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IBEWEALTH.COM, The Network Marketing Success Blueprint: Applied Knowledge is ... - www.ibewealth.com/page/10/ - Cached - 28 Jan 2011 – Next, a Free Market Money emerges. This is a Need due to the fact that different quantities of different items have a “different value”. ...
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IDEAL MONEY SYSTEM OR MONETARY FREEDOM? The discussion on a supposedly ideal money system for all, if such a thing were really possible, is likely to be almost endless. Alternatively, discussion on monetary freedom for all does appear to be finite, since it would confine itself to elaborating the rights, liberties, tolerance and opportunities existing or to be established in this sphere, in order for individuals or their voluntary associations to use them as they please, at least among themselves. - J. Z., free after MFNL&MF 3/4, Feb. 89.
IDEAS: The difficulty lies not in the new ideas but in escaping from the old ones. – J. M. Keynes, quoted as motto by Dieter Suhr and Hugo Gottschalk in Optimale Liquiditaet. – When it comes to exchange media and value standards then it comes to sufficiently refuting the ancient statist errors and prejudices that Keynes popularized all too much in the 20th century, by giving them a seemingly scientific appearance. – Did he really have any new ideas? I don’t know of any. – J.Z., 20.9.10. - EDUCATION, PROPAGANDA, ENLIGHTENMENT, PUBLICITY, DIS., REFUTATIONS ENCYCLOPEDIA, FREE BANKING VS. CENTRAL BANKING, MONEY MONOPOLY, FORCED & EXCLUSIVE CURRENCIES.
IKEDA, SANFORD, The Dynamics of Disintervention - June 2009. - "People as different as Paul Krugman and Alan Greenspan blame deregulation for the mess Wall Street got itself into. Supporters of the free market respond, correctly, that the primary culprits are the incentives and pressures government created in the housing and finance industries that precipitated the housing bubble. But in the context of the theory of intervention outlined here, the grain of truth in what the market critics say is that partial deregulation, not deregulation per se, is to blame. The problem was not too much but too little deregulation." - Roy Halliday, in section on Government-Regulated Banking
IMAGINARY DEPOSITS: They exist only in the imagination of those who imagine that they do exist because they cannot imagine the clearing and short term credit transactions that are involved. - J. Z., 8.10.92, 16.3.97. See: SOCIAL CREDIT, CREDIT CREATION, DEPOSIT CREATION, MONEY CREATION. - J.Z., 3/97.
IMMIGRATION BARRIERS: Just because governments do not know how to end unemployment, depressions, stagflations and inflation, they think that they ought to set up immigration barriers and concentration camps for illegal immigrants and deport them when they think that they are "only" refugees from still worse economic policies of other governments rather than politically persecuted refugees seeking asylum. And even then they are expected to wait their term - and all are expected to pay for their imprisonment in idleness, often in remote areas. It is really a bankruptcy declaration of governments and for their policies. Instead, they ought to allow these immigrants to opt out of all the laws and institutions that cause unemployment and other economic difficulties, so that they could help themselves via their own monetary and financial arrangements and organizations. They should be granted full exterritorial autonomy for this purpose and then at least some of their experiments would be successful and set a shiny example to the natives and previous immigrants. The problems which territorial governments, with their ignorance, prejudices and coercive and wrongful measures laws and institutions cannot solve, could be easily solved by free men - engaged in free experiments in the economic, social and political spheres, but not by wrongfully imprisoned ones "and measures" like the usual ones of territorial governments. - J.Z., 19.8.02, 14.9.02, 1.7.11. - UNEMPLOYMENT & INFLATION, MONETARY & FINANCIAL FREEDOM, EXTERRITORIAL AUTONOMY FOR VOLUNTEER COMMUNITIES
IMMIGRATION CAUSES INFLATION: Popular opinion. So, if the white man would not have come to Australia then the Aborigines would have had a stable currency? - Does every deportation of illegal immigrants, regardless of how productive they had been employed or could be employed, increase the value of the Australian dollar? Does every illegal or illegal immigrant decrease it? - The mere assertion of a causal connection cannot cause or substitute for a causal connection. Under monetary freedom we could multiply the number of immigrants and employed - and still enjoy stable competing currencies. Under monetary despotism, no matter what is tried otherwise, we have had stable and also, seemingly, sufficient currencies only for short periods; never full employment, boom economies and stable currencies for long. The cause is otherwise and so is the cure. - J. Z., 2.4.97, 1.7.11. - DIS., FULL EMPLOYMENT, INFLATION
IMMIGRATION RESTRICTIONS & UNEMPLOYMENT OR FEARS OF UNEMPLOYMENT: We do not have 800,000 unemployed in Australia because we have ca. 100,000 or even less immigrants to Australia p.a. Nor do we have a vast youth unemployment, from 20 to 40% in some areas, due to immigration. Most immigrants are adults. Nor do their young children throw ours out of jobs. All such notion are based on primitive and false nations, e.g. that there is only a limited number of jobs available at any one time, which ought to be "fairly shared" - first of all among the locally born or already naturalized citizens. At the same time, the really limiting factor: Prohibitions, regulations, red tape and, most of all, a monopoly means of exchange, especially for wage and salary payments and the suppression of monetary freedom and of freedom to clear all one's debts, is ignored, although it is the major factor in preventing all desired and possible exchanges from taking place, which would require the labour of all our unemployed and that of all the immigrants we could manage to get, by the millions, per year. - J.Z., 20.3.97. - Neither should all of them become forcefully and territorially Australianized! Let them establish their own and exterritorially autonomous communities of volunteers, their own kinds of free or even unfree societies, for their voluntary victims, as long as they are willing to individually put up with them. Let them have their own "welfare", insurance, credit and banking system. Would all of them be worse than our territorial system? Could we not learn both, from their successes and failures? Already Wolfgang von Goethe proposed self-help organizations for immigrants, rather than tax-based subsidies for them. - J.Z., 1.7.11. - DIS., IMMIGRATION, AS USUAL, IS WRONGLY BLAMED.
INCENTIVES: Cleveland industrialist James Finney Lincoln represented the best in American capitalism. When he died in 1965 he had been for nearly forty years president of the Lincoln Electric Company, the world's largest manufacturer or electric welding equipment. Back in 1934 Lincoln adopted what was at that time a highly unusual program: and employee incentive plan. This plan was so successful that in the years that followed the Lincoln Company was consistently able to undersell the competition while at the same time paying Lincoln employees nearly double the prevailing wages in the industry. The most intriguing part of the story, however, concerns the straightforward reason that James Lincoln gave for introducing the incentive program. "Selfishness", he explained, "is the motivating force of all human endeavor." - Lincoln obviously did not mean selfishness in the sense of concern for one's self "at the expense of others", but rather the natural desire of most persons to act in their own rational self-interest by means of their own productive efforts. Men are indeed selfish in this sense. They seek their own food, shelter, clothing etc. If they did not, they would die. It is as simple as that. Men will and should pursue their own welfare. Lincoln recognized this basic fact of nature and acted accordingly with results which were highly beneficial to all concerned." - Richard W. Grant, The Incredible Breadmachine, self-published, n.d., indexed, 286pp, p. 29/30. - I microfilmed it, because it was so rarely seen. A successful film was made of it or rather is popularization in form of a pocket book. However, to my knowledge, neither the original nor the popularization are so fare offered online or on disc or as an email attachment upon payment. - Libertarians have only to blame themselves for the absence of a complete digitized freedom library, which could, by now, be offered very cheaply on a single large disc. - J.Z., 4.8.11. - LIBERATION AT WORK, LINCOLN ELECTRIC COMPANY, JAMES FINNEY LINCOLN, SELFISHNESS, CAPITALISM, ORGANIZATION DEVELOPMENT, PRODUCTIVITY, STEPS TOWARDS SELF-MANAGEMENT & EMPLOYEE-OWNERSHIP, COOPERATIVE PRODUCTION
INCOMES POLICY & INFLATION: We need a sensible incomes policy approach. - Popular opinion. - The only rightful and sensible policy is to let the productive individual chose his job, trade or profession, the wage rate or prices offered to him or by him and the number of hours he is willing to work in that job, trade or profession, and the form of payment in a stable currency that is acceptable to him, useful to him and measured in a value standard that he has reasons to trust. All other incomes policies set by third parties are wrong and dictatorial, part of a centralised and planned, i.e., centrally mismanaged economy, or part of the utopia of State socialism or bureaucratic socialism or State capitalism. - J. Z., n.d. & 2.4.97, 1.7.11. - DIS., WAGE CONTROLS
INCOMES POLICY: We need therefore something new, an "incomes policy", one that will help us resolve better this vexing conflict between full employment and price stability. ... Examples of incomes policies range from the direct wage-price controls and freezes of wartime down to mere moral persuasion and verbal wrist slaps from the President. Without recommending outright wage-price controls I do urge upon the Administration an activist incomes policy - that is, a policy in which the Government, at times when labour markets are not slack and demand-pull inflation is not excessive, supplements its fiscal and monetary policies by actions that discourage price-tag and wage rate increases. - I shall not pretend here that modern economic science knows how to prescribe an incomes policy that a jury of informed people can agree will work well... Alas, study of foreign examples does not tell us how to solve the problem. - Dr. Paul A. Samuelson, THE NATIONAL TIMES, 26.1.71. - The only" incomes policy" that is rightful and useful is that agreed upon between individuals in their choices of careers and jobs and their employers, those of tradesmen and professionals and the customers for their services, that of e.g. retailers and their buyers, the individual consumers. Each consumer with one dollar to spend has a dollar vote on the market that expresses his incomes policy for all those who directly or indirectly supply what he wants. The experts and planners do not like them to have this consumer sovereignty and monopolistically inclined employers do no love it, either. Any income policies imposed upon employers or employees or self-employed, by any third parties, would represent either unearned incomes or coercive transfer payments or robberies to make these possible. - J. Z., 2.4.97. - DIS., ECONOMISTS, EXPERTS, PRICE CONTROLS, WAGE CONTROLS, INFLATION
INCONVENIENCE OF A GREAT VARIETY OF MEANS OF PAYMENT: This fact or opinion is often used in an attempt to justify the uniformity of an imposed means of exchange and value standard. But overlooked is that the inconvenience of a great variety was usually accepted because the inconvenience of not being able to sell and not being paid would have been even greater. Thus, as long as the convenience of monetary transactions was not exceeded by the inconvenience of a great variety in money tokens, a great variety was still accepted, naturally, not a greater variety than people were still able and willing to cope with. The varieties of present private notes, like cheques, is often overlooked and people can manage to deal with hundred-thousands of different kinds of tickets - or refuse to deal with them. At best and at least money can solve only the monetary problems of its voluntary acceptors. In this respect it is not different from any other commodity or service, within the circles of their voluntary acceptors. One can speak rightly of "universal" acceptability only within the circulation sphere of a particular kind of money in its payment community, whether that be small or large. In England from 1648-1672 there were over 20,000 different tokens. They were still voluntarily accepted although many of these tokens not beyond a particular street. - Source: J. Shield Nicholson, Elements of Political Economy, p.272. - J.Z., 12.4.97. - See: VARIETIES OF MONEY, UNIFORMITY OF MEANS OF PAYMENT?
