The Apriorian Apologetics Index

Consumerism is a social problem because it focuses spending on immediate gratification with low or zero rates of investment. Subsistence cultures are consumer cultures, because the focus is on immediate gratification. Investment, as much as exists, is in the good will of the tribe.

The expectation is that if the tribe member distributes a surplus to the tribe; the tribe will distribute any surplus back to him, in times of need. However, in times of universal shortages the lack of preparedness for an uncertain future has serious consequences.  

Consumption is not the same as consumerism. Consumerism is consumption that replaces investing.

The fact that this world offers a choice between consumerism and property accumulation does not make either response the correct one. The Bible tells us that accumulating property is not the right response to the problem of risk. But riotous living, as portrayed by the prodigal son, is not a wise path to follow, either.

Meritocrats prioritize investment over consumption. Consumption is considered a form of investing when it leads to property improvements. We do not accumulate property so much as add value to it. We do not need ten houses we need one ideal home.

Meritocrats policy puts more power into the hands of the property improver and less in those who only seek to accumulate more of the same thing. A Meritocracy will:

• Reduce taxes on property improvements.

• Increase the rate on passive income.

• Increase the capital gains tax.

• Eliminate income tax.

• Fund the establishment of Sovereign Tax Shelters. 

Consumerism is the consumption of output without investment or even maintenance. Debt is consumption without compensation. It is a symptom of freeloading. The debtor is a free rider for at least as long as he has debt

The rise in debt reflects the increase in consumerism. Scripture does not condone debt but what is more, it makes debt impossible. Cash accounting ties purchases to compensation. We pay for what we get.

Scripturalist groups prevent anyone from acquiring unearned income. The rentier does not exist, nor does those who are said to let their money work for them. 

Scripturals create a new, equity-based currency that cannot be inflated or exploited because it is not created out of assets. All conventional forms of money are formed from assets, which makes the prone to the formation of liabilities.

Liabilities are created when two or more parties have a vested interest in the same asset, for example a house with a lien.

Scripturalists will systematically return all asset-based currencies to issuer, thereby paying off debt.

Depopulation is considered a problem because our communities pay it forward. This seems to be a good thing in some cases, but nothing works better than each person paying their own way. When we had a large population spike after the second world war it was easy to make many promises to their parents about the benefits they would enjoy as they aged. But the Baby Boomers having provided the elder generation with this graceful retirement, expect the same to be done for them. Only instead of five workers looking after two retired persons, there are two workers looking after five retirees.

If the young was not expected to care for the old or the poor to keep the rich living in style, a declining population would not matter. Apriorian Dominion is an economic system that adjusts to a declining population systematically and in a balanced way so that there is no disruptions to anyones living standard.

What is a solution and what is a problem? These are important questions. The answers tell us what you think has merit. If we do not know what a solution is, how do identify a problem?

Apriorists believe a solution is something we can have faith in. If no one believes in it or has faith in it, it is not a solution. It is what we believe in that gives us our reality. 

For every solution there is a confirmation and a reassurance of faith. Solutions reduce fear because a solution reduces uncertainty. We have faith in what we believe in and we believe in what, over time, has demonstrated that it is a reliable answer. 

Investment adds equity or value, to assets. Investing is an activity driven by faith. We invest in what we trust. We trust what we know responds in a predictable way to a similar input. 

Consumption, linked to maintenance of what we value, is a form of investing. We must invest in the upkeep of what we value. But at some point, maintaining what we have lost faith in, is not a wise use of resources. 

Apriorists consider investing to be an exercise in faith. Secularists favor immediate gratification over deferred pleasure. They have little or no faith in the future.

• Apriorists prioritize investment over consumption and faith over fear.

• Apriorian communities make investing available to everyone.

• Apriorians invest in communities of faith to build up places of faith as a work of faith.

Freeloading is the pre-eminent evil.  Satan created freeloading, not God, this puts freeloading outside of Gods Kingdom. 

