This is a proposal to show how the 18.6 year real estate cycle is a hang over from times where the mechanics of the lunar month were used by high priests of the time to forecast ancient agricultural cycles - what we would today call a business cycle culminating in a financial crisis or a great recession.
The 18.6 year period is governed by the intersection of lunar and solar eclipses. It is known scientifically as the Saros Cycle. Where all 3 harmonics of the orbit of the moon coincide once every 18.6 years. The ancient scholars knew this. And the politicians of the time used it to signal the day when the economy would be deliberately reset by fiat. This reset was necessary because this period was about how long the people of nations could abuse the economy before it was too late to recover on its own and much worse effects would have emerged.
So it was the wisdom of the leadership of the time. As the aeons went by, the meaning and rationale of this policy became normalised - people and leadership forgot about why it was necessary. As the policy was by now normalised, it had become a part of the economic world of the time so it persisted anyway. And we are where we are today. Except, we are not conscious of it still being used any more. A great recession still occurs by fiat bang on time. But those with the power to trigger it are not aware this is a fundamental necessity.
The end of this 18.6 year period will occur toward the end of 2026. This time globally. There are no longer any economic borders in spite of foolish leaders trying to erect them. China may be pulled in this time too and that completes the global input. America will lead it through mortgages again.
Why was the policy initiated in the first place by the ancients? Due to the often uncontrollable, immoral and unsustainable demands of people in general, it was found to be more beneficial for the economy of the time to be deliberately recycled periodically rather than leaving it to run its course out of control with nature being the final arbiter. The high priests knew this from millennia of records handed down. They realised about 19 years was as long as any economy could hold out if the people insisted it's foundation was based on systemic rent seeking. These powerful ones still got the blame nonetheless - they accept being scapegoats because they did so well out of it anyway
Obviously I have no significant evidence for this, except that it happens. Nearly every 20 years the world sees its economies, mostly in harmony with each other, collapse suddenly. So far I personally have witnessed 3 great recessions. In 1972, 1990 and 2008. The latter 2 impacted my personal economy directly through the retail financial bond we know as a mortgage.
What is the real estate cycle exactly? It is the inevitable consequence of enclosing the economic rents of a system as the foundation of a nations economic and fiscal policy. In other words
1) privatisation of unearned incomes and
2) taxation of earned incomes
Eventual collapse is obviously priced in at the start of every cycle, because you cannot take more out of an economy than is put into it. Its just a matter of when. This 'when' is when the totality of economic rents which must paid, usually debt, exceed the ability of the productive part of an economy, to pay them. It happens suddenly and worldwide each time because no one can see it coming any more. It recovers when the rents have fallen once again below the line of productivity, or if a new labour saving device or more pure government increases production, or a bit of both.
I'm not saying this is a good or bad thing, that something must be done about it or we should promote more of it. I am just pointing it out. And I am saying that it is what the people, en masse, through democratic due process have freely chosen. It is not a direct effect of an oligarchy of wealth and power. That is, all people in society are to blame as a collective every time, not Power. Or put another way, the collective IS Power.
Whats remarkable about this economic policy, is its the only one which all sides politically and ideologically refuse to give serious scrutiny to. In fact it goes deeper than that. All sides politically who would normally be fiercely competing for Power, stand together, united, in perfect harmony, when it comes to this curious policy, and will fight together as comrades against anyone who tries to bring it into the light. It's the one policy which harmonises both the left and the right into a single party and draws ferocious resistance whenever raised as a point for debate. For me that is the strongest signal of all, demanding I look at it far more deeply. Why? Because it is obviously not an economic question any more. Nor can it be a political one if all sides are in agreement on it. It must be a collectively unconscious activity, driven by the so called psyche of society. In other words, an objective fact of the collective psyche.
Moving on... The nodes of what professional astronomers call a draconic lunar month make a complete orbit of the earth in about 6,798 days (18.6 years) My hypothetical proposition is that this particular lunar cycle was chosen to forecast ancient business cycles because it was also found by coincidence to be about as long as an economy could remain afloat under the barmy conditions demanded by the people before it could no longer hold out and collapse. Though it was obvious to the priests it would collapse anyway thanks to the people's unsustainable demands, using this accurate measure of time from the heavens meant the administration could at least retain some level of control over the impending systemic shock. And given it came from the heavens, greater powers who the priests represented could be used to scare people into permitting the activity. The priests didn't believe it. They just knew it was better to collapse the system on purpose while still in control rather than let nature take care of it. And pretended it was the work of gods.
