"It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning."
I started looking at and researching the money system just before the global credit crunch. I've read and still got many books which describe money and how it operates. There are some common themes as well as differences.
Your point - "What then, is fiat money really? Is it worth anything? The answer is a resounding “nothing”. It’s a promise of nothing".
I don't think that's strictly true, governments back fiat money, and it is accepted for trading and payment of taxes. Some would argue that it's the very fact we pay tax in £'s which means it becomes ubiquitous.
You are correct that a business or an individual could use other forms of exchange, and this does happen. But, whether a government would accept other forms of payment is questionable.
Central Banks, The Bank of International Settlements and various governments exert enormous control via laws. One could say they use a form of legal violence.
Back in the 1930's, Wörgl created their own currency, which dug them out of the great depression. It was called the miracle of Wörgl. Ultimately, it was closed down via legal action from the Austrian Central Bank.
You say, "All you have to do is establish communities of people with all the goods and services they need between them and adopt an alternative medium of exchange and store of value".
This has been tried and is being done now, albeit in a small way. I think there are various reasons why they tend to fail, but it isn't easy to set up these systems in a way which keeps people using them.
I'm all for challenging the status quo, but I think it's helpful to understand this is a huge fight with plenty of vested interests who would like the status quo to continue.
I also used to use your first argument against Bitcoin maximalists. Recently, I discovered the Bradbury Pound which is what I think you describe? Alas, that is no longer the case. There is nothing to back up the value of fiat money. the threat of not being able to pay your taxes does not seem like value to me! It's a Ponzi scheme. Does the productive capacity of the economy rise in line with the new money that is printed? No. so, there is no tangible relationship between fiat money and value. It is "accepted" for trading because someone accepts it for trading. Where does the buck stop? If it's with you and you no longer want to trade with it? What do you do with it? Take it to the government or the bank to redeem it for something useful? Nada. Zilch. Nothing. It's worthless.
Backing "money" with commodities is foolish, has always failed, and been another manipulation of what we call money. It also is completely unnecessary and a waste of a resource.
I am aware of the Bradbury pound, but what I described happened in Wörgl. It was inspired by Silvio Gisell's idea of a Demurrage currency.
Perhaps we are at cross purposes on the value of fiat money, but I would bet the courts would support anyone who wished to offer it as payment of a debt. I might as a business owner wish to be paid in gold or something else, but if someone offered £'s I would in the end be forced to accept it.
Fiat is an act of faith, that is true, money and the money system is all about power and control.
All I'm saying is that changing it isn't easy at all. At the cost of repeating myself, there are powerful vested interests who wish it to remain.
I'm not sure who will start and decide not to pay their taxes in fiat money, but I guess at some point, prisons would get pretty busy.
The reality is that money and the money system is not something people are that interested in. Most people would rather stick pins in their eyes than try to understand it.
Perhaps you will do better than I in trying to raise these points, but be ready for a hard uphill slog.
No, you wouldn't. Even the BoE says so. If you priced in fiat, sure, you'd have to expect it. But if you priced in something else, even Pokémon cards, then you're not obliged to accept money. Who would determine the monetary equivalent in that case?
And I'm not saying we need to change it. We can choose to accept or even insist on whatever we like as producers in exchange for our goods and services. It's a bit like being vegan. Your choices are more limited but perhaps you prefer that and the control of what you put in your body? If everyone felt the same, the meat industry would simply go out of business. The same could happen with the fiat monetary system in that case?
I don't make the point of paying taxes in something other than money. That you cannot avoid - without avoiding taxes altogether. ;-)
Nor do I care who listens to me or not. Like my COVID ramblings, I'm not here to convert anyone, just to help those who are already minded for change.
I initially learned about this in the 1990's by watching Bill Still's The Money Masters, http://www.themoneymasters.com/the-money-masters/ but didn't understand the concept enough to change how I used money. Plus, I was raising a family and didn't have time. Nobody else in my circle of friends and family cared about it at the time.