We do not own what we did not create. No one can justify taking what others created without eliminating their rights. This is why one will never hear anyone claim no one has a right to their personal possessions. If they did, they would even endanger their right to life.

Apriorian Dominion is an economic system and theory of rights that protects creator rights. We have a right to what we create but we have no claim to anything created by others. This goes for the natural world as well as the things created by human beings. This is why Jesus told the rich young man to sell all he had and give the proceeds to the poor. He had no right to these assets and to possess them meant he had no faith in his fellow Christians. He may have been going through the motions, but his heart was far from God.

The rich man cannot get to heaven because his possessions are a measure of his lack of faith.

It is important to understand freeloading has been with us since the dawn of time. It is even more important to prevent mankind from freeloading off of God as it is to stop freeloading of what belongs to us.

God created assets. Man creates equity which is the value we add to assets. The value belongs to us but the assets never do. We are permitted to own personal possessions as this is an acknowledgement of our humanity. But we ought never to own commercial assets or things we do not need for personal use.

To end freeloading all ownership that is not personal, will be eliminated. Small Groups prevent freeloading by:

• Re-structuring all commercial and unused assets held by private, semi-private and public individuals and agencies.

• All assets are held in trust by the Small Group as a foundation of which to build wealth.

• Apriorian Small groups pay for all work done and for all donations as an equity for debt swap. Equity is issued based on the asset acquired and deposited into the appropriate account.

Homelessness is a symptom not a disease. It cannot be solved by spreading the disease to more people. The world seems to address homelessness and the other social problems with the same response, take what exists and spread it around in a thinner layer, so that deprivation is even more prevalent. 

The lack of homes has only one cause, it is the result of too few people building too few homes. The problem cannot be fixed by anything or anyone that does not solve the problem of too few persons building too few homes.  The problem of homelessness cannot be fixed indirectly using more money or fewer restrictions. Only by transferring people away from parasitic activities such as politics and into productive activities, such as building homes, can we fix the problem.

The Apriorian Small Group Program:

• Removes people from passive activities and into active positions.

• People doing jobs that do not produce real products are transferred to a trade.

• Everyone is accountable for what they do or do not do.

• Small Group economics systematically weed out freeloaders’ and free riders.

• Apriorian economic policy is, zero tolerance for parasitism, this policy will result in the building of more homes.

Inflation is a consequence of free riding. It has to do with money only in the sense that asset-based currencies permit free riding. All free riding is a form of living without producing value sufficient to liquidate your costs. Inflation is a symptom and, in some ways, a measure of this.

There is a concept in capitalism that speaks of money working for the investor. This is a euphemism for unearned income. Rich people will use surplus income to invest in an enterprise that generates a re-occurring income steam and live off the avails of this. Owning rental properties is one example of what is meant by having money work for us.  

The investor is often not the person doing the work or running the company. Upon investing in an enterprise the investor, as a condition of his investment, is entitled to a percentage of the company’s income, for the duration of the company’s operational existence.

Inflation can be eliminated by eliminating free riding. Money declines in value because more of it is chasing a pool of goods that grows less rapidly than the money supply. Inflation is mostly caused, however by people getting paid more than would be warranted by the goods and services they produce. If people were not being paid more than their productivity warrants, there would be no inflation. Money only loses value when given to free riders and freeloaders.

The Apriorian Small Group generates a currency that cannot be hijacked by fraudsters and scammers posing as investors. We consider investors to be those who advance sweat equity not those who leverage wealth from the productive sector, through fictitious forms of money.

The Apriorian economic model provides:

• An inflation-proof currency backed by equity, not created from assets.

• An equity account to all members.

• Accurate accounting that assigns debits and credits to the proper accounts.

• The abolition of all asset-based currencies, whether based on gold bullion, fiat notes or bank credit accounts.

• The exclusion of all liability accounting in favor of cash accounting.

Injustice is an unreconciled account. Every injustice creates a liability. Every liability represents an asset with competing claims. These competing claims give us double entry bookkeeping which is complex because the accounting needs to track two separate ledger accounts. 

