely known it removes the
support which the megalists have for so long so fraudulently held
and it strips away their false pretences with which they have so long
been
so splendidly robed and lets them stand naked, exposed,
whereupon they at last are seen for what they are: but
pathetically
inadequate little insecure fools trying to play God.
The
Irreconcilable Differences
Between
Capitalism
& Free Enterprise ©
By Allan Henry Munger
Subject
to some conditions, free reproduction and distribution
permissions are contained in the copyright caveat at the foot.
The
worst enemy of Capitalism is none other than Free Enterprise (hereinafter ‘Freeventurism’) and the worst enemy of
Free Enterprise / Freeventurism is none other than Capitalism and the time has come for
this to be clearly understood.
How do we know ?
For
more than a hundred years there has been an ongoing deliberate effort
to create the false impression that Capitalism supported Free
Enterprise/ Freeventurism and Democracy.
In other words Capitalism has been hiding behind Free Enterprise and also behind
Democracy, by pretending to support them. That has always
been false, as becomes obvious once the basic differences between the
purposes of Capitalism and Freeventurism are clearly
distinguished. Now to achieve a particular purpose, appropriate
methods need to be used; and to achieve a different purpose other
methods are used. The differences of purpose of
Capitalism and Freeventurism become obvious upon examining the methods
employed by each and also the different political and social climates
necessary for those methods to succeed. This examines the
differences between True Freeventurism and the worst examples of
Capitalism (megalism). Admittedly there exists between these two
extremes a large grey area where people do this or that,
without caring or being fully conscious of the consequences of their actions or
to what they lead.
Methods of Freeventurism
The
fundamental method of Freeventurism is to trade value for value, to
produce a reasonable profit whereby the seller can prosper.
In order for this to be possible, the market must be free to purchase
whenever it may please, from whoever it may please,
at whatever mutually agreeable price may please, whatever it may
please (within reason: nuclear bombs should not be freely
available); and it must be free to purchase whatever quality
it may please (within reason: fraud, planned obsolescence,
wanton wastage and pollution do produce future economic and other
disaster). It is this freedom of choice which makes
Freeventurism so very, very democratic, for each and every buyer has a
choice and each and every seller has a choice. The success of a Free
Enterprise Venture is dependant upon it being able to find favour
amongst a large enough number of freely choosing customers.
Likewise the sellers have the freedom of choosing the conditions under
which they may wish to sell.
Cultural
climate needed for Freeventurism
This
method of producing prosperity is many, many thousands of years old and
owes its fundamental success to the very good and just incentives it
offers individuals to apply their minds and labours constructively and
efficiently. Free enterprise is known to be a much more
efficient, thoughtful, quicker and more market satisfying producer
than, say, bureaucratic institutions. However, in
order for it to properly take place it is necessary for all civilized
systems and services to be fully and efficiently functional.
Most important amongst these is a very good and very fair system of justice
in order to protect the productively engaged citizens from being robbed
of the fruits of their labours. Thus in order to have that
civilized climate, necessary for Freeventurism to flourish,
Democracy is essential... being the only way to
avoid the considerable shortcomings, mindless failings, stupid inconsiderateness
and unthinking blindness, insensitivities and criminal
selfishness of despotic Tyranny. Freeventurism also relies
upon free competition to keep it balanced and
healthy. True intelligent Freeventurism welcomes
competition, would guarantee its right to exist and protect it and
would never shut it down. Competition keeps us healthy AND alive
AND in touch with the requirements of the marketplace AND it keeps us
fit AND efficient AND thinking AND therefore better able to cope with
the changes and problems of tomorrow. The worst thing that
can happen to any enterprise is that all its competitors close down. In
this it must be noted that true Freeventurism can only be, is
and always has been the very strongest defender of civilized
order, thoughtful reasonable justice and thinking
democracy. The fundamental motto of true Freeventurism must
always be “DO NO HARM”.
