The Promises Men Live By: A New Approach to Economics

CONTENTS Introductory: In Which Some Peculiarities of Economics as a Science Are Considered and the Intention of This Inquiry Is Set Forth I • We Take Hold of a Loose End of Truth in the Tangle of Human Affairs II • Some Basic Psychological Aspects of Labor to Which Long Habit Has Blinded Men III • The Role of Promises in Production—Revealing How Almost All Modern Wealth Is Given Away as Soon as Possible after It Is Produced IV • To Market! To Market! The Only Economic Area Where Swaps Now Take Place as They Did at the Dawn of Human Society V • Are the Promises of Consumers Dangerous or Beneficial?—A Common Fallacy about Instalment Contracts VI • A Brief Analysis of the Compulsions Behind Economic Promises, and Why the Promises That Center Around Rent Are Unique VII • The Vital Differences Between Short and Long Prom¬ ises—and Why the Long Promises That Center Around Land Have Produced the Same Type of Events as Far Back as There Are Records VIII • How Banks Constitute the Focal Points of the Interdependent Promises of Men IX • How Bank Promises Are Used as Money Far More Than Money Itself, and How the Creation of Bank Money Is Controlled X • The Center of the Vast Spider Web of Promises in Each Nation—Its Central Bank; and How It Ties up the Promises of Individuals with Those of Governments XI • How the Promises Made to and Made by Insurance Companies Differ from Those of Banks XII • How Our Loose End of Truth Explains the Rise of Corporations a?id One of the Most Deep-Going Changes in the Long Career of Human Beings on the Planet XIII • Government Promises and How They Reliability with Those of Individuals XIV • A Simple Explanation of Money, with a Little History, Revealing How Its Modern Mysteries Principally Arise from Failure to Distinguish between a Promise and a Thing XV • Why Is Gold the World's Money? XVI • The True Relation of Governments to Money and What the Record Shows about Three Thousand Years of Fraud XVII • How Paper Money Originated from the Fraud of Rulers XVIII • How All the Considerations Which Affect Other Economic Promises Govern Modem Money As Well XIX • Who Owns What Today? How Modern Ownership of Wealth Dijfers from That of All Our Ancestors INDEX