What do politics, war, trade, business, and shipbuilding have to do with demagoguery and inflation? Apparently nothing, because each one of these phenomena follows its own logic, but it happened 25 centuries ago and it has happened again now that all of them are chained together forming a dangerous spiral of unforeseeable consequences.
We will begin our story on the Attica peninsula, whose capital was Athens. Themistocles (525-459 BC) had been elected archon there, who made a momentous decision when the extremely rich silver mines of Laurion were discovered, which became the property of the Athenians. For its exploitation it was decided to make concessions to individuals, according to the seams, the workers being slaves. It was requested that the silver be distributed among each and every one of the citizens, once the private profit was subtracted. But Themistocles managed to pass a law that earmarked these profits for the construction of a large war fleet, necessary to defend his city from Persian rule. That happened between the years 490-480 a. c.
Athens began to mint silver coins of one, two, four and even ten drachmas, with the drachma weighing 4.37 grams. With those coins you could buy everything. First, wood for the ships, which was imported from the Black Sea, as well as hemp for the ropes and cloth for the sails. All these materials were assembled in the great arsenals and thousands of carpenters and craftsmen worked on them. The city's population began to grow and Attica was no longer able to produce wheat and other staple foods for itself, so it began to import them en masse. In exchange, that city was only an exporter of luxury oil and pottery, so its balance of payments was balanced by the export of silver coins. Let us think that in ancient times the currency was worth its weight, and that is why it was weighed when making a payment, so it can be said that the silver exported by tons was another merchandise.
But the drachma, in addition to an amount of silver, was a currency, which Athens imposed as a standard of exchange throughout the Aegean Sea and to all the members of a naval alliance, called the Attic-Delica league, which was something like NATO of the moment, since its mission consisted of the common defense of the Greeks from the naval domain of the Persian empire, which included present-day Turkey and the entire Near East.
Athens had its port in Piraeus, about 20 kilometers from the capital, and Themistocles also got the Long Walls built between the two cities, so that the entire population of the peninsula could take refuge there, overcrowded and in poor quality housing in case of an invasion, such as that of the year 432 in the Peloponnesian War.
Merchants from all over the Mediterranean flocked to Piraeus . A great mixture of populations was created, and exchange of merchandise, languages, people, and also of germs, such as the one that would bring the plague, which was fattened in the crowded population in both cities and the Long Walls. Plague that Thucydides masterfully described to us, and whose diagnosis has not been possible until very recently, thanks to the analysis of the dental pulp of corpses hastily buried in mass graves.
The Athenians became rich with their currency, with it they built a fleet that gave them power at sea, and launched an entire industrial chain. Money led to power, which brought more money, and the political power of the city began to distribute that money among the citizens, who served for free in the army from 18 to 60 years of age, but who began to charge for attending the assembly, to the theater, to the courts, to hold positions and who also benefited from the public distribution of wheat, for example. To get richer, the city increased taxes and created taxes on the rich, which began to suffocate its economy and allowed groups to emerge that saw politics as a way of life, thus giving birth to demagogues, specialized in manipulating feelings. of the people for their own benefit and their seizure of power.
But that wealth brought by naval power created various phenomena of degradation. The currency was degraded because by increasing its emission a huge inflation arose, which made everything worth more and more and public spending grew nonstop. As these public expenses supported the demagogues, the financing of the city became impossible and exaggerated taxes began to be charged for the protection of the cities of the naval league, which would end up abandoning Athens and demanding its freedom. But things did not stay that way, because politics and its language, judicial life and economic, family and social relations in general were degraded. The truth ceased to matter, morale relaxed and the climax was reached when the epidemic that brought death everywhere made nobody care about anything and everything was the same.
Something similar is happening now. We are in the midst of a global pandemic, favored by the enormous intensity and speed of the movement of people and goods between the five continents, and by the high density of the urban population and the poor living conditions in which a good part of it lives. To try to stop its expansion, it was decided at first to isolate countries and cities and slow down the pace of the economy, creating poverty for millions of people. In rich countries, public money was used to compensate for the weakness of the economy, with aid to the unemployed and subsidies of all kinds to companies and products. In poor countries, on the other hand, the disease added to the misery and people continued to die as they already did: in anonymity, without even appearing in the body count, and being poorer than they already were. And the scandal of this inequality, which is protected not only by the difference in wealth, but also by the military power that supports it, offering it legal security, was confirmed by the unequal distribution of vaccines, denounced as a scandal by the WHO, the UN and the Pope, together with many other organisms. international.
In the world of those who have money and weapons, money was issued en masse, whether in euros, dollars, yuan, yen, rubles, or any other currency. And it was done so that the economy would not sink into a crisis of under-consumption and under-production, which at first seemed logical. But, as happened in Athens, by increasing the quantity of money and maintaining, or decreasing, the quantity of goods produced, a dangerous process of inflation was created, worsened by the scarcity of raw materials and goods and components of key importance in the economy. industrial production at different levels.
The rise in energy and raw materials caused an increase in production costs that would have to be reflected in final prices. But since wages cannot be raised at that rate, then consumption and state income through taxes will fall. Immediately, by consuming less, it will be necessary to invest less and production will drop again and prices will rise. And so a spiral has begun that can be self-destructive for the rich and idle on Earth, whose great problems are sun and beach vacations, air travel, tourism and hotel consumption during the day and at night, a key theme of language of political demagogues, who live by parasitizing public funds. A topic that opens a demagogic debate, bordering on stupidity, about freedom as the right to drink all night and dine outside the house day in and day out.
Our demagogues say that billions of euros will come to them, thanks to their skill as negotiators. A few euros issued by the same bank with which they indebt their countries. Our demagogues say that thanks to the next generation funds they will renew everything, making it more modern in an economy in which only one in three jobs can be converted to digital. Our demagogues say that they have arranged everything, that day and night they think of us, to lock us up or let us out, to take care of our health, or to degrade it, along with the conditions of the media and health personnel. Day after day these demagogues manipulate figures, bordering almost on the ridiculous; They would only need to say that the more deaths the better, because this improves life expectancy. Well, if no one can die twice, then every more death is one less possible death.
And in front of the demagogues and the rich, who will be richer at the end of the pandemic, and next to the health workers who fight with their knowledge that floats on that immense ocean of ignorance and ignorance that is the mystery of nature, trying to stop the shipwreck, we have the media that do not stop bringing to light ideas and opinions of those who live in the abyssal depths of that same ignorance, but who paradoxically manage to be seen more every day. Meanwhile, the vast majority of the people, whom no one talks about and whom no one asks, limits themselves to suffering and trying to survive, falling little by little into the oblivion of history.