Fast forward to the 2008 financial meltdown and I wish I had paid more attention. Like many, I experienced a wake up call at that time and resolved never to be caught off guard by ignorance about money again. I'm in a much better position now but appalled at how little people CARE to know how money works and how the entire political, social and economic systems are designed to enslave them. If I try to explain, their eyes glaze over. So long as they're not suffering too much themselves they don't care about the sweatshops in India, Pakistan and China.
Meanwhile, the imperialist countries are raping and pillaging third world countries to maintain high living standards in the west keeping our population numbed out and dumbed down. Until those countries start fighting back or the oligarchs in power start robbing and murdering their own citizens.
So, now when it's too late people are waking up out of their TV and cell phone stupor, they're realizing the party's over. It's quite pathetic to watch people becoming bitter at everyone else without a shred of understanding about how it could have been different had they been paying attention. So many whistleblowers yet so little accountability. Citizens failed in their duty to overthrow corrupt governments and oligarchs who bought them. Now our children will pay the price.
What I see missing in crypto money is a way to define unit of value, not sure what the technical term is. The current notion of a stable crypto currency makes reference to a highly inflated fiat currency. Not exactly stable. How can we define stable without this reference back to the old system? How can we define inflation in a truly decentralized and open way?
Nothing is stable. Why should it be? everything has relative value according to supply and demand. Yes, you could reference prices in the most stable commodity, e.g. gold but it's not essential for such a system as I describe to work. The woods in my local village was valued in terms of number of pigs in the Domesday Book. Why should it matter as long as the parties involved are comfortable with the values being expressed and exchanged?
Stability might be an illusion of the current system, a forced property. At the same time, that stability is desirable. Money allows expansion of trade in both space and time. I have wood, you have pigs, I don't need pigs and you may or may not need wood, but there are many other people who need wood and pigs and have things that both you and I need. Without money it is very difficult to trade. Also, I might need pigs next year, not right now, but I need to get rid of the wood now. Money allows me to time shift. Some level of stability is very important for trade, maybe less so for speculation.
"Money" didn't evolve organically as you describe. I also used to think this must be true.
REAL money, a fiat of the law, properly made, would have only one purpose- to facilitate barter. No interest rates, no fractional reserve lending, no private cabals. Real money is more stable than precious metals or other high valued commodities....or rather it would be if we had any real money.
Read "The Lost Science of Money" and/or "Real Honest Money".
Silver and gold are not really commodities either. Yes, they have some industrial use, but in general they have value simply because a large number of people agree that they have value, nothing else.
Just examples. I didn't limit the opportunity to gold and silver but historically they have been proven to work in this context. So too, rice, pelts, etc. which have undeniable commodity quality.
Yes, gold/silver/rice etc can be more stable, and historically have been. All these commodities have huge problems as well (you need armies to defend gold, huge infrastructure to preserve and store rice, etc). You can have a bumper crop of rice one year then suddenly the value of that commodity goes down, and so on. Ultimately things have value because we all agree they have value, and that includes rice.
EXACTLY! The first gold and silver coins were FIAT. The metals were not considered valuable till after being used as a medium of exchange to record money on.
I don't see how fiat money is a Ponzi scheme. It does not promise high returns and it doesn't require an ever increasing number of investors to pay out the earlier investors. What am I missing?
You missed the entire point! Money is only worth something because somebody will accept it in exchange for something else of value. You are always relying on that. What happens when everyone realises this and you're the last one left holding all the money? Take a look at 1920s East Germany! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperinflation_in_the_Weimar_Republic
Sure, that does not mean that fiat money is a Ponzi scheme. I lived through a hyperinflation, I know exactly how it feels and how money can lose its value. I also lost Terra Luna. Nothing humans imagined as store of value that can be used for commerce has intrinsic value. Rice is not money, and even rice can lose its value. Humanity was obsessed with gold for a very long time, that seems the least likely to suddenly lose its value at this point, but it is very impractical. Some form of crypto has the most promise, but we are not quite there yet, and I think we have to be very explicit that it holds value because we all agree on that.
