The Prime Secret

Either Reason magazine's ad rates are really low or Mark Hamilton has money to burn. One explanation or the other accounts for Hamilton buying nine pages of advertising in the March issue of the libertarian monthly to advertise Wealth, Health, Peace, a 300 page "turnkey manual" that promises to reveal the long-suppressed system that will "Make All Americans Rich, Including the Poor!"

Hamilton is the founder of a new political party, the "Twelve Visions Party." Call me prejudiced, but that name does little to inspire confidence. In any event, Hamilton is also the founder of the Neothink Society and a much-published author. His immediate agenda is to apply the paradigm of the computer revolution to the entire American economy. That is, as "computer buying power" increased in the 1980s so that "ordinary families could buy computers that a few years earlier only millionaires could buy," so the "TVP-induced" technological revolution will, presumably, make today's luxuries affordable for everyone. "All people will be the beneficiaries," Hamilton predicts, many of them "without lifting a finger!"

In Hamilton's history of the computer industry, the revolution he describes was able to take place because "the ruling class" wasn't "hovering over the computer industry." Restarting that revolution through the entire economy, he asserts, requires nothing less than the removal of the ruling class, which he describes later in the ad as a "ruling family" that has sustained itself for 3,000 years by suppressing the "Prime Secret" which Wealth, Health, Peace summarizes. Despite these suppressive efforts, a succession of "super-achievers" through history (including Jesus, Gandhi, Sam Walton and Michael Jordan) have discovered the Prime Secret for themselves. The rest of us are going to have to read it in Hamilton's book, but once we do, we'll rise up past our peers and join the "wealthy elite class." Not to be confused with the ruling class, the wealthy elite class is just another branch of the "suppressed class." This class is suppressed as a whole, notwithstanding the wealthy elitism of those who know the Prime Secret, because the ruling class divides the family against itself, inciting jealousy on the part of the majority against "those geniuses of society who are actually our greatest benefactors." Left to their own devices, the geniuses of society would act consistently in the manner of Henry Ford, who paid his workers exorbitant wages by the standards of his time so they could afford his cars. But the Fords of the 21st century are mercilessly maligned by the ruling class and subjected to "suffocating regulation and abusive litigation," while the working class (a term Hamilton doesn't use) is taught to despise their natural benefactors.

The Prime Secret, Hamilton claims, can make anyone successful and everyone rich. But there seems to be an unacknowledged exception to this rule: the ruling class. Hamilton asserts that ruling classes have attempted to suppress the Prime Secret for 3,000 years. Let's assume for amusement purposes only that the ruling class has to know the Prime Secret in order to suppress it. But if the rulers know the Prime Secret themselves, why don't they take advantage of it the same way history's geniuses have to enrich everyone? Hamilton has no better explanation for this exceptional behavior than that "they are greedy." He also describes the ruling class (which consists, if you haven't figured it out by now, of politicians) as enjoying "unearned wealth and power." So jealous are they of their exclusive wealth and power, Hamilton fears, that "the authorities would LOVE to shut me down." Of course, they'd have to know who he is in order to fulfill his flattering persecution fantasy, so I guess it pays to advertise.

His ambition aside, Hamilton's own account of history looks like damning proof of the limited utility of the Prime Secret. Here, after all, is a ruling class full of people who know the Secret and have done damn little with it, even to enrich themselves. Can that be blamed entirely on greed? Are politicians the only greedy people on earth? Unless Hamilton dares to make such a claim, he has to admit that the Prime Secret is not proof against the greedy impulses on the part of those who possess it that limit its benefits to the rest of us. After all, aren't there geniuses in our world today who can be presumed to possess the Secret, either by purchase or by intuition? If so, why aren't they sharing? Meanwhile, Hamilton could be selling it to multitudes who'll only use it to rise into the ruling class rather than share it to liberate the rest of their brethren in the suppressed class. And if we go further to assume that politicians are unproductive (hence "unearned wealth") in spite of the Prime Secret, than what guarantee can Hamilton offer that those who buy the Secret from him (for $29.95) will get the benefit he claims is practically automatic. Can we take the claim that Wealth, Health, Peace "immediately liberates all suppressed readers and sends their income soaring" at face value? Maybe the Secret is something that can only come naturally to history's geniuses, or can only be exploited properly by those with innate gifts. In that case, Hamilton is being both irresponsible and (dare I say) greedy by offering this power to anyone who can pay.

Your check or money order in payment for Wealth, Health, Peace is a political contribution to the Twelve Visions Party. Hamilton depends on that money to realize the political side of his planned revolution. One year from now, he hints in a "Hypothetical Timeline," the real "wealth-shift" begins when "the new Twelve Visions party weakens the ruling-class heel pushing down the suppressed class." But even if that doesn't happen, Hamilton assures Reason readers, his book might help individuals become "Self-Leaders" and start the liberation process on their own. But I'd like to think that anyone who even imagines himself as a "self-leader" shouldn't need a book to tell him how to be one.