The Dual Doctrine of Power, also expressed as the Law of the Jungle, is the postulate that might makes right and the end justifies the means. The law of the jungle does not understand or respect the concept of ownership.

By the right of dominion, we own only what we create. We have no claim on anything created by someone else, this includes the natural world, which was created by God and which no one claim was created by them. Power or the ability to defeat an antagonist does not abrogate our rights to what we are the author of.

Either we own only what we create, or we live by the law of the jungle. By the dual doctrine of power, we either have the means, or we do not have the right. Conversely, if you have the means to do it, you are justified in what you do.

Might makes right is what justifies the law. The lawmaker has the means and power to make and enforce the law and so claims the right. The only successful appeal is the power to upend the lawgiver. This is something not understood by the Sovereign Citizens Movement.

The church ought to abjure the use of law and power. Christians are governed by a faith that produces good works and these produce no inflation.

We cannot have faith in God if we lack faith in each other. The only path to faith is to adopt a model of organization in which you know, without a doubt, all accounts will be reconciled.

 Apriorian Apologetics is a church based on small groups that utilizes the jurisprudence of reconciliation. By this we mean accounts that are imbalanced are reconciled.

• The injured account initiates reconciliation by approaching the accused with his or her concerns and the means to a reconciliation.

• If this is insufficient, the plaintiff returns with one or two friends to restate his case and hear the defence in front of witnesses. 

• If reconciliation is not achieved an Assembly is convened to hear the case in front of all interested parties, including all witnesses.

• The Assembly decrees what steps need to be taken to effect reconciliation.

• If these steps are not taken within the specified time the accused is ostracized and ultimately expelled from the community. Whatever corrections can be made are made to the account of the plaintiff by the Assembly.

Regardless of whether you are a secularist or Christian, we are compelled to acknowledge mankind must have originated in a small part of the globe. Therefore, regardless of where you live, you and your ancestors migrated. Yet, migrants have become not just a problem but a divisive one.

This is partly due to the basis of the pro-migrant argument is self-defeating and oxymoronic. It is argued that because we all were from somewhere other than where we are, no one has a right to restrict the movement of people. But the fact that restriction did not previously exist or were not implemented, is supposed to set the precedent for all future policy.

The arguments against unrestricted migration are not based on the way the earth was populated, they are based on the sanctity of one’s home and homeland. Arguments based on migration patterns prior to widespread settlements are therefore irrelevant.

The right to enter a house for sale does not remove the right of the new owner to lock his doors against all those who he does not wish to have access to his home.

There are several arguments made to justify migrants. These can be broken down to three basic points. the “migrants are at-risk group” justifier, the argument that all persons are migrants and so borders are artificial and the claim our nations need more bodies because of an aging population.

All of these excuses are coincidentally at odds with environmentalism, and with our efforts to reduce our carbon footprint. In fact, were we not taking in migrants the carbon footprint of most Western nations would decline naturally.

You may feel sorry for people who have destroyed their homeland, but it is risky moving them to ours. The fact is we do not owe them a replacement property for the one destroyed. They took out no insurance policy with us. This is doubly so, since we are trying to protect our environment having seen what these other nations have done to theirs.

Even were we to offer help, better to help them where they are at, than move them here. It is cheaper to feed them where they are than to support them where we are.

Even were we all migrants or our ancestors were all from somewhere else, we did not migrate to where we hoped to get a free meal. Even were we migrants it would still not give others the right to also migrate. We are permitted to shut the door once we have entered our home. Our nations are in fact a place we built. 

If adding migrants is a solution to our aging population, what is the solution to their aging population? Even if it is a solution for us, what of the places from where we extract their best and brightest (if this is what we actually get? Who is looking after their aged parents if they are here looking after outs?

The Apriorian program:

• Stops all migrations by putting citizenship under the purview of the small group Assemblies.

• Stops selling citizenships and ends all backdoor pathways such as birthright citizenship.