For the sceptic, there's nothing mysterious or mystical about this at all. Its just maths and geometry which ancient people had at hand in abundance. The interesting thing in the modern world about each shock, is that the 'unconscious collective' seem to completely forget about the last one within about 4 years. And as a collective we all work in harmony together to keep forgetting. This 'loss of memory' tends to last nearly 20 years. Or a generation and the lifetime of a typical mortgage by strange coincidence. One twentieth of the harvest buys the field as the old farmers saying goes. One twentieth is 5% which even more curiously is the ultra long term average increase in annual rents - 20 years rent buys the property, in perpetuity. Or, 1 twentieth of the market cap of a property shows its annual rental value, not including the capital value in it's bricks and mortar.
Anyone younger than 20 will have no memory of the last great recession at all as they start looking at the prospect of getting on the ladder as a first time buyer. So not only are they the last players to enter the game - they have no idea about its rules or history and how to budget and hedge their first household.
I'm not religious, but the Torah warns us about this in Leviticus 25:23
"you must not sell the land for ever, for this is mine and you are my tenants"
This is a stark yet fair warning, because after roughly 223 months, as if by magic, we rise from our long sleep, and suddenly 'remember'. Then, right on time, a great recession is orchestrated perfectly. With no accounting for morality, ethics, diversity, fairness and justice. It happens. You may win, you may lose. You may have worked hard and saved, you may have been an idler and sponger.
So you'd better make sure your household is in good order ready for an almighty storm which takes no prisoners, has no mercy for the weak and will often praise the strong unjustly. Nature knows nothing about morals and justice I'm afraid. And we have killed God so there are no high priests any more to take care of it somewhat in control.
The few people today who even believe in the 18.6 year real estate cycle, dismiss this whole idea as coincidental. Our proposal aims to show this ancient cycle - of 'facing the dragon' is the exact same cycle we see today for real estate and that we simply forgot about its genesis block maybe 10,000 years ago. We're proposing that the cycle has been used for such a long time to administer systemic economic and now financial structures, that today it is latently embedded in the DNA of society. It is primordial. We act collectively on it as a society by intuition without logic and reason being necessary. We 'know' as a large group of people to do it. We're just not aware of the action materially.
Its easy to imagine how this could be so. But hard to prove obviously. We can only research and analyse to see where it takes us. If ancient civilisations were using draconic months to measure their business cycle for 1000's of years, its not hard to see how that could have become normalised into the developing social organisation. Such that it became concrete and automatic over time. With the administration structuring the economy as it adapted over time to remain synchronised with a cycle which was timed for about 20 years. Eventually reaching a point where it remained fully adopted yet no one asked about why anymore - if it's not broke, don't fix it.
And here we are today.
Those who support the 18.6 year cycle are quick to blame wealth and power controlled by government and the corruption of economics for the entire show which has to be a rather childish worldview. And they freely admit they do not know why the cycle is this long except to point at weird stuff without justifying why it's weird. Mostly these influencers are libertarians who hate government for some embittering reason maybe from childhood. But this image of the world is still a terrible mistake and simplistic misunderstanding.
But what if this preservative activity of 'the Lord's' is to ensure, for the nations benefit, that a systemic financial shock happens, right on time? To get this picture I've had to stop imagining that all activity is conscious activity, or done deliberately by conspiracy or by the actions of logic and reason today. It might have been a logical activity for the priests ten thousand years ago. This governing activity is an unconscious one. It's buried away deep in the core functions of society, in a past age for very good reason. And the Lord's are simply doing their duty. Even the wholesale corruption of economics within the academies of learning is still an act of doing it's duty for a wantonly selfish and ignorant people who could frankly do a whole lot better.
The people across history have yet to find a way to elect a government of purity and thrift. What's has not happened is for society itself, not government, to have evolved into a state which was more virtuous on the whole. To recognise it is not poor government which is wrong. It is society herself which from the begging of social time, is systemically corrupt. Meaning society is neither good nor bad for us, it is what the people make of it, on the whole. And government, though often useless, are simply doing their best to the extent the people allow them to under the impossible conditions the people demand. And the Lords are proceeding with earnest to minimise the losses, by keeping at least some control over the inevitable systemic shock a large group of people who insist on behaving badly will certainly deliver. Today this requires them to maintain a fiscal structure which means it will keep happening about every 20 years. That today the world has forgotten the purpose and reason for the deliberate collapse is a bonus. If no one is conscious of it, no one will try to, or even can do anything about it.
So be it. This hypothesis is not the only systemic measure we use today which no one questions. So the proposal has precedent scientifically and is worthy of further research.
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