TRAPPED BY TRANSACTIONALISM
The Cost of Idolizing Money and Power
In Trapped by Transactionalism, Manuel Hinds argues that when morality is displaced by the idolatry of money and power, the economy becomes “transactional,” favoring those close to a tyrant rather than those who are efficient or innovative, thereby undermining growth and institutional integrity. Through a dialogue centered on corruption, the Epstein scandal, and the concentration of political and economic power in “The Prince,” the text contends that networks of mutual complicity can overpower justice, erode the rule of law, and fuse government with private gain, ultimately weakening liberal democracy. Drawing on Nietzsche’s reflections on the “morality of the strong,” Hinds warns that a society organized around power without ethical restraint becomes self-destructive, as seen in historical tyrannies. He concludes that meaningful economic reform is impossible without dismantling the “Transactional State” and restoring values, principles, and a renewed sense of collective purpose capable of sustaining a multidimensional liberal order against both corrupt vertical regimes and moral emptiness.
“Hey, Jack,” said Nicco, “Gradually, we are understanding what is happening in our complex world. Reality gives us hints, and when they start to show coherence, that means we are in the right track to look into the decisions we will have to make in the future.”
“Hi, Nicco, tell me what you have been thinking.”
“I am thinking about the relationship between morality and the economy. People think that there is no relationship or that, if such relations exist, it is a negative one, in the sense that the least morality you have, the better it is for your economic success.”
“And it is not like that, Nicco?” said Laurie, caressing Raven, her cat.
“Not at all. Well, it is for some minority of incompetent scoundrels who make money in the early stages of a tyranny because they are close to the tyrant, mainly because they give a cut to him in their businesses, and for that reason, they receive building permits others do not get, or government contracts made specifically for them, or juicy subsidies nobody else receives. Others make the mistake of seeing their success and believing they will get a cut of all that, but eventually they are disenchanted. As the tyrant and his family become greedier and more confident that they are the source of profits, they tend to monopolize their access to them, and the rest of the entrepreneurs realize they are worse than before, when their profits depended on their own efficiency. Now, they have become rivers bringing profits to the sea of the tyrant. This kills the incentives to be efficient in the overall economy, and this reduces growth and profits for everybody else.”pr
“Well, this is starting to happen in the United States,” said Jack. “Do you think that the lack of morality that we are seeing in the country, the transactional economy, in which the government and private entrepreneurs are supposed to take a cut wherever they can, gifts from foreigners and locals, as long as it is a profitable deal, has a negative impact on the economy?”
“Yes, I think so. Look at how The Prince disfavors many to favor some with all the policies he manages personally.”
“But this is going to end soon,” said Jack, “I don’t think The Prince will keep his power to manage the economy so arbitrarily after the November elections.”
“Trump is not the end of history. He is a destroyer. Some builders or teams of builders are needed to chart the course that the country will follow in the twenty-first century. The struggle for dominance between horizontal and vertical regimes, and among vertical regimes, is still to come. Those who want to defend liberal democracy in that competition should prepare for this fight.”
The Recovery and the Epstein Case
Nicco continued.
“Everybody knows about the Epstein case, so it should not need an introduction. Yet, it and its consequences are so broad that I should specify the dimension I am referring to. Certainly, the most macabre aspect of a macabre episode is the terrible suffering the Epstein machinery imposed on its victims. However, I will focus on how it stopped the functioning of justice and even the most basic sense of self-defense in American society.
Nobody can deny that the Epstein affair was one of the most, if not the most, scandalous events in the history of the country. Yet, Epstein had tied a network of victimizers so closely knitted and so complementarily powerful that, even if they were in many cases politically or economically competitors and rivals, the network compelled them to protect each other with amazing effectiveness. They were tied by crimes they had committed together.
All mafias know that this is one of the most cohesive forces you can think of.
For many years, even if the entire world knew that this criminal network existed, and that it contained top members of the American and the world elites, only two individuals were prosecuted and convicted for their crimes: Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell. Epstein’s was treated with incredible tenderness after he pleaded guilty to solicitation of prostitution and solicitation of prostitution with a minor under the age of 18. He was sentenced to 18 months in a minimum-security facility. The wealthy businessman was allowed to leave for 12 hours a day to work at a foundation that he had recently incorporated. As is well-known, Maxwell is in a prison people call a country club. Congress and the President have for years re enormous pressure exerted on them to show the detailed files compiled by Epstein about his business in a process that obviously shows that even more powerful pressures were exerted on them by implicated individuals who would hate to see their names published in connection with this and, worse still, to face the legal consequences of their crimes. It became evident that they were more powerful than the legal system.