INCONVERTIBLE PAPER MONEY & LEGAL TENDER PAPER MONEY: Many authors seem to be unable or unwilling to distinguish between the two. They are right only insofar as it matters little whether a 100% gold convertible paper money has legal tender or not. Legal tender then cannot depreciate it. Over-issues are prevented by the convertibility obligation and its fulfilment, as long as they function. But legal tender and its alternative, i.e. free market rating for a currency, do matter very much as soon as metal convertibility is temporarily or lastingly abolished. These undiscriminating authors then simply assume that the abolition of metal convertibility, on its own, would, quite inevitably, lead to the depreciation of a paper currency, since governments do always have a motive for over-issues. (With their exclusive or monopolistic territorial and national currencies they also manage under-issues, stagflations and credit restrictions, which could not happen under full monetary freedom, either. - J.Z., 1.7.11.) However, that applies only to inconvertible paper money with legal tender - at least until this money has been so depreciated that it is altogether refused, in spite of the severest penalties. Only legal tender and centralized note-issue banking permit an inflation and allow it to reach that stage. When a paper money has been made inconvertible but NOT given the legal tender privilege then there are at least 2 possible results: The paper money is not depreciated but kept at par with its nominal gold weight unit value, especially by being so accepted in payment of all taxes and dues due to a government. The government might then increase taxes in order to withdraw more of its paper money from circulation, giving it more of a taxation reflux or, by further taxation, increasing the demand for it. That was long the practice for sound tax foundation money that did not have any legal tender power in general circulation - but only legal tender towards the issuer, the government. The alternative to this is that the government may not care for preserving the value of its notes but continue issuing them without arranging for a sufficient reflux to keep them at par with their nominal value. Then there are two possible effects on the price and wage levels. Either these are marked in the nominal paper value units. Then they do become inflated. Or they are not so marked but expressed in e.g. gold weight units, with the government's money only accepted, e.g. in sales of goods and services, in wages and salaries, at its current discount and at par only if it is so rated in the market. Consequently, prices and wages expressed in these gold weight units remain the same - but the government's money depreciates. Moreover, as long as taxes are still expressed in gold weight units, and payable at par with the government's paper money, the taxpayers have, to that extent, reasons to rejoice. Their tax burden becomes reduced by the degree of depreciation of the paper money. A still somewhat honest government would have to continue to accept its own paper money IOUs. at par with their nominal gold weight value units and it would have to fix the taxes in such value units. But, as we well know, not all governments do so or do so all the time. On the contrary. They often express the taxes only in paper value "standards" and accept their over-issued paper money only at par with this nominal paper value standard. Then, under an exclusive currency system, it has lost all in-built restraints, any incentive to reduce further issues (in order not to lose out, while spending its notes at a discount and having to accept them at par in tax revenue). Under the issue monopoly and legal tender it might find it easier to print more and more of this legal tender paper money rather than raise taxes. (Towards the end of the big German Inflation of 1914 to 1923, hardly any taxes were paid any more. Most government "revenues" came fresh from the printing presses. And even they, in the last stages of a fast inflation, cannot produce enough new notes to prevent deflationary phenomena. Nor could the official and private issuers of emergency monies provide enough alternative exchange media as long as they were still as foolish as to use the paper Reichsmark as its "value standard". In expectation of further inflation, prices raced ahead of the note printing presses! - Obvious features of deflation appeared and the wonderful combination of both, stagflation, also with high unemployment. - J.Z., 1.7.11, 4.8.11.) Theoretically, through the raising of taxes, the government could increase the demand for its paper money and even restore them to par. But inflation makes it easy and profitable to delay paying taxes and, often, to avoid paying taxes altogether. During the Great German Inflation, 1914-1923, the government had finally hardly any tax revenue at all and relied on its printing presses. In practice, the attempt to reduce the circulation through very high taxes would also stifle productivity and would create deflationary difficulties. It is easier to increase taxes to keep its tax foundation money at par than to increase them later, when the depreciation has already set in, to restore them to par.) As a rule and politically, the government finds it easier to abuse it legal tender and money monopoly power rather than to increase its taxes to keep its paper money at par with its nominal value standard unit, e.g. a certain weight unit of gold. The other factor, which is almost always involved with legal tender is the exclusive currency status or issue monopoly of the central bank. Even in the absence of legal tender it would force people to accept the government's or the central bank's paper money, to the extent that they do engage in monetary transactions at all. To that extent that monopoly acts like legal tender. However, without legal tender, people would not be obliged to mark out all their contracts, prices, wages, debts, in the depreciating paper "value unit" of the exclusive currency or exchange medium. They might, instead, go on accepting it only as the exclusive exchange medium allowed to them - but only at its market rate. Their prices, wages and debt amounts, expressed in some or the other sound value standard unit, would remain the same, no matter how much the government inflated its exclusive but not forced currency. With one exception: As soon as traders and employees anticipate further paper money depreciation, they will tend to increase their prices and wages, in anticipation of further depreciation, possibly to likely (in the later stages of an inflation) even faster than the depreciation does actually occur. To this extent deflationary phenomena can then occur. There are then not yet enough exchange media printed, of the exclusive currency, to keep up with this increased demand for them. Naturally, the increased production of exchange media does have some natural limits. In Germany, in 1923, almost all printing presses were working overtime in producing more official and emergency money notes (largely due to the above hinted at deflationary effect). Moreover, the purchasing power of the exclusive and depreciated notes became so low that production costs of the notes came, according to some reports, to 48 % of the purchasing power of the notes and, according to other reports, the paper value of the notes was ultimately higher than the purchasing power that was printed upon them. Only a Hungarian inflation, after WW II, is supposed to have gone even beyond that German "Great" Inflation. When strong deflationary or stag-flationary effects appear in a rapid inflations, then, legally or illegally, private or official institutions tend to issue "emergency money", initially also using only the depreciating paper standard. To that extent such a currency is then no longer exclusive but a competition in depreciation results. After awhile at least some of the emergency money issuers (Reichsbahn and Farbenwerke Hoechst, for instance) began to issue gold-weight value emergency money. To the extent that they are thus made available, the official inflated paper money will be refused and driven out of circulation. If, right from the beginning, the government's paper money has neither legal tender nor an exclusive currency status, then the privately or cooperatively issued currencies and those by some State or local governments, provided only that they are sound alternative currencies, will tend to be preferred for most local exchanges and the central government's or central bank's depreciated paper money will either be discounted or refused (unless some taxpayers find it still useful to help them to shed some of their tax burdens with it), so that the good money alternatives will drive out the bad money, in correct application of Gresham's Law and in reversal to the popular misconception of it. - To speak only of convertibility and inconvertibility, as if nothing else mattered, is, indeed, very inaccurate and misleading. It is very similar to the abuse of the term "fiat" money as opposed to the classical gold standard (the gold redemptionist) currency. The "fiat" consists in the legal tender and the exclusive currency status of a paper money, NOT in its irredeemability by the issuer into gold. Your cheque and IOUs are also not redeemable in gold, at least not nowadays, and they are not legal tender and not an exclusive currency, nor are your current account and at any time reclaimable deposits. Potential acceptors are free to refuse them. They are not "fiat" money. FIAT MONEY & CREATION OF MONEY & CREDIT, INFLATION & ITS LIMITS, STAGFLATION, DEFLATION, DIS., TAX FOUNDATION
INDEX CURRENCIES: Free market rating of currencies and free choice among competing value standards, are also a form of indexing - but of a non-monopolistic kind and one in which the money monopoly and the exclusive and forced value standard or legal tender privilege of the government currency is eliminated. Then, and as a rule, via consumer, employee, contractor and entrepreneurial sovereignty, ensuring free competition and fully free choice, only those currencies could survive, in the long run, which remain largely and mostly at par with their value standard. In other words, under monetary freedom any additional and frequent indexing of prices, wages and contracts would no longer be required. Price and wage levels would then be as stable as they could be, and should be, from the monetary side, because they would be safe from coercive monetary interventions and policies and measures, safe from any government, as safe as measures of length, weight and volume. - J.Z., 18.10.89, 29.4.97. - INDEX STANDARDS & MONETARY FREEDOM
INDEX CURRENCY & PRICE LEVEL STABILITY: We need a currency stabilised by a price index at a particular stable price level." - Popular opinion. - What this really means is that some people do believe that they would benefit from such an index currency and thus they want all people to adopt it. While morally they do have the right to adopt any of a possible hundreds if not thousands of different index standards for themselves, they have no right at all to force their preferred index standard or any other index standard at all upon any dissenting people, not matter how strongly they believe that others would "need" it and ought to be included in their "we". - Freedom of choice for value standards, too. Indeed, most government currencies are somewhat managed, too, under the pretence that governments can and will provide stability in this sphere. What can be achieved in this political way can be seen by the more or less rapid depreciation of almost all paper currencies in this and former centuries. Stability can be best provided for when neither bad nor even sound currencies are granted any monopoly or legal tender powers - except the natural legal tender against their issuer, and when all possible, desired and practicable alternative private enterprise and cooperative currencies can freely compete even against the supposedly best one. - J.Z., 24.3.97. - DIS.