Perhaps the distinction causing the confusion is here: ponzi schemes promise returns on investment, and pay them (short term) on borrowed capital, not value creation. Fiat currency promises to store utility as bank notes, then erodes that utility via inflation (call it borrowing capital without permission from this generation, and the next) which also creates no actual value. Both are confidence scams. Conversely, If rice were to lose value, something of value would have to be created, such as a rice surplus, or substitute.
That's a good distinction, thanks. Fiat currency does create value actually, it's not just debasement. Lending and borrowing are making possible all kinds of projects that otherwise will never happen. Capital is a real thing, and it's not all evil (yes, it has lots of negative aspects). Rice could lose its value for many other reasons, not only because of surplus (other value), for cultural reasons people might decide that rice is not a desirable food anymore (everyone goes keto).
Well said. You previously suggested we list some positives of money. Let's add the capital outlay for projects to both the 'good' (borrow to start a business) and 'bad' (borrow to continue a war) column. But.......money can fulfil it's utility of capital and risk allocation without the shenanigans and ponzi-type scams like printing it and giving it to yourself.
Also, yes the simplification on rice was overcooked (pun intended), but the point on market forces not being considered theft remains. Volatility of value due to supply or demand shifts is desirable long term as a functioning market. Theft by inflation is market failure in all instances.
You are correct IMO, though missing some things, as you are aware. There is nothing wrong with FIAT. Nearly everyone misuses and misunderstands FIAT.
The current systems though, claimed to be fiat(legal), are schemes. Debt based or commodity based are both schemes.
A true fiat money, made properly, with proper rules or conditions, controlled by and for the people, would be far more stable than any commodity or Ponzi scheme system, and would distribute wealth among the people. No inflation or deflation unless desired/necessary. All common people twice as wealthy. Banks become service centers. Civilization will vastly improve.
Fiat currency could potentially serve as sound, and remarkably efficient, money absent debasement. However history informs us governments always succumb to temptation and abuse fiat, harming fiat holders. Everyone is about to learn this lesson the hard way, again, and now with all national currencies fiat this iteration of the phenomenon is bound to be global. The consequent vaporization of financial wealth will be breathtaking, and terrifying.
Joel Smalley, i cannot overstate how satisfying it is to receive your posts. Thankyou!
For this topic, i've enjoyed and hence recommend the 'what is money podcast' with Robert Breedlove and guests. A wide exploration, heavily bitcoin biased, starting with the premise of money as a store of energy.
I can't remember website now but there are communities who are trying these systems, either for goods and services, some working on a 50/50 cash/named token system. Cash required in instances where supplies to be bought. I would like to investigate further. If, for example, people got credit for their first purchase, they'd have to offer something within a certain timeframe. What happens if they don't? Do some schemes start off with purchasing tokens in first place? Who gets money? The idea of it sounds good but not sure how people will take to it. Just the other day in UK, it was announced on news that "Dave's Bank" to be made into a Netflix movie. Dave, local entrepreneur in his northern town, set up a community bank to assist local small businesses with loans which the big banks wouldn't entertain. It's obviously successful, hence Netflix interest. Richard Werner, ex WEF one time candidate also proposes community banks too.
That's why I suggested time resource can be tokenised in these situations too. Essentially, that's no different from being a salaried employee. You give up your time resource for money in the form of salary that you then spend to consume some other goods and services. If people trust your skills and ability to contribute something of value to the community, you can indeed issue your own "currency" in order to start consuming before you produce.
Yes, fiat money, inflation, the whole banking system are horrible. At the same time, can you name a few things that are good in this system? Just for the sake of a balanced view? How are we going to build a better system if we have no capacity to show gratitude for what we have?
I mean it is very easy to point out the negatives of the current system and hence for into a negative state. The current system is not all bad, if we want to build something better we should have a balanced view, both bad and good, of what we have. And it's not only a pragmatic attitude, showing gratitude sets you on a much better path to build something good.
This a central problem in transitioning to a different system. The concept of fiat currency so simple, yet repellent if you grasp how truly sinister our system of money is.
"It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning."
Fiat is not something wrong with "money". You are being deceived.
The current monetary systems are designed from the get go to be a corruption of what we call money. The systems are designed to concentrate wealth.
