 Human history can be viewed from many angles. One of them is to see it as a struggle for power and domination, as a struggle for freedom and against oppression, as a struggle of good against evil. That is how Karl Marx saw it, and Ludwig von Mises judge similarly. Mises wrote, quote, The history of the West from the age of the Greek polis down to the present day resistance to socialism is essentially the history of the fight for liberty against the encroachments of the office holders, quote, ends. But unlike Marx, Mises recognized that human history does not follow predetermined laws of societal development, but ultimately depends on ideas that drive human action. From Mises' point of view, human history can be understood as a battle of good ideas against bad ideas. Ideas are good if the actions they recommend bring results that are beneficial for everyone and lead the actors to their desired goals. At the same time, good ideas are ethically justifiable. They apply to everyone anytime and anywhere and ensure that people who act upon them can survive. On the other hand, bad ideas lead to actions that do not benefit everyone, that do not cause all actors to achieve their goals and are unethical. Good ideas, for example, are people who accept mine and yours or entering into exchange relationships with one another voluntarily. Bad ideas are coercion, deception, embezzlement, theft. Evil ideas are very bad ideas through which everyone, through which whoever puts them into practice is consciously harming others. Evil ideas are, for example, physical attacks, murder, tyranny. With Lord of the Rings, Tolkien wrote a literary monument about the epic battle between good and evil. His fantasy novel, published in 1953 and 1954, was a worldwide success, not least because of the movie trilogy released from 2001 to 2003. What is Lord of the Rings about? In the first age, the deeply evil Sauron, the demon, the hideous horror, the necromancer had rings of power made by the elven forges. Three rings for the elven kings under the sky, seven for the drawflords in the halls of stone, nine for mortal man doomed to die, one for the dark lord on his dark throne. In the land of Mordor, where the shadows lie, one ring to rule them all, one ring to find them, one ring to bring them all, and in the darkness bind them. In the land of Mordor, where the shadows lie. But Sauron secretly forges an additional ring into which he puts all his darkness and cruelty, and this one ring, the master ring, rules all other rings. When Sauron puts the master ring on his finger, he can read and control the minds of everyone wearing one of the other rings. The elves see through the dark plan and hide their three rings. The seven rings of the draws also failed to subjugate the bearers. But the nine rings of men proved to be effective. Sauron enslaved nine human kings who were to serve him. Then, however, in the third age, in the battle before Mount Doom, Aesildur, the eldest son of King Elendil, severed Sauron's ring finger with a sword blow. Sauron is defeated and loses his physical form, but he survives. Now Aesildur has the ring of power, and it takes possession of him. He does not destroy the master ring when he has the opportunity, and it costs him his life. When Aesildur is killed, the ring sings to the bottom of the river and remains there for thousands of years. Then the ring is found by the creature Smeagal, who is captivated by its power. The ring remains with its finder for nearly 500 years hidden from the world. Over time, Sauron's power grows again, and he wants the ring back. Then the ring is found, and for 60 years, it remains in the hands of the Hobbit Bilbo Baggins, a friendly, well-meaning being who does not allow himself to be seduced by the power of the one ring. Years later, the wizard Gandalf the Grey learns that Sauron's rise has begun and that the ring of power is held by Bilbo Baggins. Gandalf knows that there is only one way to defeat the ring and its evil. It must be destroyed where it was created in Mordor. Bilbo Baggins' nephew, Frodo Baggins, agrees to take the task upon himself. He and his companions, a total of four Hobbits, two humans, a dwarf and an elf, embark on a dangerous journey. They endure hardship, adversity, and battles against dark forces, and in the end, they succeed at what seemed impossible, the destruction of the ring of power in the fires of Mount Doom, good triumphs over evil. The ring in Tolkien's Lord of the Ring is not just a piece of forged gold, it embodies Sauron's evil, corrupting everyone who lays hands or eyes on it, poisons their soul, makes them willing helpers of evil. No one can wield the cruel power of the one ring and use it for good, no human, no dwarf, no elf. Can an equivalent for Tolkien's literary portrait of the evil ring be found in the here and there, in the here and now? Yes, I believe so, and in the following I would like to offer you what I hope is a startling, but in any case entertaining interpretation. Tolkien's rings of power embody evil ideas. The 19 rings represent the idea that the ring bearer should have the power over others and rule over them, and the one ring to which all other rings are subject embodies an even darker idea, namely that the bearer of this master ring has the power over all other ring bearers and those ruled by them, that he is the sole and absolute ruler of all. The 19 rings symbolize the idea of establishing and maintaining a state as we know it today, namely a state understood as a territorial coercive monopoly with the ultimate power of decision making over all conflicts. However, the one ring of power stands for the particularly evil idea of creating a state of states, a world government, a world state, and the creation of a single world currency