Methods of Capitalism
Conversely,
the purpose of Capitalism is not so much to make a profit,
which is only incidental to its purpose, but to get much more than
that: much more than just a prosperous income. This goes
back to the deepest roots of Capitalism and the very reason it was
called Capitalism. Once again examining the methods used reveals the purpose.
The
very reason for the name Capitalist is the method
of applying the purchasing power and influence of accumulated capital
to squeeze out and close down all competitors in order corner the
market in order thereafter to be able to milk the captive market,
charging whatever price the Capitalist may wish. Note that this
is done in order to dominate and to force buyers to pay heavily.
It is also often used to force sellers to sell at starvation
prices. Is this done in order to make a healthy profit
? NO it is not, for it is completely unnecessary to mobilise
amassed capital to carry out such economically destructive campaigns
merely in order to make a healthy profit. In fact it would be
crazy to do so. It is done in order to produce an extortionate
profit because large masses of wealth are required in order to repeat
the process. Huge amounts of money/assets are to the Capitalist
but chips in the power game.
Whereas the
purpose of Capitalism is not to get better housing,
nor more or better food to eat,
nor better education of the children, for all of which the
Capitalist has no further need, since the Capitalist already has
those things; but the purpose is to gain power and ultimately
control over the markets supplied and also power and control of the
sources of supply and of the means of production including
labour; and in order to bring about such control the
Capitalist needs to totally destroy, bankrupt or chase away all
competition and to circumvent, alter or break or get rid of all
laws which get in the way; and in order to bring that about it is
necessary for the Capitalist to corrupt, or buy, or
overthrow all democracy. Capitalism must therefore be seen
not as the legitimate pursuit of reasonable profit but as the
endless, insatiable quest for power which must necessarily
require getting rid of Freeventurism and Democracy and Justice while
replacing them with total tyranny instead.
For
instance:
Examine the historical doings of that arch capitalist John Davison
Rockefeller I (1839-1937). Ida Tarbell (1), a very brave
lady, in 1905 wrote in McClures Magazine, very widely read, an article
about J.D.Rockefeller (2). The charge against him was that
he had persuaded the railroad directors to charge his competitors an
extra hundred percent, doubling their transportation cost;
and he persuaded the railroads to pay that extra hundred per cent to
him and furthermore give him a special rebate on his own transportation
of oil, whereby he made it impossible for his competitors to
continue in business and so he bought their businesses at prices
suitable to him, where after he used his financial muscle to buy
oil in bulk, thereby to force the best prices from
suppliers, then he used the proceeds to buy up the oil
refineries and to buy up the railroads and the banks and thus having
enabled his company to sell oil much cheaper then took over large areas
of the market and having forced competitors out of business thereafter
bought up the producers entire production at very much lower prices for
there was no one else producers could sell to; thus a large
section of the market was monopolized where after the end user was
forced to pay much higher prices for there was no one else to buy
from. These methods are the methods of a capitalist,
carried out to an extreme.
Cultural climate of Capitalism
Professor
Ferdinand Lundberg reported in “The Rich and the Super Rich” (3) that
the Attorney General of Ohio testified in court that Rockefeller’s
Company had tried to bribe him and his predecessors. In his
1899 annual report to the Governor of Ohio, the Attorney General
detailed six attempts to bribe his predecessors as well as the $400,000
bribe offered to himself. In 1899, $400,000 was quite a lot
of money. Anyone who is criminal enough to attempt to bribe the
Attorney General and the next Attorney General and the next Attorney
General, will stop at bribing no one.
Will a criminal who is criminal enough to bribe anyone,
no matter who or how high, have scruples at using the “poor man’s
bribery”, namely blackmail? Would a criminal so bad as to use
bribery and blackmail against high officials, hesitate to bribe
competitors staff and hesitate to employ industrial espionage and
industrial sabotage? It seems he was not a man that respected
the democratically decided laws. One cannot truthfully claim to
uphold democracy if one is not prepared to abide by the democratically
decided law. The democratic formulation of the law is what
democracy is all about.
