It Seeeems the Numbers Are Off a Bit...

I have a question, a legitimate question. I really don't have the answer to it. I think I may know, but I confess I do not know for sure. I am on the lookout for the answer, and look forward to meeting the kind soul who does know it.

I was introduced to a figure that is the most reasonably accurate assessment of the value of the world's assets. Essentially, it is the total dollar value of all the world's "stuff," and, pretty much, the claims people have on that "stuff." That figure: $250 trillion, give or take a few trillion.

I then came across another figure, the total value of the world's derivatives claims. Derivatives are those fuzzy investment instruments that apparently comprise mathematics/finance experts' genius calculations that make up their value assessment claims. That figure?

A little over $1 quadrillion.

Now, there's a bit of a disconnect here, and seriously, I don't know how to resolve it. I emphasize this because I really do not want to presume anything--I just may not know enough about how all this works to get it. But honestly, I do want to get it.

The thing is, here's what I'm just not getting. If the total value of the earth's valuables is $250 trillion, how on earth--to use a phrase--could anyone say it is anything higher than that, much less four times as much?

Is it possible--and please correct me if I am wrong--that a whole bunch of people of whatever "investor" class is assessing things higher than they are simply to make the claim for the purpose of getting enough people to believe that claim so those people can hand over more of what things are truly valued at to said "investors"?

I mean, can it be that simple? Have we simply caught everyone with their hands in the value extraction cookie jar? Really, is it as simple as far too many people pulling that 25 cent cookie out and saying it's really a dollar?

Some of this possible condition--if it is indeed true--is revealed in Hernando de Soto's recent piece in the Wall Street Journal in which he addresses this idea. It certainly seems to confirm what I'm addressing here. De Soto is the fine economist who wrote the groundbreaking work The Mystery of Capital, detailing how much of the productive capacity out there could be used to generate great prosperity for all except that too many people are just too deceitful and the law is far too impotent to keep accurate enough records of people's capital to make up for that.

In the WSJ piece he reviews six procedures that must be in place for capital movement to happen the best, but sadly he won't speak about the one thing--or, really, The One by whom those things would actually occur.

One of them caught my eye. He intimated he concurred with both Adam Smith and Karl Marx that "Finance supports wealth creation, but in itself creates no value." Aside from the premise that no value is ever really created outside of God already creating it and that we merely discover it, this statement is just flatly wrong. Wow. Taking issue with Smith, Marx, and de Soto. How's that...

Well, the reason I make such a bold contention is that yes, indeed, we really do want iPods, pizzas, and sunglasses. The problem is that iPods, pizzas, and sunglasses can only get made with bold fluid capital movement. And if you are someone who provides the service of making capital movement bold and fluid,

Then you have value.

Sure a dollar is just a piece of paper. It in and of itself is not wealth. This is what Smith, Marx, and de Soto mean, I know. But the dollar used properly helps create wealth (confirmed by the triumvirate), therefore the one who uses it properly is worthy of his pay. He and his work do have value.

The quadrillion dollar question is

How is that done the best?

World people do business the World way, and too often they request that Caesar do the capital movement thing. "Here, Barack, move some capital around." Whew--good luck with that.

Has anyone ever considered letting Kingdom people to the capital movement thing? People so wholly abandoned to Christ and His bountiful provision of charity, joy, wonder-- yes, productive capacity? People who'd end up making 100 times what the World professes to have however shadowy that is? They proudly boast to have a $1 quadrillion claim on what is actually about $250 trillion of actual stuff.

In the Kingdom that'd be $250 quadrillion. Kinda squashes the piddly $1 quadrillion.

I just have to put de Soto's conclusion here. Here it is...

"Financial institutions will have to serve society and fully report what they own and what they owe -- just like the rest of us -- so that we get the facts necessary to find our way out of the current maze. They must begin learning to put on paper statements about facts, instead of statements about statements."

Annnd you're going to continue to trust sworn dutiful liars to actually do that?

What makes me particularly sad is that I just don't see a whole lot of Kingdom people out there boldly and fluidly challenging them and their lies to make real capital movement happen. This is another thing I may be very wrong about. I hope I am.

I'd just like to see people authentically drawing on the power of the living God and still worshipping Him no matter what, and out of that sowing the bounty everyone in the financial world is swirling about trying to fix. As it is, too many of those claiming to be Christ's are tied to the very World that moors capital to cinder blocks, and must then resign themselves to enlisting the best liars to jerk them around with their duplicitous value assessments of that capital.

Want facts about capital not just statements?

Try trusting in the One Who Is Fact.

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