INDEX, COMBINED, AUTOMATICALLY COMPUTER PRODUCED, OF ALL MONETARY FREEDOM WRITINGS & BANKING BOOKS, TO THE EXTENT THAT THEY ARE ALREADY DIGITIZED & OFFERED ONLINE OR ON DISC: A centre should be agreed upon, to which contributions could be sent on discs or per email attachments, possibly with a small contribution towards the costs. The same should be done for a free banking bibliography, abstracts and review compilation. Perhaps this should start with the rare and out of copyrights texts. I read that programs do exist already for this purpose. But it should be able to discriminate sufficiently the different meanings and definitions of the same terms. - J.Z., n.d. & 1.7.11.
INDOMITUS REPORT, THE, The Indomitus Report 26 September 2004 - indomitus.net/ir20040926.htm - Cached - 26 Sep 2004 – The Indomitus Report on being sovereign, free market money, the space frontier, launch technology, new country developments, and longevity.
INDOMITUS REPORT, THE: Free Market Money 2004. - The Indomitus Report - Free Market Money 2004 - indomitus.net/2004status.html - Cached - 31 Jan 2005 – The Indomitus Report for 2004 on the free market money industry.
INDOMITUS.NET: About the Indomitus crest - indomitus.net/thecrest.html - Cached - Gold is, of course, a key element of our views on free market money. Within the black circle we've added a gold dollar sign. The dollar sign is in a fancy ...
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INDSOVU.COM: Team - indsovu.com/tiki-index.php?page=Team - Cached - ... business planning, software development, real estate, toll road development, free port development, free market money, and private stock markets. ...
INDIGENOUS PEOPLE: Seven Global Currencies of the Indigenous Peoples, http://community.indigenousportal.com/_Seven-Global-Currencies-of-the-Indigenous-Peoples/audio/494697/109225.html - 5. posted by chantlaca at 05/29/2011 @ 10:59pm - THE NATION, 13.6.11. Audio only - GLOBAL CURRENCIES? - J.Z.
INDIVIDUAL SECESSIONISM & MONETARY FREEDOM: See: "ON PANARCHY" & PANARCHY.
INFLATION & CAPITALISM: Capitalism drives prices up." - Popular opinion. - In unjust discrimination leftist people tend to blame capitalism for almost everything and State socialism for almost nothing. What is true is that it drives up e.g. wages for skilled labour to their highest level, precisely by equipping it not only with training but also with much capital. Only unskilled labour, unwilling to learn enough, and easily and cheaply replaced by machines, will have to satisfy itself with lower wages as a result of a kind of referendum among the consumers, whose preferences are found out by entrepreneurs. But even while it does increase wages of those able and willing to handle advanced tools and machines, it is blamed for paying starvation or exploitation wages. The fact that demand for labour is generally, quite artificially and legally, limited by the note issue monopoly, remains widely ignored. By developing markets and to the extent that it is really free (and this requires monetary freedom, as well, which statists are not willing to concede or promote) it does, indeed, achieve the highest prices producers - including employees - can achieve on their internal and the world market. But it does not allow them to charge monopolistic high prices because it does not permit legal monopolies but rather introduces maximum competition - provided only it introduces monetary and financial freedom, too. Without these it is an incomplete capitalism or a still restricted market. Wherever its production is quite competitive, e.g. in the production of cheap nylon stockings, ball point pens and digital watches, it has obviously driven prices down to their lowest possible level, even when reckoned in already much depreciated paper money. The latter indicates that capitalism is not fully operative but that statism still mismanages its forced and monopolistic exchange medium and value standard. - J.Z., 24.3.97. - Capitalism did reduce e.g. the prices of aluminium and plastics. Also e.g. of hand-made wooden combs, still produced for some in Japan, for ca. $ 200 each, to a few cents for plastic ones. - Nonsensical assertions are still as common in what is now classed widely as "economics", i.e. degrees of territorial statist interventions with real economics, as they are in the ca. 30,000 religious faiths, sects, churches or religions. - J.Z., 1.7.11. - DIS., GREED, INTEREST, PROFIT, MONOPOLY, CAPITALISM, PRICE INCREASES.
INFLATION & COMPULSORY SAVINGS: Some form of compulsory savings would be an attractive alternative which would probably win public acceptance. - Colin Chapman, THE BULLETIN, 13.2.71. - When the managers of the central bank have so mismanaged the money issue entrusted to them, that the currency would be depreciated if everyone fully spent what he has earned, then these mis-managers and their supporters want to diminish the effectiveness of that over-issue upon the price level by depriving those, who earned this money, of its immediate use. Two wrongs do not make one right. - Further, an over-issue has already occurred and has already been somewhat expressed in nominally increased prices. To then enforce savings by everybody, e.g. through the issue of forced loans, would suddenly reduce the circulation and create a deflation. That could have catastrophic rather than healing effects upon the economy for while individually fallen prices (due to technological or agricultural progress), do encourage buying, generally falling prices deter potential buyers from buying right now as much as they could, in the expectation that prices will fall further. - Furthermore, this proposal overlooks that through financial despotism banks are already forced to deposit certain percentages of all their deposits with the central bank and, moreover, they are often and to a large extent forced to purchase government insecurities. The same applies to many public authorities and their savings and especially to superannuation and pension funds. In all these cases the victims of these forced loans are later forced, as taxpayers, to repay these loans to themselves. And all such dishonesty is smugly called "public finance". - J.Z., n.d. & 5.4.97. - All the nonsense uttered on inflation would make an interesting anthology, especially if it is confronted with its best refutations. - Compare my 16pp brochure in PEACE PLANS 19B, entitled: The Soft Option: Monetary Freedom to Stop Inflation without Causing Unemployment, 1976. - I offer it digitized as an email attachment, 114 KB, zipped 30 KB if it cannot be found online. - J.Z., 1.7.11. - It is still accessible on my old home page, although after my conversion to broadband with Acenet, I am no longer entitled to this site: www.acenet.com.au/~jzube/lmphomepage.htm.htm Google brings 7810 search results for: John Zube, The Soft Option, PEACE PLANS 19B, if I do not use quotation marks, most of them not reporting on this brochure, There are only 7 results on one page, if I put the terms in quotation marks. app17-utv.htm - www.acenet.com.au/~jzube/app17-tuv.htm.htm - Cached - - FB floppy 1.doc - www.docstoc.com/docs/74468304/FB-floppy-1doc - 22 Mar 2011 – John Zube, Berrima, February 1979. Peace Plans 41/49 ... condensed essay on this: The Soft Option: Monetary Freedom to Stop Inflation ... - J.Z., 1.7.11. - DIS., UNEMPLOYMENT
INFLATION & DEARNESS: Inflation and dearness (dearth or high prices) are completely different concepts. Inflation is caused exclusively from the monetary side, dearness exclusively from the goods side. - Ulrich von Beckerath, 25.1.52. - PRICES, HIGH PRICES, PRICE INCREASES
INFLATION & DEFLATION: Under monetary despotism they can occur at the same time and in the same country, for then different segments of the economy are differently supplied with exchange media from one monopoly centre only. There are different circulation spheres and channels as well as greater or smaller time delays. For instance, governments may insist on rapid tax payments but are not so rapid when it comes to paying the bills that taxpayers send them for supplies to the government. One area or segment of all business may be flooded with currency (e.g. the arms industries during a war) while others are starved for cash (like e.g., clothing or toy producers or builders during war time.) From one issuing centre a whole country can no more be evenly supplied with locally required currencies than water could be supplied to it from a single spring or lake or via the weather - rain clouds from evaporation of ocean waters and waters on continents. - Moreover, during rapid inflations prices can race ahead of the printing presses and thus cause shortages in the depreciated notes, to pay all these rapidly increasing prices with them. - J.Z., 9.9.02, 1.7.11. - ARE THEY ALWAYS OPPOSITES & OCCUR ONLY ONE AFTER THE OTHER OR CAN THEY OCCUR AT THE SAME TIME IN THE SAME COUNTRY? DIS., Q.
INFLATION & EXCHANGE RATES: That inflation has taken place can be best (or only) be seen in the foreign exchange rates. - A widespread opinion this but one only partly true. Other central banks, as Keynesians or Friedmanites, might inflate at the same rate. Only if they do not as much or even more, could the difference be seen. We can certainly no longer assume that all foreign currencies are sound ones. Exchange rates are influenced by many other factors as well. However, generally it is true that when internally free market rating is suppressed (through legal tender and the exclusive currency status, that outlaws competing internal currencies), then external exchange rates, against foreign currencies, where the own internal legal tender does not apply, can and often do indicate degrees of depreciation, or, sometimes, even appreciation. (As happens currently regarding the Australian Dollar compared with the USA Dollar, because the latter is even faster depreciated. - J.Z., 1.7.11.) However, e.g., a free official or unofficial gold or silver market can do the same much faster and more accurately. So can a selected basket of commodity prices. But why presume that the internal price control and monopoly for a currency must continue? Why not abolish it and subject every currency to competition and free pricing and maximum publicity and let it survive only on its merits? - J.Z., 24.3.97, 1.7.11. - DIS., EXCHANGE RATES, Q.