• Ensures cultural conformity for all citizens.

Property crime covers a large swath from graffiti to the willful destruction of what belongs to others. Of course, other parties and politicians think property is physical and property crimes are acts that damage physical property. But this is a sloppy definition, because blowing up a rockface with explosives, could be considered a serious property crime or the activity of a construction company, depending on who owns the property and who is using the explosives.

Property crime is an act that reduces the value of asset. Over-all, property crime reduces the equity of a community. Property crime, as is true of all crime, is a special form of consumption without reconciliation. Crime causes a loss of value. The penalty for all crime must be the restoration of the lost value. 

The program of Apriorian Apologetics ensures:

• All costs are paid for at their source by the originator of the expense.

• No one is permitted to use property without the permission of the owner.

• Use of commercial assets is permitted only if it produces equity. 

• Damage is considered the causing of negative equity.

• If a tree could produce 300 board feet of lumber, harm is caused by producing less than this number.

• If stealing results in a loss of value, the penalty restores market value.

• If damage produces an expense, a penalty is levied that pays the expense.

• All citizens are accountable for adding to the equity of their community.

• The loss of value not assigned to a malefactor is a loss borne by the community.

• Every Citizen has a vested interest in the welfare and care of the community and may serve as a plaintiff in all cases involving property crimes. He or she has the right and duty to bring an action against anyone damaging, defacing or degrading community property. 

• All citizens have the right and legal obligation to begin judicial proceedings against someone they accuse of a property crime. (See the information regarding this aspect of the justice system).

• Justice consists in the reconciliation of accounts. The person who causes damage is a person whose account is in arrears; justice consists in ensuring the loss is made good by the reconciliation of accounts.

Pollution ought to be considered a property crime though perhaps a passive one. Burning trash that produces noxious fumes has an economic impact on the community. Dumping trash into rivers that flow into the ocean has a global impact. But the solution to pollution is not to externalize it. Not permitting oil wells where you live while buying oil exacerbates the problem by globalizing it. Problems ought always be kept as local as possible.

Pollution is just another social cost created by externalizing costs onto society and future generations.

If the output is harmful, it has not been neutralized by the producer. This can be as simple as throwing one’s cigarette butts on the street to be cleaned up be someone else or left to contribute to pollution and urban blight, or as serious as throwing municipal trash into a river where it eventually finds it way into the ocean.

In an Apriorian Exchange small group:

• Producers pay the cost of neutralizing any negative features of their goods and services.

• The producer of packaging must make arrangements for its disposal.

• Packaging is either an integral part of the product and must be accounted for when pricing a product or unnecessary and discontinued.

• The goal is always to increase the percentage of our income that goes to investment while reducing the percentage going to consumption.

• Consumption is maintained at a level that maximizes investments.

Poverty always suggests an injustice because people are not poor unless they are not working or they are not being paid for the work they do. The desire for equality is not a denial that different people have different abilities and challenges, it is the recognition we are not so different that natural differences in ability explains the large differences in outcomes.

Indeed, that is the anomaly of poverty. It is largely a problem of civilized society. Civilized persons learned how to gain an advantage over their fellows and have access to enough wealth to generate huge disparities in income.

Apriorian is an approach that eliminates unemployment, inequality, and poverty through the removal of taxation and other regulatory factors that preferences freeloaders over workers. Unemployment is the result of government interference. Governments create and exacerbate power disparities. Power disparities exacerbate whatever natural inequality there is, making it worse.

Apriorian ends poverty by:

• Reducing and finally eliminating taxation, so that people who create wealth can use it to purchase goods and services. 

• Creating small groups that function as free markets. The economy is an exchange. Apriorian Exchanges work as free markets by removing regulatory interference.

• Creating a living wage that becomes the standard in all sectors of the economy.

• Removing barriers to employment, other than any that are natural and genetic.

• Creating a unit of exchange called a prefer. Prefers are issued by the market as part of the normal activity of the market, which enables the market to operate free of regulatory interference or the need of power disparities.