Vampires, Creatures, and Slaughterhouses
Three Halloween book recommendations that prove the State is scarier than fiction
Halloween is a time when society embraces horror. If you’re a Voluntaryist, you understand society really embraces horror year-round. As long as movie scripts and book plots are filled with ghosts, demonic entities that just won’t die, and haunted houses, masses flock to them in droves. Whether the film or book is objectively scary or not, many people happily consume these mediums with the rationality that it can never happen to them. Somehow, as long as horror is happening to someone else, it’s palatable.
But what about real life horrors? Why are these oftentimes overlooked by a society obsessed with slasher films and gore? What if one day the majority of society realized the State is scarier than even the most sinister cult classic?
For those like me who can appreciate a spooky film AND books about the government that should be listed under the Horror section of your local bookstore, here are three Halloween book recommendations that prove the State is scarier than fiction.
THE CREATURE FROM JEKYLL ISLAND
This book’s title is a riff off classic horror film, The Creature from the Black Lagoon. However in The Creature from Jekyll Island, a scaly amphibious creature has been replaced with the corrupt, tentacle-laden Federal Reserve. The black lagoon setting has been replaced with the sandy beaches and thick swamplands of Jekyll Island, GA.
The book takes you on a journey through the creation, execution, and cancerous swelling of America’s central bank.
The first several pages tell you the Federal Reserve’s origin story in true-crime fashion, weaving a wild tale of secret train rides, a private island, and an elite few sociopaths who toss the economic fate of every household aside as they take control and manipulate the country’s currency for their own personal gain.
There is not another book out there I’ve found that is as detailed and complete as G. Edward Griffin’s The Creature from Jekyll Island, a second look at the Federal Reserve.
The truth revealed in this book will haunt you long after you’ve finished reading it.
Like the murky waters surrounding the lodge where the draft of the Federal Reserve Act was created, the book’s depth begs you to come back again and again.
Spooky Scale Rating: 3/5
Information-packed pages require multiple reading sessions. The reader forgets the terrifying nature of the central bank as he wades through economic terms, government policy, and the mystic ways banks balance their books.
VAMPIRE ECONOMY
“In 1932, the fear of Communism was a phantom; today National Socialism is a terrible reality.”
Vampire Economy was published in 1939. Written by Gunter Reimann who fled Germany for London during the reign of Nazism, the book lays out in stark reality the ills that fell on the economy during the rule of the Third Reich.
The term “Vampire Economy” references a government which drains “the lifeblood out of businesses through taxation, regulation, inflation, price controls, trade interference, fiat money, and attacks on private property.” It also conjures up imagery of the zombified nature of an economy under this monstrous control, having been violently stripped of its will to live.
Other books dealing with Germany’s economy, like the work Exchange, Prices, and Production in Hyper-Inflation Germany written by Frank Graham about the Weimar Republic, require patience and focus due to dated grammatical stylings. Vampire Economy reads easily and offers a wealth of knowledge.
This book is referenced often by economists of the Austrian School. While the book isn’t written with an Austrian lens (neither is Graham’s work), it stands as a generous historical reference for anyone curious about how entrepreneurs, the main drivers of an economy, are snuffed out in centrally planned economies.
Vampire Economy opens up with a picture, a diagram detailing the myriad steps a business owner has to go through just to get an order of tires delivered to his business. The author then transitions to a letter written by a German businessman to an American businessman about the current state of the economy at the time:
“You have no idea how far State control goes and how much power the Nazi representatives have over our work. The worst of it is that they are so ignorant. In this respect they certainly differ from the former Social-Democratic officials. These Nazi radicals think of nothing except "distributing the wealth."”
As the author writes about the debilitating control the State has over the German people, the reader can’t help but recognize an almost-mirror image of America and her economy today. The author states:
“Everyone has his doubts about the system, unless he is very young, very stupid or is bound to it by the privileges he enjoys.”