INFLATION & FEVER: Inflation is a type of fever. - Popular opinion. - It is certainly indicative of a disease in a currency, the disease of monetary despotism. One might compare this fever to the action of government injecting harmful germs into healthy blood streams and thereby artificially inducing a fever. But why grant any government such abusable power? Usually, the term is used by culprits or their apologists, to prevent people from looking at the real causes of inflations. One might compare it to Mafia chieftains "explaining" a rise in crime with a rise in dishonesty in the general population. - VIRUS. - J.Z., n.d. & 2.4.97, 1.7.11. - EXCUSES & FALSE PRETENCES, DIS.
INFLATION & GOVERNMENT SPENDING: Inflation could be stopped by a reduction of government spending. - Popular opinion. - Government spending is non-inflationary as long as it remains within its tax, fees and loan returns. Only if "spending" is done with newly printed or coined money, money that is an exclusive and forced currency, due to the issue monopoly and legal tender, does inflation come it and can it result. "Spending" is too good a world for legal imposition of depreciated money upon all creditors and the enforced and exclusive circulation of depreciated notes - among people not allowed to provide honest money for themselves and under no individual or moral obligation to support any wildly spending government and its budget. - J.Z., 2.4.97. - A more suitable term for governmental monopoly money with legal tender power is: requisitioning certificates. They have nothing any longer to do with sound money and sound value standards when they are issued beyond their tax foundation and upon a mere fictitious paper "value standard". - J.Z., 1.7.11. - DIS.
INFLATION & GOVERNMENTS: Governments force you into participating in the depreciation of their paper currencies by a) legal tender, b) their money issue monopoly, c) their outlawry of value preserving clauses in contracts, d) by misdirecting savings, pension- and insurance funds into governmental "insecurities". - J.Z., 10.7.91, 4.7.11.
INFLATION & GOVERNMENTS: The tenor of most of the submissions was the admission that there was an inflationary problem and that the government should do something about it, ... - On industry submissions, THE AUSTRALIAN, 11.2.71. - The offender is asked to go straight! But he is left in power over an exclusive and forced currency that is not criticised, not even doubted or questioned by industry and agriculture and business representatives, whose output and services are required to give value to any currency and who should rather be in charge of currencies issued by themselves than expect government gangsters or "representatives" to run a single currency rightfully, honestly and efficiently for all - although during all of history that was only done very rarely by them and then, usually, not for long. - J.Z., 2.4.97. - DIS.
INFLATION & HIGH PRICES: Inflation is caused by high prices. - Popular opinion. - The reverse is true, even when one reckons in an inflated paper standard. If the standard of value is sound, then prices remain the same and an inflated currency becomes depreciated against it, i.e. it is either refused or accepted only at a corresponding discount, while all other optional means of exchange, using the sound value standard, are still accepted at par. Then the cause and effect relationship in these cases will become clear very soon. Under an exclusive and forced currency it remains obscured for most people, for all too long and for some forever. - J.Z., 24.3.97. - DIS.
INFLATION & LEGAL TENDER & THE ISSUE MONOPOLY: Inflation can only happen when you or somebody else has the power to legally force all his tokens upon all others in their country, at their nominal value, regardless of how valuable or valueless they actually are. It can never happen when each is only at liberty to issue tokens which only oblige himself - and his associates - to accept them at any time at par from anyone, in payment of debts owed to him or them, or for any of his goods, services or labour offers, regardless of any discount which they may have suffered in general circulation. Each will tend to severely limit the total amount of his commitments to supply others at any time they demand it, and most potential acceptors will severely limit the amounts of such commitments by others, unless they are very convenient local currencies, with an obvious, believable and wanted local shop-foundation. Even then, they would not accept local currency, in most cases, much beyond their immediate or near future requirements. If they went beyond that, then they would carefully check out the exchange rates of this local currency, perhaps even its rating in futures dealings and they might unload their excess local currency holding fast at a local currency exchange office, like tourist do with local national currencies that they do no longer need. In other words, local currencies would not tend to be over issued and depreciated. If they were, they would soon disappear from circulation, driven out by better or excellent ones. - J.Z., 5.4.97. - DIS.
INFLATION & LEGAL TENDER: Inflation-proof money is not impossible. It is merely outlawed by legal tender legislation and the central bank's issue monopoly. Let good money drive out the bad: Repeal legal tender and the central bank's legalized privileges, especially its note issue monopoly. - J.Z., April 97, 1.7.11. - GOOD & BAD MONEY, GRESHAM'S LAW
INFLATION & LEGAL TENDER: Try to find any large and lasting inflation of the general price level, through any physical or accounts-only or clearing certificate currency, that ever happened without the legal tender and monopoly issue privilege. I would be very interested to hear or read about one. - J.Z., 3/97, 1.7.11.
INFLATION & OVERSPENDING: Is inflation due to "overspending"? What does "overspending" mean? Without legal tender, i.e., compulsory value and compulsory acceptance for a monopolistic currency, no government or its central bank could over-spend, in an inflationary way. Otherwise, it has first to extracted purchasing power, from those who still have it, via taxes or loans, which would correspondingly reduce the purchasing power of others and even, sometimes for considerable periods, leave the thus extracted monies unprofitably in government accounts, creating a degree of deflationary conditions, thus making sales for the rest of the economy even more difficult. Any spending by any government may be considered to be "over-spending", like the spending of any bank robber or mugger or thief or of anyone who forged cheques upon your account or who had stolen and used your credit card. What is probably meant is "deficit-spending" or use of the note-printing press for legal tender money. If a government had to depend upon tax foundation for soundly constructed tax foundation money of its own, its voluntary acceptance in general circulation, its value rating against a sound value standard, upon full publicity for all its issues, on the refusal option of potential acceptors, on competition with alternative and freely issued currencies and on voluntary membership of its taxpayers - would much or even any "overspending" opportunity remain for it? All thought models, hypotheses, theories and explanation attempts that take for granted monetary and financial despotism, as well as territorial sovereignty over tax slaves and subjects to its other laws, imposed by the minority which rules, in effect, however representative it claims to be, however large or small its supposed "mandate" or consent is, are all too limited in understanding the present territorialist reality or establishment and rightful as well as rational and voluntary alternatives to it. Take, for example, an ordinary citizen, one who tries to "overspend" by trying to take up more credit than he can expect to repay or tries to issue uncovered cheques. His cheques, although made out to legal tender, are not legal tender themselves and thus can be refused. Moreover, his bank will charge him highly for overdrafts and for uncovered cheques not accepted by it in advance. In the absence of legal tender and a means of payment monopoly for him, he cannot over-issue or over-spend without rapidly reaching his limits, getting into debt and bankruptcy and perhaps losing all he had accumulated. Why should we grant such privileges to governments, who almost never failed to abuse them? If a government, due to monetary freedom, could only issue its tax foundation money at 10% discount, it would immediately have to accept it at par, at 100%, from all who still owe it taxes, i.e., it would have given them a 10% tax discount. Its self-interest would prevent such issues. The others would largely refuse to accept government money at all, if it had such a discount on a free money market and would rather arrange for payments in alternative exchange media that stand at par with their nominal value and could thus be readily be passed on in payments to others. Monetary despotism leads inevitably to many and large abuses. Monetary freedom ends them, to a large extent, although, certainly, it could not prevent all kinds of frauds and deceptions. - J.Z., 16.8.91, 26.8.02, 2.7.11. - DIS., Q.
INFLATION & PAYMENT DIFFICULTIES: Without inflation there would be payment difficulties in the payment of wages and pensions. - Popular opinion. - With inflation there are also payment difficulties in the payment of wages and pensions. Wage and pension recipients are only partly paid, by being paid in depreciated money and, since prices tend to race ahead of rapid inflationary money issues, money is then, finally, so short that the government finds it difficult to pay its suppliers and employees. There is much historical evidence for the reality of such payment difficulties in spite of or because of monetary inflation. - Strikes multiply during times of inflation, indicating that the ability of employers is not so much increased by inflations that they can readily give in to any wage demands. - Nor should one assume that all sectors of an economy are equally supplied with the inflated currency. The government sector and some privileged private sectors, e.g. armament contractors, may be over-supplied while, at the same time, other sectors may be under-supplied with means of payment. Price adaptations to inflations and deflations are neither instantaneously nor completely even or proportionate. Both introduce enormous artificial distortions and miscalculations. - Moreover, the number of creditors prepared to grant medium to long-term credits, on the basis of a fast depreciating paper "value standard", imposed by monetary despotism, is also fast diminishing, which leads to a lessoning of production of goods and services, while the and less spending of earned incomes, while the note printing presses work overtime. Subsidies, "stimulus spending", bail-outs etc. at the expense of ordinary taxpayers or those of the inflation tax, cannot make up for these flaws. - J.Z., 2. 4. 97, 2.7.11. - DIS., KEYNESIANISM, MONETARY DESPOTISM
INFLATION & PRICES: Inflation is caused by excessive prices. - Popular opinion - Yes, in the same way as fever is caused by a thermometer indicating a high body temperature! - J.Z., n.d. - DIS.