controlled by states would pave the way towards such an outcome. To explain this, let us begin with the state as we know it today. The state is the idea of the rule of one over the other. This is how the German economist, sociologist, sociologist and Dr. Franz Oppenheimer sees it. Quote, the state is a social institution forced by a victorious group of men on a defeated group with the sole purpose of regulating the dominion of the victorious group over the vanquished and securing itself against revolt from within and attacks from abroad. This dominion had no other purpose than the economic exploitation of the vanquished by the victors, quote ends. Joseph Stalin defined the state quite similarly, quote, the state is an instrument in the hands of the ruling class to suppress the resistance of its class opponents, quote ends. The modern state in the western world no longer uses coercion and violence as obviously as many of its predecessors, but it too is of course built on coercion and violence, asserts itself through them, and most importantly it divides society into a class of the rulers and a class of the ruled. How does the state manage to create and maintain such a two class society? In Tolkien's Lord of the Ring, nine men, all of them kings, wish to wield power and so they became bearers of the rings, and because of that they were inescapably bound to Sauron's one ring of power. This is quite similar to what the idea of the state leads. To size, maintain, and expand power, this seduces its followers to do what is necessary, to resort to all sorts of techniques, propaganda, character, stick, fear, and even terror. The state lets the people know that it is good, indispensable, inevitable. Without it the state whispers, a civilized coexistence of people would not be possible. Most people succumb to this idea of propaganda and the state get carte blanche to effectively infiltrate economic and social matters. Kindergarten, school, university, transport, media, health, pensions, law, security, money and credit, the environment, and thereby gains power. The state rewards its followers with jobs, rewarding business contracts and transfer payments. Those who resist will end up in prison or lose their livelihood or even their lives. The state spreads fear and terror to make people compliant as people who are afraid are easy to control, especially if they have been led to believe that the state will protect them against evil. Lately the topics of climate change and coronavirus have been used for fear mongering, primarily by the state, which is skillfully using them to increase its omnipotence. It destroys the economy, the jobs makes many people financially dependent on him, climbs down on civil and entrepreneurial freedoms. However, it is of the utmost importance for the state to win the battle of ideas and be the authority to say what are good ideas and what are bad ideas, because it is ideas that determine people's actions. The task of winning over the general public for the state traditionally falls to the so-called intellectuals, the people whose opinion are wildly heard, such as teachers, doctors, university professors, researchers, actors, comedians, musicians, writers, journalists and others. The state provides a critical number of them with income, influence, prestige and status in a variety of ways, which most of them would not have been able to achieve without the state. In gratitude for this, the intellectuals spread the message that the state is good, indispensable, inevitable. Among the intellectuals, there tend to be quite a few who willingly submit to the rings of power, helping consciously or unconsciously to bring their fellow men and women under the spell of the rings or simply to walk over, subjugate and dominate them. Anyone who thinks that the state, as we know it today, is acceptable, is a justifiable solution, as long as it does not exceed a certain power limit, is seriously mistaken. Just as the ring of power tries to find its way back to the Lord and Master, an initially limited state inevitably strives towards its logical endpoint, absolute power. The state, as we know it today, is pushing for expansion, both internally and externally. This is a well-known fact derived from the logic of human action. George Orwell put it succinctly, quote, the purpose of power is power, quote, ends. Or as Hermann Hopper nailed Zed, quote, every minimal government has the inherent tendency to become a maximal government, quote, ends. Inwardly, the state is expanding through all sorts of interventions in economic and social life through regulations, ordinances, laws, and taxes. Outwardly, the economically and militarily stronger state will seek to expand its sphere of influence. In the most primitive form, this happens through aggressive campaigns of conquest war in a more sophisticated form by pursuing political ideological supremacy. In recent decades, the letter has taken the form of democratic socialism. To put it casually, democratic socialism means allowing and doing what the majority wants. Under democratic socialism, private property is formally upheld, but it is declared that no one is the rightful owner of 100% of the income from their property. Part of it belongs to the state. People no longer strive for freedom from being ruled but rather to participate in the rule under social democratic socialism. The result is not people pushing back the state but rather coming to terms and cooperating with it. The practical consequence of democratic socialism is interventionism. The state intervenes in the economic and societal order on a case-by-case basis to gradually make socialist ideals a reality. All societies of the western world have embraced democratic socialism, some with more authority than