The Evil and the Beast

“For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.” (Ephesians 6:12)

This is what it says in Ephesians 6:12, one of the most profound letters of the Apostle Paul, with the message: The spiritual battle of the Christian is not directed against other people (that is, not against “flesh and blood”), but against the invisible, spiritual powers of evil, including their evil ideas.

The State’s Coercive Money Monopoly

Biblically speaking, ideas are evil when they oppose God, His holiness, His order, and His love. When one reflects on the state’s compulsory money monopoly, its origins, and above all its consequences against this background, one quickly arrives at the conclusion: This is certainly not a good idea, but a bad one. It is, in fact, an evil idea that has come into the world. To recognize this, one should recall the works of the economist Carl Menger (1840-1921).

As early as 1871, he pointed out that money had arisen spontaneously from the voluntary transactions of people in a free market, specifically from a commodity, above all from gold and silver; that money, therefore, had come into the world in a “natural,” voluntary way. Of course, commodity money was not perfect, it had its problems. One need only think, for example, of counterfeiting money: casting coins with inferior metal and/or reducing the weight of coins by “clipping.”

Counterfeiting money is probably as old as money itself. The punishments for it, however, were also very severe. The counterfeiter faced death by fire in antiquity, boiling oil, chopping off of hands, hanging in the Middle Ages and early modern period, and even in the 19th century imprisonment or the death penalty. People were well aware of the evils of counterfeiting money: counterfeit money destroys trust in money and thus in the division of labor, trade, and prosperity.

Counterfeiting money is a form of fraud, of lying, of destruction, and therefore belongs to the works of evil, because it perverts the order given by God. It is no coincidence that Dante Alighieri (1265-1321) in his epic poem The Divine Comedy places the money counterfeiters in the 8th circle of Hell, in the 10th ditch (Bolgia); this is also where alchemists, forgers of persons, as well as liars and false witnesses are banished.

“Legalized Counterfeiting of Money”

It is therefore not surprising that the path from commodity money to today’s fiat money was anything but flawless and innocent. The American economist Murray N. Rothbard (1926-1995) showed in his book What Has Government Done To Our Money (1963) how the state, in a process that admittedly stretched over a long period of time, literally seized money, replacing commodity money with its own arbitrarily expandable fiat money.

More precisely: The American state committed a serious breach of contract at the latest on August 15, 1971, by willfully ending the redeemability of banknotes and deposits in gold. The U.S. dollar was thereby literally cut off from gold, and thus arbitrarily expandable from then on, and the money holders were robbed of their yellow metal. From Rothbard’s perspective, a system of “legalized counterfeiting of money” has emerged as a result.

The central banks, in close cooperation with the commercial banks, have since expanded the money supply (in the form of “money substitutes,” i.e., banknotes and checking deposits) through credit creation, without the quantity of real money, the “base of money gold,” increasing. Economically speaking, Rothbard argues, it is irrelevant whether private counterfeiters are at work here or whether the central and commercial banks are increasing the money supply through credit expansion. In any case, money is being counterfeited in the aforementioned sense when the connection to its value-creating foundation and physical anchor, gold, is arbitrarily severed by the state.

Inflation, Overconsumption, Debt Servitude, Corruption, and War Economy

The consequences of the multiplication of counterfeit money, of inflationary money, are well known: The purchasing power of money dwindles; saving is discouraged; some become richer at the expense of others; when the new money is created through credit, financial and economic disruptions occur; national economies sink into a swamp of debt; living on credit becomes the normal case, people become debt slaves; the state becomes ever larger and more powerful; corruption and cronyism spread; wars can be financed relatively easily and become more frequent; the morals and customs of people become shallow and decay; and economic decline of the commonwealth follows.

Precisely because one knows the “natural monetary order,” that is, a free market for money, and its functionality, one cannot avoid classifying the idea of the state’s coercive money production monopoly as a bad idea and, in view of its consequences, even as an evil idea; and viewing the state central bank, which embodies the compulsory money monopoly, as the “Beast” of evil. That is, the state central bank coercive monopoly as a visible embodiment of the invisible power of evil.

Territorial Compulsory Monopolist of Coercion and Violence

There is, of course, a direct link between fiat money and the state (as we know it today). In fact, today’s fiat money system would not be possible without the state. The state as a territorial compulsory monopolist with ultimate decision-making authority over all conflicts in its territory, and which also presumes to levy taxes (that is, to take something from people against their will), cannot link its origin and existence to a good idea either. The opposite is the case: The state is based on coercion and violence, on the intention of some to dominate, coerce, oppress, and plunder others.

Whoever does not wish to make the biblical connection to the problem of the state central bank coercive monopoly actually faces the same question: Is perhaps the state (as we know it today) not only the product of a bad idea, but perhaps also of an evil one? Rothbard would answer “Yes” without hesitation: The state as an institution of coercion and violence is based on an evil idea, because it systematically violates God’s order of individual freedom, of property, and of voluntary action; and an idea that promotes coercion instead of love, lies instead of truth (or even self-deification instead of the worship of God) is evil.

Spiritual-Christian Struggle Against Evil

The Christian mandate for action is thus virtually pre-formulated: To confront the evil ideas and their Beast. The Bible shows the way: Evil ideas are spiritual strongholds. One should take them captive, tear them down through God’s truth and overcome them with good, instead of ignoring them or fighting them with carnal means (2 Corinthians 10:4-5). It is therefore high time not to continue overestimating the effect of economic insights that have long been available about the state and its central bank coercive money monopoly, but to rely on the “spiritual armor” of Christianity, its biblical principles for the struggle against evil. Only with this help can one deal with the Evil and its Beast. Insights from economics alone will probably not suffice.