INFLATION & TAXATION: The most effective thing that Mr. Gordon (then Prime Minister of Australia) could do now to contain the inflation bogy would be to cancel or suspend the personal income tax concessions he granted in the August budget. - T. M. Fitzgerald, THE AUSTRALIAN, 22.1.71. - First the victimised citizens are taxed by the government-caused inflation and then, when in their only defence left to them against inflation, they have nominally increased their incomes, expressed in the depreciated, forced and exclusive government paper money, they are to be taxed again, to counter this inflation! Then the politicians have the impertinence to call it a "concession" when they do not collect as much in tributes from you as they did before! - The only kernel of truth in the above statement is that of tax foundation, which Adam Smith did also recognize in at least one passage of his writings, On money, in An Inquiry …The Wealth of Nations. (Vol. I of the London, Grant Richards edition, page 366: A prince, who should enact that a certain proportion of his taxes should e paid in a paper money of a certain kind, might thereby give a certain value to this paper money, even though the terms of its final discharge and redemption should depend altogether upon the will of the prince. If the bank which issued this paper was careful to keep the quantity of it always somewhat below what could easily be employed in this manner, the demand for it might be such as to make it even bear a premium, or sell for somewhat more in the market than the quantity of gold or silver currency for which it was issued. - Here he summed up a large experience, which most of his fans still ignore. However, in its last part he still does, quite wrongly, assume that it must be issued upon a stock of gold or silver currency and, ultimately, redeemable in it. He, too, did not clearly realize that its acceptance like rare metal coins, in payments of taxes, whose size is measured in such value standards, can already give such paper money a par value with the chosen rare metal, without the promise of redemption and the costs of any readiness for it. - J.Z., 2.7.11.) A government's optional paper money issues can, indeed, be balanced by and limited in its amount to its due or soon due tax "revenues". Thus such paper monies have been called tax anticipation warrants. As such they are merely clearing certificates, not promises to pay rare metal coins for them. Such tax foundation money should have legal tender only towards its issuer and it should also use a sounder value standard than a managed and usually mismanaged paper standard. Taxes and tax foundation money should be expressed e.g. in gold weight units and the government should have to accept its own tax foundation certificates at their face value even when in general circulation they have got a discount corresponding to their over-issue. That would reduce the "spending" power of the government and reduce the tax burden for the tax victims. Moreover, without legal tender power and the issue monopoly, government paper could ultimately be altogether refused in general circulation, being replaced by sounder and sufficient issues, so that at last even government employees would no longer be prepared to accept it. The more and more worthless bucks should be passed back to the issuer. Pay to Caesar what is Caesar's! Do not offer him your own honest currencies in payment- and do not let your incomes, paid in these currencies, be confiscated by him! Rather go on a well organized tax strike, one that includes the total refusal to accept any government paper money. - J.Z., 2.4.97. - DIS., ADAM SMITH, TAX FOUNDATION MONEY, TAX STRIKE
INFLATION & THE IGNORANCE OF OUR RULERS & THEIR EXPERTS: I really never have confused myself with God. So I can't cure inflation. Who the hell do I think I am? I do what I can." - Alfred Kahn, Chief of President Carter's Anti-Inflation Program. - INQUIRY, June 11 & 25, 1979, p.2. - Do not forgive them - for they do not know what they are doing or care what they are doing to us - by their legalized actions, measures and programs, systems and institutions. - J.Z., 15.9.02. - Most government programs do not deserve the term "program". They neither comprehend the cause nor the cure for any problem - which, in most cases, the government has caused itself, by various wrongful interventions. - J.Z., 2.7.11. - INFLATION AN ACT OF GOD? AN HONEST CURRENCY POSSIBLE ONLY THROUGH AN ACT OF GOD? DIS., EXPERTS, BUREAUCRATS, POLITICIANS
INFLATION & VOLUNTARY RESTRAINTS: Voluntary restraints by private industry in new investments in plant, machinery and new office blocks could curb inflation. - Pop & "expert" opinion. - The ongoing inflation is a strong incentive to borrow long term and invest this money by buying capital values that preserve their value even during inflations and then, finally, repaying these loans with inflated paper money. The suggestion tackles effects, not causes. - Why not discuss, instead, a voluntary restraint of the institutions of monetary despotism and their activities - or their abdication or outlawry? - J. Z., n.d., 6.4.97, 2.7.11. - DIS.
INFLATION AN INFECTIVE VIRUS? Business and farm leaders would follow the union men to the White House within the next few days to help plan a system of wage-and-price stabilisation measures which, Mr. Nixon said yesterday, would ensure that "America is not again inflicted by the virus of runaway inflation". - THE SYDNEY MORNING HERALD, 11.9.71. - Was he really as stupid or dishonest or misinformed? - J. Z. - DIS., LEADERSHIP, PRESIDENTS, NIXON, FEVER.
INFLATION DUE TO EXCESSIVE WAGE CLAIMS? Inflation arises out of excessive wage claims of labourers. - Pop opinion. - This view is so superficial that it does not even include salary claims of employees in the private and public sector and the higher fee claims of tradesmen, professionals and of the professional con-men, the politicians. The supposedly unjustified prices of imagined "price-makers" are left out, too! - If mere claims could lead to their satisfaction, regardless of the supply of exchange media, then and only then would such assertions be somewhat right. But such things happen only in fairy tales. Real inflation has other causes - central banking and legal tender or monetary despotism, i.e. the outlawry of monetary freedom. No employer has an unlimited wage fund to pay higher wages with. No employer, except the central bank, has a note printing press, a money monopoly and legal tender powers. No employer can say to the central bank: You must give me more inflated paper money so that I can seemingly satisfy their demands for higher nominal wages. Without the circulation being further inflated by the central bank, the employer simply cannot pass on higher wage demands to wholesalers and retailers - for, ultimately, the employees themselves, as consumers, would resist the higher prices resulting. Not only that, they could not pay them at all, not even the former lower prices, when they had to be laid off, in the expectation that at the higher costs, of higher wages, many less goods could actually be sold. Goods do not have legal tender power for the consumers. The production and trade in mere survival goods and services would go on, although reduced, too. All the other production and exchanges, made uneconomical or impossible, through excess wage and salary demands, would simply come to a stop. Anyone can price himself out of his market. As a sovereign consumer he does this to others, all the time, who try to extort too high prices from him. He goes, instead, to those suppliers and their wholesalers and manufacturers with lower costs, including lower wages, salaries and profits. The free pricing system is a continuous referendum on "just" prices, wages, salaries, fees and subscriptions etc. - However, to be really free, it should also include free enterprise, free trade and free pricing for optional, competing exchange media and value standards. Workers and employees will not be fully emancipated until they are monetarily emancipated, too. - Instead of striving for nominal wage increases in the exclusive and forced currency of monetary despotism, employees should contract for wages and salaries that are expressed in sound alternative currencies, which do preserve their purchasing power and do increase only with the development of technology, science, of the economy and of individually increased higher productivity. And they should strive for autonomous work group or cooperative production contracts that would automatically increase their earnings in accordance with their increased productivity. - The highest wages were for a long time paid in the U.S. and perhaps they are still the highest there now. But in the U.S. prices were often not higher but lower. Not the hourly cost of labour is decisive but the labour cost per unit produced. A very expensive labourer may, due to extensive use of labour saving machinery and good management, lead to a smaller percentage of labour costs in the total production costs. In other countries or employments, much lower labour costs may form a much higher percentage of the unit costs. - Real wage increases should be aimed for e.g. via productivity increases (leading also to lower prices), sound currencies, free trade, cooperative production, lower taxes etc. To strive for merely nominally increased wages, paid for in the government's inflated currency, is absurd. Foolish wage demands are "satisfied" thus, in foolish ways, with which only fools will remain content. - If the government does not inflate its currency and thereby nominally increases earnings and prices, what happens? Shoe repairers may e.g. double their wages or prices. Then, if their customers were to go on to demand as many repairs from them as before, at the new prices or wages (highly doubtful), then these customers would have to reduce their demand for other goods, whose prices would correspondingly fall. Thus the general price level would remain unchanged although the shoe repairers would then have gained a larger share of the total earnings - at the expense of others. But the most likely result would be a reduction of the turnover and thereby the total income of the shoe repairers and an increase in the sale of new, cheap and factory produced and disposable shoes, which can be produced by unskilled labourers and which are never repaired but merely thrown out. To that extent their increased wage claims would make the shoemakers unemployed. That has actually happened, to a large extent, not only to shoemakers but e.g. to plasterers, too. -J.Z., n.d. & 6.4.97, 2.7.11. - DIS.
INFLATION FIGHTING: Inflation must be fought by various measures. - Popular opinion. - Why create the legal preconditions for it in the first place and then maintain it for over a century? If one does not introduce an evil or let it grow - then one does not have to fight it. - J.Z., n.d. - If you really want to fight inflation, its cause, not its symptoms, repeal legal tender and the issue monopoly of the central bank and do not grant it any regulatory and supervisory powers, either. At most it should be allowed to run the government's monetary system, but only quite non-coercively, competitively, with government paper money in circulation only upon whatever merits its voluntary customers would still see in it. Without compulsory taxation and compulsory territorial State membership only competing State paper currencies based on voluntary contributions and their voluntary tax foundations could remain. No governmental value standard should be granted any monopoly over a whole territory and all its people any longer. Free choice in currency and value standards, confining all bad issues to voluntary victims only. - J.Z., 2.5.97. - DIS.