others, and all of them use interventionism. And in this light, all western states are now acting in concert. What they also have in common is their disdain for competition because competition sets undesirable limits to the state's expensive nature. Therefore, larger states often form a cartel. Smaller, less powerful states are compelled to join, and if they refuse, they will suffer political and economic disadvantages. But the cartel of states is only an intermediate step. The logical endpoint that democratic socialism under interventionism is striving for is the creation of a central authority, something like a world government, a world state. In Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, the One Ring, the Ring of Power embodies this very dark idea to rule them all to create a world government. To get closer to this goal, democracy, as we understand it today, is proving to be an ideal trailblazer, and that's most likely the reason why it is praised to the skies by most socialists. Sooner or later, a democracy will mutate into an oligarchy as the German-Italian sociologist Robert Michels pointed out in 1911. According to Michels, parties emerge in democracies. These parties are organizations that need strict leadership, which is in the hands of the most power-hungry, ruthless people. They will represent the party elite. The party elite can break away from the will of the party members and pursue their own goals and agendas. For example, they form coalitions or cartels with elites of other parties. As a result, there will be an oligarchization of democracy and the elected party elites or the cartel of party elites will be the kings of the castle. It is not the voters who will call the tune, but the oligarchic elites that will rule over the voters. The oligarchization of democracy will not only afflict individual states, but will also affect the international relation of democracies. Oligarchical elites from different countries will join together and strengthen each other primarily by creating supranational institutions. Democratic socialism evolves into political globalism, the idea that people should not be allowed to shape their own destiny in a system of free markets, but assigned and directed by a global central authority. The one ring of power drives those who have already been seduced by the common rings to long for absolute power to elevate themselves above the rest of humanity. Who comes to mind? Well, various politicians, high-level bureaucrats, court intellectuals, representatives of big banking, big business, big pharma and big tech, and of course, big media together, they are often called the Davos elite or the establishment. Whether it is about combating financial and economic crises, climate change or viral diseases, the one ring of power ensures that supranational state orchestrated solutions are propagated, that centralization is placed over decentralization, and that the state, not the free market, is empowered. Calls for the new world order, the great transformation, the great reset are the results of this poisonous mindset inspired by the rings of power. National borders are called into question, property is relativized or declared indispensable, is declared dispensable, and even emerging of people's physical, digital and biological identity transhumanism is declared the goal of the self-empowered globalist establishment. But how can political globalism be promoted at a time when there are still social democratic nation states that insist on their independence and where people are separated by different languages, values and religions? How do the political globalists get closer to the badly desired end of world domination, their world state? Sauron is the undisputed tyrant and dictator in his realm of darkness. He operates something like a command economy, forcing his subjects to clear forests, build military equipment and breed orcs. There are neither markets nor money in Sauron's sinister kingdom. Sauron takes whatever he wants. He has overcome exchange and money, so to speak. Today's state is not quite that powerful and it finds itself in economies still characterized by property, the division of labor and monetary exchange. And that is why the state wants to control money because this is one of the most effective ways to gain ultimate power. To this end, the modern state has already acquired the monopoly of money production and it has replaced gold with its own fiat currency. Over time, fiat money destroys the free market system and thus the free society. As Ludwig von Mises pointed out as early as 1912, it would be a mistake to assume that the modern organization of exchange is bound to continue to exist. It carries within the germ of its own destruction. The development of fiat money or fiduciary medium must necessarily lead to its breakdown. Quote ends. Indeed, fiat money not only causes inflation, economic crises and an unsocial redistribution of income and wealth. Above all, it is a growth elixir for the state making it even larger and more powerful at the expense of freedoms of its citizens and entrepreneurs. Against this backdrop, it should be quite understandable why the political globalists see creating a single-world currency as an important step towards seizing absolute power. In Europe, what the political globalists want on a large scale has already been achieved on a small scale, merging many national currencies into one. In 1999, 11 European nation-states gave up their currencies and merged them into a single currency, the euro, which is produced by the European Central Bank. The creation of the euro provides the blueprint by which the world's major currency can be converted into a single currency. This is what the 1999 Canadian Nobel laureate in economics, Robert