The only thing good about the current systems, is that we already have the infrastructure to produce a true money system. A true FIAT REAL JUST ORGANIC MONEY that represents barter, and does not employ private control, interest rates, national debt, or fractional reserve lending.
All we need do is understand better, what the true nature of real money is, then likely have to force governments to employ it.
Politicians only listen to the money masters...that needs to be the people.
Notes and coins are only about 3% of the money supply in the UK. Printing more notes and coins will have only a small effect on the total supply of money. Most money is created by commercial banks. You get a loan from a bank and deposit the money in your account, prior to spending it, that is money creation. The Bank of England can control what the commercial banks do by setting interest rates, by regulating how much capital they need to operate and by controlling the amount of reserves they need to deposit at the Bank of England. When people talk about ‘printing money’ they usually mean Governments running deficits which they need to finance by issuing bills and gilts to investors. The other form of ‘printing money’ which is fashionable since the global financial crisis is QE - quantitative easing. This is where the Bank of England through an Asset Purchase subsidiary acquired assets such as government and corporate bonds financed by loans from commercial banks.
"It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning."
Henry Ford
Hi Joel
I started looking at and researching the money system just before the global credit crunch. I've read and still got many books which describe money and how it operates. There are some common themes as well as differences.
Your point - "What then, is fiat money really? Is it worth anything? The answer is a resounding “nothing”. It’s a promise of nothing".
I don't think that's strictly true, governments back fiat money, and it is accepted for trading and payment of taxes. Some would argue that it's the very fact we pay tax in £'s which means it becomes ubiquitous.
You are correct that a business or an individual could use other forms of exchange, and this does happen. But, whether a government would accept other forms of payment is questionable.
Central Banks, The Bank of International Settlements and various governments exert enormous control via laws. One could say they use a form of legal violence.
Back in the 1930's, Wörgl created their own currency, which dug them out of the great depression. It was called the miracle of Wörgl. Ultimately, it was closed down via legal action from the Austrian Central Bank.
You say, "All you have to do is establish communities of people with all the goods and services they need between them and adopt an alternative medium of exchange and store of value".
This has been tried and is being done now, albeit in a small way. I think there are various reasons why they tend to fail, but it isn't easy to set up these systems in a way which keeps people using them.
I'm all for challenging the status quo, but I think it's helpful to understand this is a huge fight with plenty of vested interests who would like the status quo to continue.
I also used to use your first argument against Bitcoin maximalists. Recently, I discovered the Bradbury Pound which is what I think you describe? Alas, that is no longer the case. There is nothing to back up the value of fiat money. the threat of not being able to pay your taxes does not seem like value to me! It's a Ponzi scheme. Does the productive capacity of the economy rise in line with the new money that is printed? No. so, there is no tangible relationship between fiat money and value. It is "accepted" for trading because someone accepts it for trading. Where does the buck stop? If it's with you and you no longer want to trade with it? What do you do with it? Take it to the government or the bank to redeem it for something useful? Nada. Zilch. Nothing. It's worthless.
Backing "money" with commodities is foolish, has always failed, and been another manipulation of what we call money. It also is completely unnecessary and a waste of a resource.
I am aware of the Bradbury pound, but what I described happened in Wörgl. It was inspired by Silvio Gisell's idea of a Demurrage currency.
Perhaps we are at cross purposes on the value of fiat money, but I would bet the courts would support anyone who wished to offer it as payment of a debt. I might as a business owner wish to be paid in gold or something else, but if someone offered £'s I would in the end be forced to accept it.
Fiat is an act of faith, that is true, money and the money system is all about power and control.
All I'm saying is that changing it isn't easy at all. At the cost of repeating myself, there are powerful vested interests who wish it to remain.
I'm not sure who will start and decide not to pay their taxes in fiat money, but I guess at some point, prisons would get pretty busy.
The reality is that money and the money system is not something people are that interested in. Most people would rather stick pins in their eyes than try to understand it.
Perhaps you will do better than I in trying to raise these points, but be ready for a hard uphill slog.
No, you wouldn't. Even the BoE says so. If you priced in fiat, sure, you'd have to expect it. But if you priced in something else, even Pokémon cards, then you're not obliged to accept money. Who would determine the monetary equivalent in that case?