INFLATION IS A MATTER OF TOO MUCH MONEY CHASING TOO FEW GOODS. - Popular opinion. - It would be more correct to say that the coercive and exclusive money issues of others than the owners of goods, labour and services, tend to wrongly chase the goods, services and labour, upon which they are not and cannot be rightly based and that they do prevent the owners of goods, and providers of services and labour to issue just as many money token, based upon their goods, services and labour, as are needed to sell all of them easily, all the time, at market prices, as long as they are wanted. If one does not make these distinctions between different forms of money, i.e., especially the money of monetary despotism and the money of monetary freedom then one will never understand the cause of and cure for inflation. - Honest money doesn't have to chase goods and services: it represents them. Exclusive currency that is supplied by others one has to chase with one's goods and services. Or one has to try to hunt for it - and is not always sufficiently successful in such attempts, for there are all too many other such "hunters" around and the game is relatively scarce, compared with the number of hunters and their guns. The money of monetary freedom one can issue oneself, based upon one's goods and services and accepts it for one's goods and services. No chasing is involved. The goods and services are simply its fundamental cover and redemption fund, its issue and reflux guaranty. The goods and service side is automatically kept in balance with the money side, by the owners and traders of goods and services themselves. E.g. by a local shop association, acting as its own note-issuing banker, issuing its own local shop-foundation money, consisting in goods warrants, service certificates etc. in monetary denominations and using for them and for their prices a self-chosen value standard. That would be an example of monetary emancipation from monetary despotism. Honest money has no other convertibility or value or reflux option or foundation than that of being useful in payment for the assortment of goods, services and labour upon which it is based, in any private or cooperative payment community. But it can also be used to purchase gold, silver and platinum on the markets for these rare metals. Owners of these rare metal commodities could also issue certificates based upon and redeemable in these products. But they should not imagine that their issues could suffice to provide a substitute for all the monies that could and should be issued based upon and redeemable in all other daily and frequently wanted goods and services. - Monetary troubles arise only when honest monies are not allowed to "chase" bad monies out of circulation, by refusing or discounting them. In other words, when wanted goods, services and labour cannot be turned into an optional and market rated local currency by their owners and providers. - J.Z., 28.3.97, 30.8.02, 2.7.11. - DIS.
INFLATION PSYCHOLOGY: The most important need is to check the development of an inflation psychology, of a tendency for people to express a growing distrust for money by accelerated spending and by a chronic process of industrial turbulence in search of wage increases to offset the dollar's falling value. This would be a self-reinforcing process: industrial turbulence and wage hosts promote the deterioration of money's value, which provokes the wage demands. - The psychological type is the third and worst form of inflationary pressure, the other two forces in the spiral being the cost-push and the demand-pull types. - T. M. Fitzgerald, THE AUSTRALIAN, 22.1.71. - In other words, he wants to prevent people from engaging in the only defensive measures that are left to them against monetary despotism and he slanders it as a mere "inflation psychology". Any inflating government has really earned any degree of distrust against its monetary policy. A monetary revolution against it would be morally and economically justified. Here, too, the defensive measures are accused of being aggressive or inflationary by themselves. He did not demand a stop to the note printing presses, the abolition of the privileges of the Reserve Bank and of legal tender for its exclusive currency and of the monopoly for the issue of notes. - J. Z., 2.4.97. - Unfortunately, only such "experts" find it easy to get their flawed and misleading views expressed in most of the mass media, even when no formal censorship has been introduced. Their ignorance and prejudices, backed up by those of the public, prevent monetary and financial enlightenment even more so than a formal governmental censorship would. - J.Z., 2.9.02. - Obviously, just like among there professional psychologists, priests and preachers, and various other social "scientists", there only very few who have any sound ideas and opinions on genuine economics. - All the more we should appreciate these few. - J.Z., 3.7.11. - DIS., PSYCHOLOGICAL MOTIVES?
INFLATION PSYCHOSIS & CENTRAL BANKING CONTROLS: Tighter and more painful central banking controls are required to eradicate a nation's inflation psychosis." - Pop or even "expert" opinion. - That "psychosis" is the all too well founded distrust against any government forced and exclusive paper currency over the last all too many decades. Without that monetary despotism and its catastrophic results, crippling whole economies and impoverishing all their people, it would not exist. More of the same does not offer a way out but merely one into further troubles. Monetary freedom instead of monetary despotism! - J. Z., 23.3.97. - DIS.
INFLATION TARGET: Inflation, with 1.3%, is at the lower end of the Reserve Bank's target of 2-3%. - Radio news 24.4.97. - Who says Keynesianism is dead after it has been repeatedly and thoroughly refuted? Here it even frankly admits that it aims not at currency stability but currency instability, at inflation or currency depreciation, instead and pretends that it has reasons to be proud of having achieved a lower inflation rate, rather than stopping inflation altogether, something that it could do immediately, merely by ending its monopoly and legal tender powers, letting its paper money find its true market value and leaving all prices and wages to be marked out in sound alternative value standards, unchanged by its despotic legislation. The law usually ascribes the role as a defender of the currency to the central bank. In reality, it becomes its depreciator in the vain pursuit of full employment through a gradual and managed inflation of the monopolised and forced currency. The figures given are, naturally for government institutions, not the truly representative ones for the facts but politically influenced ones. See: CPI or Consumer Price Index. This is also a monopolistically determined figure that leans away from the fact to please the politicians and deceive their voting cattle. Controlled prices are included to measure inflation and almost no economists protests, at least not in public. - J. Z., 24.4.97, 3.7.11. - One might as well speak of targets for robberies, thefts, fraud, rapes and child molestation. - Often our supposed experts condemn themselves by their own utterances, at least in the minds or moral and intelligent people. - J.Z., 3.7.11. - DIS.
INFLATION THEORIES: They are so numerous that all should be listed - and confronted with the facts and contrary theories as far as is possible, in order to enable the patient truth searchers to finally sort the wheat from the chaff. - J. Z., 19.3.97, 3.7.11.
INFLATION, A LESSER EVIL? - Inflation is the lesser evil compared with deflation, depression and mass unemployment and mass bankruptcies. - Should we argue at length which is the greatest evil among cancer, heart disease, AIDS and tuberculosis? Or should we try to resist or prevent all of them? Inflation is not the opposite of deflation, since it also has deflationary effects and can be mixed with deflation and unemployment in stagflations. Deflations and mass unemployment can also, under monetary despotism, be used as excuses for permanent inflations. - J. Z., 2. 4. 97, 3.7.11. - DIS., DEFLATION, DEPRESSIONS, UNEMPLOYMENT, BANKRUPTCIES, CRISES
INFLATION, A NEBULOUS ECONOMIC MECHANISM? - In reality it is a quite simple mechanism but this is hidden in a dense fog of errors, wrong premises, myths, fallacies, prejudices, misleading terms, wrong conclusions, false observations etc. - I would rather say that it is an over-issue of money that is made possible through legal tender and the issue monopoly - beyond the quantity of money that would be readily accepted on a free market, and this at par with its nominal value, expressed in a sound value standard, if the issue monopoly and legal tender in general circulation (apart from the natural, economical and moral one towards its issuer) were absent. - That is my version of Ulrich von Beckerath's definition. - J.Z., 2.4.97. - DIS.
INFLATION, CAN IT BE PREVENTED? - It is impossible to prevent inflation altogether. One can only fight some of its consequences. It is like an earthquake or other natural catastrophe. - Popular opinion. - So the real culprits of this result of monetary despotism would have us believe. They do not want to be blamed for their flawed and despotic payment and value measurement system and their actions within it. At most they are prepared to "reform" their system of monetary despotism, somewhat, but never to abolish it. - Without legal tender and the issue monopoly one cannot inflate a currency, not even with the worst intentions. For then anyone is free to discount an inflated currency or to reject it altogether while going on to reckon and account all one's prices, wages, salaries, fees and contracts in sound alternative value standards. - If inflation is like a natural catastrophe, and, as such, inevitable, then how come there were some prolonged periods of stable currency, e.g. in Prussia, from the Napoleonic wars to WW II? - J.Z., n.d. & 3.4.97. However, mot of the time governments have dishonestly depreciated their "value standards" and forced their depreciated currency upon their victims, as if it were still a sound one. - J.Z., 3.7.11. - OR IS IT A NATURAL CATASTROPHE? DIS.
INFLATION, CAUSE OR GUILT? Who is to blame for inflation? - This or that group of claimants, with their inflationary demands? This or that group of conspirators, financiers, speculators, unionists, shopkeepers etc.? - Popular opinion offers many such "explanations". Basically, the question should not be "who?" but "what?" - While the few, those in territorial power, can, with their laws and institutions of monetary despotism, initiate the process and do have wrongful motives to do so, their motives, these are the causes which make their inflations possible. I may have a motive to cause an inflation but I do not have the power to do so. Neither have you. I possess neither an issue monopoly for my notes, nor do they have legal tender power, like those of the central bank. Nor does any private bank or financial institution, subordinated to monetary legislation and to the central bank, has any such power. One should not try to assign blame without referring at all to monetary legislation and legalized institutions and their "principles" and motives of operation. - J.Z., 7.4.97, 3.7.11. - Free people can only oblige themselves to accept their own notes in payment for their goods, services or debts owed to them, they cannot oblige others, who are not their debtors, to accept these notes at all or to accept them at par with their nominal value. Thus they cannot cause an inflation of all prices, wages, salaries, fees, etc. that are reckoned and priced in sound value standards and paid in sound exchange media or clearing certificates or account credits using such standards. - J. Z., 4.9.02. 3.7.11. - WHO OR WHAT IS TO BLAME? CAUSE & CURE, DIS.
INFLATION, COMPETITION & LOWER PRICES: Increased competition could curb inflation, e.g. by legislation against restrictive trade practices and by lowering some high tariff barriers. - Popular opinion. - This would not deal with monetary inflation but merely with price increases due to goods shortages, in these cases artificially caused goods shortages. The correct name for high prices causes by the goods side is "dearness", not inflation. - J.Z., n.d., 28.3.97, 3.7.11.