Done
partly, no doubt, in order
to counteract his increasingly bad name he also embarked on some
massive apparently philanthropic activity with carefully managed
publicity. Indeed people such as he would been a major
influence in bringing about changes to US law whereby donations to
non-profit philanthropic institutions and the institutions themselves
would escape all tax. He created several such
entities, no doubt all run by boards consisting of people
acceptable to him. Of course those institutions were run by
professors, doctors, lawyers, churchmen and other professionals,
but not by businessmen of his calibre. So, in
donating company stock to those institutions, would he have not
retained in perpetuity the proxies for the vote entitlements of those
shares and probably even had the agreement that he could swap stock for
other stock of like or better value? In such a way he would never
have lost control of all that capital but merely changed the name of
the owner, shifting it to another pocket where it would remain tax
free. Therefore what the foundations and various institutes
and trusts gained was not simply a massive cash donation as naive
people might ignorantly believe, but rather it was the dividend income
accruing to such investments AND considerable credit lines being opened
to them for their having been created or supported and funded by
Rockefeller. Furthermore the income that such institutions
received would largely have been funded by the US tax paying citizen by
way of the tax which would otherwise have had to be paid on those
dividends. Taken in context therefore it must be seen that the
largesse of the altruism was not that large and in fact it did benefit
the donor with a very large spin off - for it all very
strongly augmented the commercial power wielding and did so at
considerable expense to the taxpayer.
John D
Rockefeller I was not a free-enterprisist. He hated free-enterprise and
attempted to stamp out his competition. He was Freeventurism’s worst enemy.
His method was to stamp out competition so to corner and milk the
market and so his interest was only in getting money, not making
money, but just getting it in massive amounts by any
means. He apparently hurt so many decent people in
doing it, that his underground reputation must have been
disgusting, so much so that he had to spend in his lifetime
$446 719 371 in outlays (many of them actually tax dodges) to
philanthropic/non-profit enterprises, in an attempt, with such
donations, to buy back public respect and his self respect.
Examples
of the methods employed by Capitalists are everywhere and repeatedly
one finds that the methods chosen display not a motive of simply
wanting a reasonable or honest profit but are specifically designed to
gain power over the market, close down free enterprise
competition, gain power over suppliers, power over the
labour force, power over the law enforcers and lawmakers and
politicians and political parties and the media and thus to hobble
democracy, in fact to destroy democracy.
The
smoke & mirrors swept away
To
prevent the true nature of their game being publicly realised, so
harmfully have malfeasant capitalists and their public relations
experts made the frequent false claim that they support free enterprise
and democracy, that all humanity has been bamboozled into
thinking Capitalism, Democracy and Free Enterprise all to be the same
thing. The truth is that criminal Capitalism has long been
noted for hatred of Democracy, because democracy would prevent
their corrupt practices, election crookery, political
manipulation and despotic control. Likewise criminal Capitalists
have a long and disgusting record of destroying, wiping
out, free enterprise competition wherever it gets in their
way. This sadly causes us all endless confusion. It
is time for the confusion to be swept away. In doing so it is
imperative that in order to unbundle the confusion of Capitalism,
Democracy and Free Enterprise we should name them to clearly
distinguish what we mean. Whereas "Freeenterprisesism" is
awkward and unspellable, herein genuine free enterprise is
referred to as "Freeventurism" and that fundamental criminal
malfeasance which is the worst ‘Capitalism’ is referred to as "Megalism".
Such clear differentiation between Freeventurism and Megalism is most important
to understanding what goes on. To further understand the difference
between Freeventurism and Magalism it is necessary to understand the nature and
result of the pursuit of power.