And I'm not saying we need to change it. We can choose to accept or even insist on whatever we like as producers in exchange for our goods and services. It's a bit like being vegan. Your choices are more limited but perhaps you prefer that and the control of what you put in your body? If everyone felt the same, the meat industry would simply go out of business. The same could happen with the fiat monetary system in that case?
I don't make the point of paying taxes in something other than money. That you cannot avoid - without avoiding taxes altogether. ;-)
Nor do I care who listens to me or not. Like my COVID ramblings, I'm not here to convert anyone, just to help those who are already minded for change.
Okay, fair enough
I initially learned about this in the 1990's by watching Bill Still's The Money Masters, http://www.themoneymasters.com/the-money-masters/ but didn't understand the concept enough to change how I used money. Plus, I was raising a family and didn't have time. Nobody else in my circle of friends and family cared about it at the time.
Fast forward to the 2008 financial meltdown and I wish I had paid more attention. Like many, I experienced a wake up call at that time and resolved never to be caught off guard by ignorance about money again. I'm in a much better position now but appalled at how little people CARE to know how money works and how the entire political, social and economic systems are designed to enslave them. If I try to explain, their eyes glaze over. So long as they're not suffering too much themselves they don't care about the sweatshops in India, Pakistan and China.
Meanwhile, the imperialist countries are raping and pillaging third world countries to maintain high living standards in the west keeping our population numbed out and dumbed down. Until those countries start fighting back or the oligarchs in power start robbing and murdering their own citizens.
So, now when it's too late people are waking up out of their TV and cell phone stupor, they're realizing the party's over. It's quite pathetic to watch people becoming bitter at everyone else without a shred of understanding about how it could have been different had they been paying attention. So many whistleblowers yet so little accountability. Citizens failed in their duty to overthrow corrupt governments and oligarchs who bought them. Now our children will pay the price.
‘Money’ and ‘currency’ are not the same thing. Gold is money. Fiat is currency.
Understand that and you are 75% of the way there.
Absolutely incorrect. Gold existed long before we invented the legal abstract called money.
What? That’s what I said. They are not the same. There is money. And there is currency. What is it that is ‘incorrect’?
Gold is not money. Gold comes from the ground. Money is an abstract creation of the law; is supposed to be.
Whatever "money" is being used, real or modern funny money, that is currency. The flow of money is currency.
What I see missing in crypto money is a way to define unit of value, not sure what the technical term is. The current notion of a stable crypto currency makes reference to a highly inflated fiat currency. Not exactly stable. How can we define stable without this reference back to the old system? How can we define inflation in a truly decentralized and open way?
Nothing is stable. Why should it be? everything has relative value according to supply and demand. Yes, you could reference prices in the most stable commodity, e.g. gold but it's not essential for such a system as I describe to work. The woods in my local village was valued in terms of number of pigs in the Domesday Book. Why should it matter as long as the parties involved are comfortable with the values being expressed and exchanged?
Stability might be an illusion of the current system, a forced property. At the same time, that stability is desirable. Money allows expansion of trade in both space and time. I have wood, you have pigs, I don't need pigs and you may or may not need wood, but there are many other people who need wood and pigs and have things that both you and I need. Without money it is very difficult to trade. Also, I might need pigs next year, not right now, but I need to get rid of the wood now. Money allows me to time shift. Some level of stability is very important for trade, maybe less so for speculation.
"Money" didn't evolve organically as you describe. I also used to think this must be true.
REAL money, a fiat of the law, properly made, would have only one purpose- to facilitate barter. No interest rates, no fractional reserve lending, no private cabals. Real money is more stable than precious metals or other high valued commodities....or rather it would be if we had any real money.
Read "The Lost Science of Money" and/or "Real Honest Money".
www.monetary.org
https://www.monetaryalliance.org/
https://positivemoney.org/
Economists are trained in models that don't agree with history or reality, nor do they learn what real money is. BTW.
Please read "The Lost Science of Money" for proper understanding and actual solutions.