INFLATION, DEPRESSIONS, UNEMPLOYMENT, CRISES: Judging by their own utterances and actions, the few who now can legally cause inflations and deflations as well as stagflations and their involuntary mass unemployment, do not know that they cause them and how they do so and, consequently, do not know how to stop the consequences of their own decisions and actions. They have often enough admitted their ignorance in this respect - and their inability to cope with the problems they have created is rather obvious, too. Required is the repeal of their relevant laws and powers and they are not even aware of how wrongful and harmful these are. - J.Z., 14.1.02, 27.8.02, 4.7.11. - & MONOPOLIZED DECISION-MAKING ON MONETARY MATTERS, COMBINED WITH GREAT ECONOMIC IGNORANCE & NUMEROUS WRONGFUL PREMISES, MYTHS & PREJUDICES, CENTRAL BANKING, MONETARY DESPOTISM, MONETARY POWERS, MONETARY MISMANAGEMENT, CENTRAL BANKING, MONEY MONOPOLY, LEGAL TENDER, ISSUE MONOPOLY
INFLATION, EXCESSIVE: Some people speak of acceptable and excessive degrees of inflation as if not every manipulation of the standard of value would be excessive. A small sum stolen does still amount to a 100% theft and when a robber only gains a few dollars by openly violating the property rights and physical security of others, then it still amounts to a complete act of robbery. - One should also take into consideration what effect a small percentage of annual inflation has upon all long term investments and claims, like e.g. those to old age pensions, payable in depreciated legal tender. 40 years of a 2% annual inflation, can destroy about 80% of the nominal value of a pension payable in paper dollars. Moreover, inflation rates are not always made up in full, if at all, by correspondingly increased interest rates. Sometimes at least some interest rates are reduced by inflation to negative interest rates. Thus, instead of premiums building up an old age security capital, the value of that capital may be diminished; quite apart from the taxation robberies committed against old age security funds. - J.Z., n. d., & 2.4.97. - DIS.
INFLATION, GERMAN INFLATION OF 1914-23: By November 1923 notes denominated 100 Billion Reichsmarks, was, apparently, the biggest denomination note issued, according to the guides for collectors that I have seen. One mentioned that this note was then worth about 7 UK pounds. - "Workers were paid twice daily and given time to go shopping, before the value was eroded by inflation." Not only the Reichsbank issued large denominations. The money shortage, in relation to the inflated prices, which were, by law, expressed in the inflated money, anticipating further inflation, was so large that numerous others issued emergency currencies, also, mostly in Reichsmark denominations, thus participating in the inflation of the Reichsmark while trying to reduce its deflationary effects. But some, like the Reichsbahn and Farbenwerke Hoechst, did, later, issue emergency monies on a stable value basis. (I micro-fiched a booklet they published about their issues.) This development and secessionist aspirations were two of the factors that finally forced the Reichsbank to discontinue its paper money inflation. - J.Z., 25.4.97, 4.7.11. - Initially many of the emergency money issues were only for small change, that was in short supply by the Reichsbank. However, since they, too, in most cases, used the inflated Reichsmark as their "value standard", But soon these issues followed the depreciation of the paper Reichsmark and thus they were also issued in large denominations, although, probably, not in as large ones as those which the Reichsbank got finally printed for itself and forced upon the public. - J.Z., 8.9.02, 4.7.11.
INFLATION, GOVERNMENT MOTIVATIONS, GOVERNMENT SPENDING, CAUSE OF INFLATION: The CAUSE of inflation is not that governments have a MOTIVE to inflate it but that their legislation gives them or their central banks the wrongful power of the money issue monopoly and of legal tender for its paper money, so that the national economies, depending upon monetary exchanges, have no other option, as long as this monetary despotism can be enforced, than to use this monopoly and forced currency, no matter how much it has already been over-issued and depreciated, because its reflux via taxation, forced loans and subscriptions to government insecurities (investment in tax-slaves, mostly not safeguarded against inflation) is not strong enough. Its victims are not free to refuse it or to discount it. They are not free to price out their goods and services and labours in sound value standards, instead and accept, if at all, the government's paper money only at its discounted value. They are not free to use only their own or freely chosen sound exchange media and value standards instead. They are disfranchised in this respect. They are deprived of their consumer sovereignty of free pricing and free choice and freedom to refuse to buy the currency of the government at all - with their goods and services. Instead, their only remaining option, until price controls, quotas, rationing and forced labour are imposed upon them as well, is to increase the nominal prices for their goods, services and labours, paid in the depreciating, inflated and thus price-inflating government paper money. - Without these coercive and monopolistic, even despotic or totalitarian monetary powers, the government's motivation would be irrelevant. It could not force an excess of its notes or insecurities upon an unwilling market. Then it could not do any wrong or harm in this way. -J. Z., 9.3.89, 15.5.97, 4.7.11. - DEFICIT SPENDING, BUDGETS, MONETARY DESPOTISM, LEGAL TENDER, ISSUE MONOPOLY
INFLATION, MONETARY DESPOTISM & THE THREAT OF WAR: That subject deserves a special section, perhaps a whole book. Just ask yourself: How many of the wars of the last century were financed without inflation? - J.Z., 4.7.11.
INFLATION, PRICES: Inflation is a measure of the greed of those in the community who are in a position to set their own prices for the goods or services they provide. - Popular opinion. - Even world corporations shave not market power to raise their price in the face of a slackening demand for their products or of growing competition. The law of diminishing returns applies even to monopolists. We buy less and less of their overpriced products and services and more and more of substitute goods and services at lower prices. Trades, by their very nature, are not deals or bargains in which one side is at liberty to set all the conditions and gather all the advantages to itself, even though, sometimes, a particular market may be more a seller's market than a buyer's market or more a buyer's market than a seller's market. - J. Z., n.d. & 3.4.97. - Employees tend to blame the employers and employers large blame the employees. Neither are, as a rule, sufficiently aware of the real causes and culprits that make this abuse possible, namely the legislators of monetary despotism, with its monopolistic note-issuing central bank and legal tender power for its paper "money" and its paper "value standard". - J.Z., 4.7.11. - PRICE MAKERS, PRICE SETTERS & GREED, GREED, ANTI-CAPITALIST MENTALITY, STATE SOCIALISM, COMMUNISM
INFLATION, PROGRESSIVE INFLATION: An inflation is not necessarily progressive and runs the full course towards almost complete depreciation. It can be kept within certain bounds. - In spite of strong political pressures to continue an inflation, once it has begun and to dispense and take larger and larger doses of this "drug", to achieve the same effect and in spite of the remaining deflationary pressures demanding relief by further money issues, not all inflations have run the full course. Many have been stopped before that. For instance, in Germany, after 3 inflations in this century, the 4th inflation, since 1948, has been kept mostly to low annual percentages and, for some years even, no further inflation took place. Too many remembered the past experiences with large scale inflations during and after WW I, that by the Nazis and that by the occupation forces, from 1945 - 1948. Alas, all too often inflations have only been stopped or reduced at the price of a deflation, with mass unemployment. The soft option, stopping it without causing even temporary mass unemployment, is still held to be impossible, even by most libertarians who are interested in at least aspects of monetary freedom. I have shortly described that option in PEACE PLANS 19B: The Soft Option: Monetary Freedom to Stop Inflation without Causing Unemployment, 1976, 16 pp. (I offer it digitized as an email attachment. It is also reproduced on some websites. This is one of the numerous topics still insufficiently discussed among libertarians, in spite of their significance. -J. Z., 3.4.97. - GALLOPING INFLATION, LIMITED INFLATION, CONTROL OF INFLATION
INFLATION, RATE OF INFLATION, TOLERABLE RATES? Inflation at an annual rate of between 7 & 8% is simply politically intolerable. - Pop opinion. - It might be, IF people had been used to currency stability for a long time. Not otherwise. Politicians know better under present conditions, where they themselves and their voters and those who voted against them, are not yet monetarily emancipated and have no right to vote in this sphere. Thus they do go on inflating beyond these already catastrophic inflation rates - and remain safely in office, nevertheless, and can even expect to be praised for their nominally higher and higher" spending" of what does not rightfully belong to them and has not been voluntarily and individually entrusted to them. - It all depends on how much the politicians have hoodwinked those they are supposed to represent. A fool and his money are soon parted. The money of people who monetarily remain fools will soon be depreciated by those who have the legal monopoly and power to do so and tend to do so in their own short term interest. When someone objects then, with Keynes, they might reply: "In the long run all of us are dead", or: "Let posterity take care of itself", or like Louis XIV: The great flood may come after us. I don't care! (Aprés nois la deluge!) During the 1914-23 great inflation in Germany it came to a DAILY inflation rate of 100%, i.e., from day to day the purchasing power of this paper money was halved. Inflation rates of 30-100 % p.a. were quite common for years to decades in South America, Indonesia and Vietnam and the reduction e.g. of a 70% inflation to a "mere" 30% inflation was celebrated as an economic and political achievement already indicative of "political stability". I really wonder whether a proper survey of the may be 200 "independent nations" now in existence, would not indicate as high inflation rates among most or all too many of them. Alas, the mass media do not even publish regularly and reliably the current inflation rate and that of past years and past decades in the own country, e.g. by a tabulation of the note and coin circulation year by year, together with the rise of the wage and price levels, the exchange rates, unemployment rates, rates of bankruptcies, and of taxes, as well as of “rare metal prices expressed in paper currency "standards" and of the official and unofficial CPI's. The rate of strikes, revolutions, civil wars and international wars, as well as terrorist acts, that accompany or follow monetary despotism, should also be tabulated, not only for one country but for all of them. Such surveys would daily induce more questions, doubts, demands and resistance against monetary despotism and its obvious effects. Alas, the most important facts, ideas and abuses are rarely discussed by the mass media and when at all then usually quite insufficiently, spreading more confusion and prejudices regarding them rather than light. - In the long run even the smallest degree of inflation undermines political stability and promotes revolutionary or dictatorial conditions. - J.Z., n.d. &5.4.97. - Even on Facebook most participants are more inclined to discuss trivial or personal matters rather than important economic, political and social questions. - 4.7.11.