Mandel, recommends, increasing the exchange rates between the US dollar, the euro, the Chinese renminbi and the Japanese yen and the British pound against each other and also fixing them against a new unit of account, the so-called intore. And Hokus Pokus here is the world fiat currency controlled by a cartel of central banks or a world central bank. Admittedly, creating a single-world currency seems to have little chances of being realized at first glance, but maybe we get a different picture at a second glance. First of all, there's a good economic reason for having a single-world currency. If all people do business with the same money, the productive power of money is optimized. From an economic standpoint, the optimal number of monies in the world is one. What is more, nation-states have the monopoly of money within their respective territory, and since they all adhere to democratic socialism, they also have an interest in ensuring that there is no currency competition not even between different states, not even between different state fiat currencies. This makes them susceptible to the idea of reducing the pluralism of currencies. Furthermore, one should not misinterpret the so-called rivalry between the big states, such as the US and China and between China and Europe, which is being discussed in the mainstream media on a regular basis. No doubt that there is a rivalry between the national rulers. They do not want to give up the power they have gained in their respective countries. They want to become, at times, even more powerful. But the rivalry between the oligarchic democracies of the West has already weakened significantly, and there are great incentives for the oligarchic party elites to work together across borders. In fact, it is the oligarchization of democracy in the Western world that allowed for the rapprochement with a socialist-communist regime, the state increasingly taking control of the economic and societal order. This development could be called the Chinaization of the West. The way the Western world has dealt with the coronavirus, the suspension, perhaps the determination of constitutional rights and freedoms, undoubtedly shows where the journey is headed to the authoritarian state that is beyond the control of the people, as it is the case in communist China. The proper slogan for this might be one system many countries. Is it too far-fetched to assume that the Western world will make common cause with communist China not only on health issues, but also on the world's currency issue? The democratic socialists in the West and the Chinese Communist Party have a great deal in common ground and common interest, I would think, in this regard. It is certainly no coincidence that China has pushed very hard for the Chinese renminbi to be included in the IMF's special drawing rights, and that the IMF already agreed in November 2015. The issue of digital central bank money, something the world's major central banks are actually working on, could be a catalyst in the creation of a single-world currency. The issue of digital central bank money not only heralds the end of cash, the anonymous payment option for citizens and entrepreneurs. Once people start using digital currency, digital central bank money, it will be easy for the central bank and the state to spy on people's transactions. The state will know who pays what, when, where and for what. It will also be in a position to determine who gets access to deposits, who gets them and who doesn't. China is blazing the trail with its social credit system, behavior conforming to the communist regime is rewarded, behavior that does not is punished. Against this backdrop, digital central bank money would be particularly effective at stifling unwanted political opposition. Digital central bank money will not only replace cash, but it will also increasingly compete with money from commercial banks. Why should you keep your money with banks that are exposed to the risk of default when you can keep your money safe with the central bank that can never go bankrupt? Once central bank deposits can be exchanged one-to-one for digital central bank money, and this is to be expected, the credit and monetary system is de facto fully nationalized because under these conditions, the central bank transfers its unlimited solvency to the commercial banking sector. This completely deprives the financial markets of their function of determining the cost of capital and the state-plant economy becomes a reality. In fact, this is the type of command and control economy that emerged in National Socialist Germany in the 1930s. The state formally retained ownership of the means of production, but with commands, prohibitions, laws, taxes, and control, the state determined who is allowed to produce what, when, and under what conditions, and who is allowed to consume what, when, and by how much. In such a command and control economy, it is quite conceivable that the form of money production will change away from money creation through bank landing towards the issue of helicopter money. The central bank determines who gets how much new money and when. The amount of money in people's bank accounts no longer reflects their economic success. From now on, it is the result of arbitrary political decisions by the central bank's IE, the rulers. The prospect of being supplied with new money by the state and its central bank, that is, receiving an unconditional basic income, will presumably drive hosts of people into the arms of the state and bring any resistance to its machination to a shrieking halt. Will the people, the general public, really subscribe to all of this? Well, government-sponsored economists in particular are the best to inform us about the benefits of having a