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    Opinion | An Ancient Sumerian Solution to Our $40 Trillion Deficit (Gift Article)


    This author has a brave idea inspired by ancient times: just cancel all public debt and hope nothing bad happens. If populists like Catiline and Agis IV could campaign on it, why can’t we? Fuck Cicero and fuck Leonidas.

    Posted by cdstephens

    View 11 Comments

    11 Comments

    1. ModernirsmEnjoyer on

      Just print money and use it to pay debt

      How people are this stupid that they haven’t figured it out

    2. AnachronisticPenguin on

      Guys what if we just made money free. I mean its not like we cant just make more of it whenever we want.

    3. AtomAndAether on

      Just refuse to pay your debts. What could go wrong?!?

      Anyway, someone let me borrow $5

    5. RandomGuyWithSixEyes on

      Mesopotomian solution: promise high quality products but actually send low quality products

    7. Adminisnotadmin on

      there are actual discussions of just cancelling the public debt in mainstream media

      it’s so over

    9. anangrytree on

      As Lord Stark put it “duty is sacrifice” and debt comes with the duty to pay. That requires sacrifice.

      They hate that.

    10. cdstephens on

      From the same author: Jesus died for debt cancellation

      https://paulvigna.substack.com/p/jesus-died-for-debts-not-sins

      > You all probably know the story of Yeshua throwing the money-changers out of the temple, but if you don’t know this background you don’t really understand the significance of what he did. When he and his followers ransacked the temple, they were upending the economic life of Jerusalem. Yeshua was actually executing an ad-hoc amargi, because once his followers swarmed in and took over the temple, you can imagine what happened to the money and the records.

      > The other context you probably never learned is this: At the time, 33 AD, the Roman Empire was embroiled in a financial crisis every bit as debilitating as our 2008 crisis. A banking firm named Maximus and Vibo was rendered insolvent when two of its customers, an importer in Alexandria and an inking concern in Tyre, went bankrupt. Maximus and Vibo’s insolvency sparked a chain reaction across the Roman financial system. Banks from the capital out to the hinterlands closed their doors in the face of bank runs. The entire credit system froze. And in one corner of the empire, a*t the exact same time*, an itinerant preacher was demanding the restoration of a long-forgotten law that wiped out debt.

      > Kind of puts the story in a different light doesn’t it? Debt forgiveness was once a real thing, the creditor class killed it off, Yeshua tried to revive it, and got crucified for it. The Romans mockingly called him the king of the Jews — he did after all try to seize a power reserved for kings — his followers earnestly believed he was their king, and as was the custom back then a god. And through the centuries and millennia the god story was reinforced generation after generation and the debt story was buried and forgotten, to the point where you have to squint through the Gospels to see it.

      > But I think the story I’ve just told is closer to the truth. And sheds an important light on a long-forgotten but important tool for solving the problem of overwhelming, unpayable debts. Yeshua tried to revive that tool and failed. And for the next two thousand years we have been denied the most common-sense solution there is for solving the problem of overwhelming debt. Now, with the U.S. national debt growing exponentially, about to cross the $40 trillion mark, with global debt topping $300 trillion, we seem to be helplessly watching as overwhelming debt once again threatens to collapse society. There is a method for dealing with this, if we can wrap our heads around it. Bringing back debt forgiveness is the resurrection story we really need right now.

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