We can't just all run and hide. We need to fix things. We need to understand the very nature of money, and its history going back thousands of years.
The first fiat currencies were gold and silver coins(recorded history). If that does not make sense to you, it is because you need to learn better.
Silver and gold are not really commodities either. Yes, they have some industrial use, but in general they have value simply because a large number of people agree that they have value, nothing else.
Just examples. I didn't limit the opportunity to gold and silver but historically they have been proven to work in this context. So too, rice, pelts, etc. which have undeniable commodity quality.
Yes, gold/silver/rice etc can be more stable, and historically have been. All these commodities have huge problems as well (you need armies to defend gold, huge infrastructure to preserve and store rice, etc). You can have a bumper crop of rice one year then suddenly the value of that commodity goes down, and so on. Ultimately things have value because we all agree they have value, and that includes rice.
EXACTLY! The first gold and silver coins were FIAT. The metals were not considered valuable till after being used as a medium of exchange to record money on.
Hm, not sure about that. Gold was used by many if not most cultures, before coins as money were invented and always considered valuable.
I don't see how fiat money is a Ponzi scheme. It does not promise high returns and it doesn't require an ever increasing number of investors to pay out the earlier investors. What am I missing?
You missed the entire point! Money is only worth something because somebody will accept it in exchange for something else of value. You are always relying on that. What happens when everyone realises this and you're the last one left holding all the money? Take a look at 1920s East Germany! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperinflation_in_the_Weimar_Republic
Sure, that does not mean that fiat money is a Ponzi scheme. I lived through a hyperinflation, I know exactly how it feels and how money can lose its value. I also lost Terra Luna. Nothing humans imagined as store of value that can be used for commerce has intrinsic value. Rice is not money, and even rice can lose its value. Humanity was obsessed with gold for a very long time, that seems the least likely to suddenly lose its value at this point, but it is very impractical. Some form of crypto has the most promise, but we are not quite there yet, and I think we have to be very explicit that it holds value because we all agree on that.
Perhaps the distinction causing the confusion is here: ponzi schemes promise returns on investment, and pay them (short term) on borrowed capital, not value creation. Fiat currency promises to store utility as bank notes, then erodes that utility via inflation (call it borrowing capital without permission from this generation, and the next) which also creates no actual value. Both are confidence scams. Conversely, If rice were to lose value, something of value would have to be created, such as a rice surplus, or substitute.
That's a good distinction, thanks. Fiat currency does create value actually, it's not just debasement. Lending and borrowing are making possible all kinds of projects that otherwise will never happen. Capital is a real thing, and it's not all evil (yes, it has lots of negative aspects). Rice could lose its value for many other reasons, not only because of surplus (other value), for cultural reasons people might decide that rice is not a desirable food anymore (everyone goes keto).
Well said. You previously suggested we list some positives of money. Let's add the capital outlay for projects to both the 'good' (borrow to start a business) and 'bad' (borrow to continue a war) column. But.......money can fulfil it's utility of capital and risk allocation without the shenanigans and ponzi-type scams like printing it and giving it to yourself.
Also, yes the simplification on rice was overcooked (pun intended), but the point on market forces not being considered theft remains. Volatility of value due to supply or demand shifts is desirable long term as a functioning market. Theft by inflation is market failure in all instances.
You are correct IMO, though missing some things, as you are aware. There is nothing wrong with FIAT. Nearly everyone misuses and misunderstands FIAT.
The current systems though, claimed to be fiat(legal), are schemes. Debt based or commodity based are both schemes.
A true fiat money, made properly, with proper rules or conditions, controlled by and for the people, would be far more stable than any commodity or Ponzi scheme system, and would distribute wealth among the people. No inflation or deflation unless desired/necessary. All common people twice as wealthy. Banks become service centers. Civilization will vastly improve.
Yes, but such an ideal true fiat never existed, so we can only hope that it is possible.
Thanks Joel. Only reasonable to observe that most fiat currency uses the dollar as a reference value.
The devil $ has been barrel of oil price backed for a long time now.
USA's determination to maintain that supremacy is 100% the reason for each & every single conflict, world wide, since WW2.