Austrian economists are known as the only school of economics to not only include the businessman in their work but set him as one of the prime movers of the economy. Reimann details the constant fear businessmen worked under:
Manufacturers in Germany were panic-stricken when they heard of the experiences of some industrialists who were more or less expropriated by the State. These industrialists were visited by State auditors who had strict 12 Vampire Economy orders to "examine" the balance sheets and all bookkeeping entries of the company (or individual businessman) for the preceding two, three, or more years until some error or false entry was found. The slightest formal mistake was punished with tremendous penalties. A fine of millions of marks was imposed for a single bookkeeping error. Obviously, the examination of the books was simply a pretext for partial expropriation of the private capitalist with a view to complete expropriation and seizure of the desired property later. The owner of the property was helpless, since under fascism there is no longer an independent judiciary that protects the property rights of private citizens against the State. The authoritarian State has made it a principle that private property is no longer sacred.
Another interesting Third Reich theme Reimann discusses is the reality of two different constitutions. One constitution, remnant of the Weimar constitution and supposedly adopted by the subsequent administration, was a more traditional code of law which protected private property and kept judges separate from executive powers. The other constitution, the one actually exercised by the State, was an unwritten constitution.
“Constitutionally the businessman still enjoys guarantees of property rights. But what is the value of such constitutional guarantees without courts that dare to defy the omnipotent bureaucracy or to enforce laws that are "out of date"?
The influence of the Party cannot be seen in laws, but in practice, and personalities are the important factor.
…in their eagerness to demonstrate that there has been a complete break with the past, the present rulers of Germany have almost invented a new tongue.”
Any liberty-loving individual reading Vampire Economy can relate to the complete authoritarian tyranny workers and citizens lived under during this time.
The Volkischer Beobachter, the newspaper of the Nazi Party, predicted that, "a new type of individual will arise in the economic field who will enjoy living dangerously and who by his individual efficiency will create freedom of economic action for himself."
Reimann concludes towards the beginning of the book, “We shall have to find out what this "new type" of capitalist is like.”
Like Vampires, a Vampire economy can be warded off temporarily with the talisman of Freedom. But if humans let their guard down even for a moment, the blood-letting ways of a government undead will return to drain livelihood once again from every household it can sink its fangs into.
Vampire Economy has rightfully earned the title of Cult Classic in the economics world.
Spooky Scale Rating: 5/5
Part economics book, part historical non-fiction, Vampire Economy never loses its eerie undertone with a perfect balance of biographical storytelling and terrifying Third Reich tactics involving economic phantoms which become “terrible reality.”
SLAUGHTERHOUSE- FIVE
I know at the beginning of this article I said the State is scarier than fiction, however I couldn’t leave Slaughterhouse- Five off this list. Though it is one of Kurt Vonnegut’s classic works of fiction, it offers the most realistic view of war one can find in literature.
Slaughterhouse- Five tells the story of Billy Pilgrim, an Optometrist war veteran who just so happens to get abducted by aliens.
Or does he?
Vonnegut is known for his special touch he adds to the science fiction genre.
If the reader is simply glancing over the story, they go on a wild space journey with the Tralfamadorians through the eyes of Pilgrim.
But if you dig deeper, I believe this book was one of the first examples of how severely PTSD affects soldiers at a time when the term Post Traumatic Stress Disorder didn’t even exist.
The book jumps back and forth between time. For the Tralfamadorians, the alien species, time is a circle. The reader could extrapolate that the warped feeling of time travel through out the book is Pilgrim’s own experience with flashbacks.
One scene towards the end of the book is an emotional climax for both Pilgrim and the reader. Towards the end of World War II while Billy is still in Germany, he comes across a bloodied and injured horse standing stoically among rubble and soldiers in recently bombed Dresden. When he saw the horse he broke down and began weeping. Even in the book he mentions he didn’t know why. But the reader can dig deeper than Billy can in the moment and understand he feels a deep connection with the horse because he sees himself in the battle-scarred creature.
For a gut-punch of a story that stays with you, read Slaughterhouse- Five as the weather gets its first chill in the air.
Spooky Scale Rating: 4/5
Vonnegut’s masterful writing, dark themes, and mysterious alien visitors make Slaughterhouse- Five a book you’ll find yourself reading well into the night.
Do you have any book suggestions not on this list that prove the State is scarier than fiction? Comment below or Tweet me at @RebeccaDayMusic with your recommendations!
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