Why?
Because they have money and power in a country and a civilization that has reduced the importance of life to having money and power. Society is paying the costs of the idolatry of money and power that has dominated it in the last few decades. In this environment, Nietzsche calls it the morality of the strong, in which everything that helps them is good and everything that contradicts them is bad. As he said in the words I quote here,
“Here we must beware of superficiality and get to the bottom of the matter, resisting all sentimental weakness; life is essentially appropriation, injury, overpowering of what is alien and weaker; suppression, hardness, imposition of one’s own forms, incorporation and at least, at its mildest, exploitation -- but why should one always use those words in which a slanderous intent has been imprinted for ages?..`Exploitation’ does not belong to a corrupt or imperfect and primitive society: it belongs to the essence of what lives, as a basic organic function; it is a consequence of the will to power, which after all is the will of life.”[i]
“Nietzsche says that, of course, the strong could not allow themselves to be restrained by any feeling of sympathy for the weak, for this would hinder the fulfillment of their role. The strong had to be ruthless in their actions. Nature had foreseen this by granting man the enjoyment of cruelty, which the strong exercised at the expense of the weak. The recognition of this asymmetry of nature, the recognition that ranks were part of the essence of life, was essential to the progress of humanity. In other quotation, he says,
“That lambs dislike great birds of prey does not seem strange: only it gives no ground for reproaching these birds of prey for bearing off little lambs. And if the lambs say among themselves: `these birds of prey are evil; and whoever is least like a bird of prey, but rather its opposite, a lamb -- would he not be good? there is no reason to find fault with this institution of an ideal, except perhaps that the birds of prey might view it a little ironically, and say: `we don’t dislike them at all, these good little lambs; we even love them; nothing is more tasty than a tender lamb.”[1]
“This is an ode to the morality of the strong, which in fact is no morality.”
“This is the cost of idolizing money and power. No morality. And without morality, the economy becomes transactional, and inefficient because in a transactional world, efficiency is not the source of personal wealth. ‘Wealth comes from being close to the holder of the unified economic and political power—which is, a tyrant. Thus, in the long term, as it happened in the Soviet Union and all other empires that have died from within, the lack of values, the idolatry of money and power, the transactional economy, or, better called, the corrupt society, kills itself.”
Morality, Meaning and the Economy
“Under these conditions, the United States’ ability to reform The Prince’s absurd economic policies and restore the economy’s normal functioning will be heavily constrained by non-economic factors. Reintroducing free trade and narrowing the gap between the left behind and those benefiting from new technologies can be effectively attempted. However, reducing the fusion of government and the economy by eliminating or reducing tariffs and other measures would weaken the functioning of the transactional regime. Restoring checks and balances to rebuild investors’ confidence in the Rule of Rights and Law would strip the President of the power to exert the coercion necessary to maintain his personal authority. He, or someone like him, would never do that.”
“Thus, discussing economic policies without abolishing the Transactional State would be a waste of time and effort for both those seeking to reestablish liberal democracy and those seeking to install a sustainable vertical regime. Values and principles are essential, even if you cannot see them, even if they cannot be coded.”
“A task of this size cannot be undertaken if the problem of meaning is not resolved. A cause is needed to propel people to overcome their immediate self-interest and make the sacrifices demanded by a multidimensional system that would sustain liberal democracy. It would help that the remaking of the country based on liberal values is in itself a source of meaning.”
“Konrad Heiden, a German journalist who knew Hitler personally in the early 1920s and witnessed his rise to power, saw the religious dimension of Nazism as a response to people’s yearning for transcendence. He believed that this was the reason why Hitler succeeded in imposing his tyranny on Germany.”
“Hitler was able to enslave his own people because he seemed to give them something that even the traditional religions could no longer provide: the belief in a meaning to existence beyond the narrowest self-interest. The real degradation began when people realized that they were in league with the Devil, but felt that even the Devil was preferable to the emptiness of an existence which lacked a larger significance.” [ii]
“Will we have to learn this lesson again?”
[1]Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals, Second Essay, in Kaufmann, Basic Writings of Nietzsche, pp. 480-481.
[i]Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, Part Nine, in Kaufmann, Basic Writings of Nietzsche, pp. 393.
[ii] Heiden, Konrad The Fuhrer, Castle Books, New Jersey, 2002, [1944], pp. 603.