globally coordinated monetary policy of, that is, that stabilizing the exchange rates between national currencies is beneficial. That if a supernational controlled currency with the name of Intor or Global is created, we will achieve the best of all worlds. And as the issue of digital central bank money has shut down the last remnants of a free capital market, the merging of different national currencies into one will be relatively easy. The single-word currency creature that the political globalists want to create will be a fiat money, certainly not a commodity money. Such a single-word fiat currency will not only suffer from all the economic and ethical defects, which weigh on national fiat currencies. It will also exacerbate and exponentiate the damages and national fiat currency causes. The door to high inflation policy would be pushed wide open as nobody could escape the inflationary single-world fiat currency. The states are the main beneficiaries. They can get money from the World Central Bank at any time, provided they adhere to the rules set by the World Central Bank and the special interest groups that govern it. This creates the incentives for national states to relinquish sovereignty rights and to submit to super national rules, for example, in terms of taxation, financial, market regulation, etc. It is therefore the incentive resulting from a single-word currency that paves the way towards a world government, a world state. In this context, please note that what happened in the euro area is quite instructive. The starting point was not the creation of the EU super state, which was to be followed by the introduction by the euro. It was exactly the opposite. The euro was introduced to overcome national sovereignty and ultimately establish something like the United States of Europe, so a EU super state. No one has good reason to fear that the idea of issuing a world fiat currency, which the mastering relentlessly pushes for, would bring totalitarianism that would most likely dwarf the regimes established by Joseph Stalin, Adolf Hitler, Mao Zedong, Pol Pot and other criminals. In Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, evil is eventually defeated. The story has a happy ending. Will it be that easy in our world? The idea of having a state, as we know it today, of tolerating it, of cooperating with it, of giving the state total control over our money, are deeply rooted in people's minds as good ideas. Where the force is supposed to come from that will enlighten people about the evil of the state, as we know it today, brings to humanity, particularly when in kindergartens, schools, universities, which are all in the hands of the state, the teachings of collectivism, socialism and Marxism are systematically drummed into people's especially impressionable children's heads. When the teachings of freedom, free market and free society and capitalism are hardly or not at all imparted to the younger generation, who will explain to people the uncomfortable truth that even a minimal state will become a maximal state, that states' monopolies over money will lead to a single-world currency and thus world tyranny. It does not take much to become bleak when it comes to the future of the free economic and societal order. However, it would be rather short-sighted to get pessimistic. Those who believe in Jesus Christ can trust that God will not fail them. If we cannot think of a solution to the problems at hand, the believers can trust God, because even in the darkest night, there is a bright light shining somewhere. Or please remember the Enlightenment movement in the 18th century. At that time, the Prussian philosopher Immanuel Kant explained the unheard of to the people, namely that there is such a thing as autonomy of reason. It means that you and I have the indisputable right to lead our lives independently, that we should handle it according to self-imposed rules, rules that we determine ourselves based on good reason. People back then understood Kant's message. Why should such an intellectual revolution triggered by the writings and words of a free thinker not be able to repeat itself in the future? When it comes to thinking about changes for the better, it is important to note that it is not the mass of the people that matters, but the individual. Applied to the conditions in today's world, among those thinkers who can defeat evil and help the good make a breakthrough are Ludwig von Mises, Mary Rothbard, Hans Hermann Hopper and all those following their teachings and fearlessly disseminate them as scholars or as fans. They are, in terms of Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, the companions. They give us the intellectual firepower and courage to fight and defeat evil. I don't know if Ludwig von Mises knew Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, but he was certainly well aware of the struggle between good and evil that continues throughout human history. In fact, the knowledge of this struggle shaped Mises' maxim of life, which he took from the verse of the Roman poet Virgil, quote, tu no sedemales sed contra audentior ito, which means do not give in to evil, but proceed ever more boldly against it. I want to close my interpretation with a quote from Samwise Gamshi, the loyal friend and companion of Frodo Baggins. In a really hopeless situation, Sam says to Frodo, there's something good in this world, Mr. Frodo, and it's worth fighting for. So if we want to fight for the good in this world, we know what we have to do. We have to fight for property and freedom and against the darkness that the state, as we know it today, wishes to bring upon us, especially with its fiat money. In fact, we must fight steadfastly for a society of property and freedom. Thank you very much.