North Africa, The Middle East ripped to shreds by Oil war. Ukraine Oil war.
All ultimately driven by Rothschild's evil.
https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t2934-complete-list-of-rothschild-owned-and-controlled-banks
Fractional Reserve Banking (money making magic–$1 for $10) exists to make drug cartels look respectable.
Fiat currency could potentially serve as sound, and remarkably efficient, money absent debasement. However history informs us governments always succumb to temptation and abuse fiat, harming fiat holders. Everyone is about to learn this lesson the hard way, again, and now with all national currencies fiat this iteration of the phenomenon is bound to be global. The consequent vaporization of financial wealth will be breathtaking, and terrifying.
Tangible assets offer refuge particularly liquid tangibles, namely precious metals.
Joel Smalley, i cannot overstate how satisfying it is to receive your posts. Thankyou!
For this topic, i've enjoyed and hence recommend the 'what is money podcast' with Robert Breedlove and guests. A wide exploration, heavily bitcoin biased, starting with the premise of money as a store of energy.
I can't remember website now but there are communities who are trying these systems, either for goods and services, some working on a 50/50 cash/named token system. Cash required in instances where supplies to be bought. I would like to investigate further. If, for example, people got credit for their first purchase, they'd have to offer something within a certain timeframe. What happens if they don't? Do some schemes start off with purchasing tokens in first place? Who gets money? The idea of it sounds good but not sure how people will take to it. Just the other day in UK, it was announced on news that "Dave's Bank" to be made into a Netflix movie. Dave, local entrepreneur in his northern town, set up a community bank to assist local small businesses with loans which the big banks wouldn't entertain. It's obviously successful, hence Netflix interest. Richard Werner, ex WEF one time candidate also proposes community banks too.
That's why I suggested time resource can be tokenised in these situations too. Essentially, that's no different from being a salaried employee. You give up your time resource for money in the form of salary that you then spend to consume some other goods and services. If people trust your skills and ability to contribute something of value to the community, you can indeed issue your own "currency" in order to start consuming before you produce.
Yes, indeed! Just watched Bank of Dave, one of those feel good movies, defeating the parasites.
Yes, fiat money, inflation, the whole banking system are horrible. At the same time, can you name a few things that are good in this system? Just for the sake of a balanced view? How are we going to build a better system if we have no capacity to show gratitude for what we have?
I don't understand your question.
I mean it is very easy to point out the negatives of the current system and hence for into a negative state. The current system is not all bad, if we want to build something better we should have a balanced view, both bad and good, of what we have. And it's not only a pragmatic attitude, showing gratitude sets you on a much better path to build something good.
This a central problem in transitioning to a different system. The concept of fiat currency so simple, yet repellent if you grasp how truly sinister our system of money is.
"It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning."
Henry Ford
Fiat is not something wrong with "money". You are being deceived.
The current monetary systems are designed from the get go to be a corruption of what we call money. The systems are designed to concentrate wealth.
The only thing good about the current systems, is that we already have the infrastructure to produce a true money system. A true FIAT REAL JUST ORGANIC MONEY that represents barter, and does not employ private control, interest rates, national debt, or fractional reserve lending.
All we need do is understand better, what the true nature of real money is, then likely have to force governments to employ it.
Politicians only listen to the money masters...that needs to be the people.
Notes and coins are only about 3% of the money supply in the UK. Printing more notes and coins will have only a small effect on the total supply of money. Most money is created by commercial banks. You get a loan from a bank and deposit the money in your account, prior to spending it, that is money creation. The Bank of England can control what the commercial banks do by setting interest rates, by regulating how much capital they need to operate and by controlling the amount of reserves they need to deposit at the Bank of England. When people talk about ‘printing money’ they usually mean Governments running deficits which they need to finance by issuing bills and gilts to investors. The other form of ‘printing money’ which is fashionable since the global financial crisis is QE - quantitative easing. This is where the Bank of England through an Asset Purchase subsidiary acquired assets such as government and corporate bonds financed by loans from commercial banks.
Indeed. Printing is just an analogy. See Mathew's article where it is expanded.