The power problem
The
problem with power is that power always needs more power to protect it
and the more power is amassed the more power is needed to protect that;
and the more people tramped on to get power the more power is
needed. The more power the power junkie has the more
power is needed. Power is something like a black hole in
space: difficult to escape and the more gets sucked into it the
stronger it gets. Eventually massive power assembled
becomes itself the greatest threat to its master and,
Frankenstein monster like, it always turns upon and destroys its
own master. Power is a tiger and whoever rides upon the back of
that tiger cannot easily dismount; which is why wise men prefer
to regard power as an illusion which they refuse to gather or ever rely
upon. Too greatly accumulated power jumps and blows all
circuits. It is uncontainable. Power is
the worst narcotic there is. It makes heroin look
like a jelly bean. Whoever grabs power does so because they feel
insecure. There is no other reason. That comes about
because they feel inadequate. There is no other reason. The
more someone grabs power to compensate for feeling inadequate,
the more dishonorable the acts which have to be committed to achieve
the power grab. The more power grabbed, the more one needs to
grab power. The longer it goes on the worse the secret activities
necessary to achieve it. Eventually gross crimes against humanity
are perpetrated in secret. Crimes against humanity are only
carried out by only power grabbers only and no one else.
It should
now be obvious that Megalism cannot reform but can only self destruct.
Summary
The
purposes of Freeventurism and Megalism (capitalism) being completely at
cross purposes to each other, Freeventurism is Megalism’s
(capitalism's) worst enemy and Megalism is Freeventurism's worst
enemy. Neither can exist where the other is allowed to
rule. To win, Capitalism/Magalism needs tyrannical, fascist power
whereas for Freeventurism to flourish it needs a healthy, civilized,
just, fair, law abiding, democratic, truly moral and free
society. The ultimate outcome of Capitalism is a somewhat
wobbly society despotically ruled by a single Tyrant whereas the
ultimate outcome of Freeventurism is a society composed of a very, very
large number of separate, individual, prosperous businesses
and other autonomous groups populated by free people freely competing
without being enemies; such individuals, companies and groups all
healthy and vigorous, all necessarily strongly supportive of
justice, especially social justice and necessarily strongly supportive
of democracy and liberty.
In
particular Freeventurism needs to have a very good, autonomous and
politically unassailable law
system
in order to prevent that criminal abuse of free enterprise which
becomes Megalism.
The
essential irreconcilable differences between Freeventurism (free
enterprise)
and
Megalism (capitalism) need to be well and widely understood.
(1)
& (2) Ida M Tarbell (History of Std Oil Co)
http://www.history.rochester.edu/fuels/tarbell/CONTENTS.HTM
http://tarbell.allegheny.edu/sitemap.html
http://tarbell.allegheny.edu/archives/jdr.html
(3)
“THE RICH & THE SUPER-RICH” by Ferdinand Lundberg. Published
Lyle Stuart Inc. June 1968. 9th printing March 1969.
&
Identical Text Bantam soft cover edition published 1969 - 4th printing.
Copyright
Sept 2009 A.H.Munger
While
the author still retains ownership of this copyright,
conditional
permission is hereby granted to every reader, all humanity, (subject to
the conditions that the title and wording are faithfully reproduced
without any changes and the authorship and copyright are fully
acknowledged) to freely copy or reproduce and distribute this article
by any means and may do so freely
for their own gain if they
wish, but in all cases subject to the further
conditions that
this copyright holder is kept informed (e-mail: webmaster at
allanmunger dot org) and that this permission shall be valid only until
the beginning of the year 2015 whereafter no further new reproduction or
distribution may be
made without arrangement with the copyright holder.
If
you agree
with this article please bring it to the attention of whoever else you
know who you think will also agree with it, but do not waste
your time giving it to those who cannot dare to
agree.
Alternatively if any reader wishes to donate to help keep this vehicle
for the above article running, such donations will be gladly received.
Please
e-mail the author: allan
at allanmunger dot org (Here written
to avoid spam-address-hunting robots, but should be
written as normal e-mail address)
It is the authors ultimate
intention for this article to have its own web site to globally promote
and record the
advance of this comprehension.
Once widely
and well
understand the power grabbers will not be able to get away with
instigating war.
Wars cannot be prevented UNTIL
this
matter is widely and well understood.
This is a vital stepping stone to the prevention of war.