INFLATION, RATE OF INFLATION: So long as we were not inflating as fast as the rest of the world we had no real cause of alarm. - John Hallows, THE AUSTRALIAN, 12.2.72. - Assume that all the rest of the world would be inflating at 1000% and we "only" at 100%. Would this be no cause of alarm? - Do I exaggerate? "Retail prices skyrocketed 20,000 % between 1945 &1965". - NEWSWEEK, 5.8.68, on Indonesia. It continued: "The budget has been balanced and inflation has been slowed down from a gallop to a canter of about 100% per year." - Isn't it surprising how propagandist choice of words can minimise the impact of facts upon man's "thinking" or opinions? - J.Z., 4.4.97. - STABILITY OF CURRENCY, DIS.
INFLATION, RATE OF INFLATION: The economy is comparatively stable if price rises do not exceed 4 % in any year. - Popular opinion. - It may be relatively stable, when compared with rapid or galloping inflations taking place elsewhere but it does not stabilise long term credit and debt relationships at all. Imagine the disturbance in the market if length, weight and volume measurements were reduced annually by 4%. Even a 1% inflation could already destroy all too much of one's old age insurance claim. This kind of "currency policy" is no more honest that the stance of a thief who steals from many people but only something of little value every time, arguing that they won't notice it or will not mind it. Those who watered down milk or fruit juice could argue similarly: We do little harm. Also many polluters would argue likewise. Especially those who disperse radioactive substances and increase the radiation hazards or add poisonous substances to our foods. - J. Z., 5.3.97. - Here at least the ALDI chain has recently done away with artificial colouring in its food offers. - J.Z., 4.7.11. SLOW INFLATION, STABILITY OF CURRENCY, DIS., BUDGET, GOVERNMENT SPENDING.
INFLATION, SLOW INFLATION TO ACHIEVE FULL EMPLOYMENT? A slow inflation is necessary to provide full employment. - Popular & "expert" opinion. - That has been tried, under monetary despotism, for decades and has led only to many fast inflations and a permanent degree of unemployment and sometimes massive unemployment rates - presently totalling 1 billion unemployed and underemployed. - You really want more of the same for the next few decades? - J.Z., 6.4.97. - DIS.
INFLATION, UNEMPLOYMENT: Inflation can be countered by creating substantial unemployment through various repressive measures that would restrain wages and salaries. - Popular to "expert" opinion. - Only one repression is needed, that of the monopoly for the issue of paper money and the legal tender privilege for it. Other people, who do not possess such wrongful powers, should not be blamed, penalised or restricted for the disastrous effects of these wrongful powers. Unionised workers might demand a million dollars as a normal weekly wage. Unless the central bank inflates the currency to that extent, they will not get it. If you demanded as much tomorrow, from your employer, then he would have to give you "the sack" or you would have to resign. The same applies to e.g. a baker who demanded $ 10,000 for a loaf of bread from you. He would have to do without your custom and he would be out of business very fast, having priced himself out of his market. Instead of trying to back up monetary despotism by further despotic measures - we should simply abolish it. - J.Z., 6.4.97, 4.8.11. - Compare my 16pp brochure in PEACE PLANS 19B, entitled: The Soft Option: Monetary Freedom to Stop Inflation without Causing Unemployment, 1976. - FB floppy 1.doc - www.docstoc.com/docs/74468304/FB-floppy-1doc - & WAGE CONTROL, THE HARD OPTION, DIS.
INFLATION, WORST INFLATION? On July 31, 1946, the forint superseded the pengo, victim of the postwar hyperinflation. The official exchange rate of the new currency was 11.74 fortings to the US dollar, as compared with 115.5 octillion (+26 zeros!) pengo, probably the highest exchange ratio in the history of money. – From the article on Hungary, section money and finance, p. 914, in vol. 11 of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1958. - What are the figures on the recent inflation in Zimbabwe? – J.Z., 18.9.10. - Many relevant pictures, figures and dates are provide at: A Thousand Pictures Is Worth One Word: Worthless | ZeroHedge- www.zerohedge.com - HUNGARY, GREAT INFLATION, ZIMBABWE
INFLATION, ZIMBABWE: Reported inflation rate in Zimbabwe in October 2009: 231 million per cent; date the $Z100 trillion note was introduced: January 16, 2009. – Jon B. Croucher, Professor of Statistics, Macquarie University, in GOOD WEEKEND, Jan. 16, 2010, page 9.
INFLATION: According to Ulrich von Beckerath, inflation is that excess of circulating money which is forced into circulation through legal tender and the issue monopoly beyond that amount of its total possible circulation at which, in the absence of legal tender and the issue monopoly, it would not have been accepted at all or not at par with its nominal value. All other attempts to prevent or end inflation than by the removal of this monopoly and coercion are in vain. In the presence of this monetary despotism it is even impossible to measure accurately and fast enough the point at which the saturation point for exchange media is reached and beyond which monetary inflation sets in. - J.Z., 14.4.97.
INFLATION: All lasting inflations of the general price level in a whole country do occur and can occur only under the communist, collectivist and despotic system of an exclusive currency with forced acceptance and forced value (legal tender power), against which the sellers of goods, services and labour have no other defence left than to increase their prices, charges and wages or salaries. Alas, those depending on fixed incomes, only nominally accounted and paid for in the depreciated currency, are, as a rule, not given such an option. At most they can avoid making such investments, in the future, if they still have some earnings that they could so invest. - J.Z., 9.10.93, 1.5.97, 4.7.11, 4.8.11.
INFLATION: DEMAND-PULL & COST PUSH INFLATION: If you permit demand-pull inflation to rage for three years, then it will follow, as the night follows the day, that the subsequent periods will become subject to cost-push inflation. ... In cost-push inflation, we witness a rise in wage rates arrived at by collective bargaining. Cost push, or 'seller's inflation', to distinguish it from demander's inflation, is more than a matter of intransigent union leaders or impatient rank-and-file strikers. It comes also from the side of rises in 'administered prices' by large corporations in their desire to protect their profit margins or even to improve upon them. - Econ-babble by Dr. Paul A. Samuelson, THE NATIONAL TIMES, 26/4/71. - To call the issue of exclusive and forced currency by a government, leading to an enforced over-issue or monetary inflation, a "demand-push" inflation, is as misleading as calling the "payments" of governments "spending". It is assumed that a genuine "demand" or "spending" is involved. One might as well say that the issue of currency forged by private forgers is a genuine demand - instead of a fraudulent transfer of purchasing power from honest people to dishonest people or that the "spending" of a bank-robber is the equivalent of the honest spending of his victims. - The fancy terms "demand-push" and "cost-pull" - inflation are used to cover up what really happens, frequently, with forced and exclusive currencies, particularly when they are world-wide used currencies like the U.S. dollar and are not as much depreciated as most other currencies are, so that they become a currency hoarding option for other victims of monetary despotism. Inflation means the over-issue of notes whose acceptance and value is enforced beyond the quantity that would be accepted at par and quite voluntarily if they were not legal tender and monopoly money. An equivalent rise of all prices to the total issue of US dollars does not take place today, or not yet, because many to most of the notes are internally or externally hoarded. Sometimes by internal authorities, sometimes by internal criminals, to some extent by foreign banks and foreign criminals, to some extent by honest citizens overseas, who trust the U.S. dollar more than they trust the paper money of their own government. - Once part of this overhead of over-issued and hoarded dollars is let loose upon the internal U.S. market, then this previously issued excess of notes will tend to drive up prices and wages, to the extent that it streams back to the U.S. and is there used for consumer purchases. - However, inflation takes not place evenly all over the economy but unevenly. Some prices and wages rise later than others, especially when they are somewhat fixed for a period, by contracts or government controls. - All types of monetary inflations are characteristic for the monies of monetary despotism, not those of monetary freedom. - J.Z., 28.3.97. - Without legal tender and the issue monopoly one cannot inflate a currency, not even with the worst intentions. The supposed gold-inflations, that are ascribed to periods of great gold discoveries, are mostly imagined. The total stock of gold accumulated over thousands of years was not very significantly increased and certainly not quite out of proportion with the increased population and the increase in produce, products and services. If we had prohibited the sale of goods, labour and services for any other means of exchange than rare metal coins, then the somewhat free economies could not have grown as far as they did. Luckily, the clearing options went far beyond the available rare metal stocks even before the great gold discoveries in modern times, so that we were never completely dependent upon the supply of rare metals that was coined out. Alas, for wage and salary payments we were, largely, for all too long, just like we are now dependent upon government monopoly money, for them, even when they are not paid in such cash put only accounts of this monopoly money. - J.Z., 30.8.02, 4.7.11. - DIS.
INFLATION: Fully freed competition against central banks is the only way to rapidly stop and prevent further inflation, stagflation, depressions, credit restrictions and involuntary mass unemployment. - J.Z., 31.10.01, 26.8.02, 3.7.11. - CENTRAL BANKING, FREE BANKING & MONETARY FREEDOM
INFLATION: Hyperinflation.net - Essays - www.hyperinflation.net/essays/englund7.html - Cached - In fact, the opposite is true in that a central bank is an institution that usurps a free-market's money supply (such as gold and silver), and destabilizes ... - INFLATION, CENTRAL BANKING, MONOPOLY MONEY, LEGAL TENDER, FIAT MONEY
INFLATION: Inflation is a consequence of government legislation establishing a note issue monopoly and legal tender for its notes. Without such despotic powers no one could inflate. However, all or almost all governments possess this kind of legislation and they do inflate their national currency, most of the time, whenever they do not use this legalized but wrongful monetary powers to cause deflations, depressions, mass unemployment or a stagflation (which combines the evils of inflation and deflation). - Possibly no other economic fact is better established and none is more widely ignored. - J. Z., 26.3.93, 27.5.97, 4.7.11.
INFLATION: Inflation is like sin: every government denounces it and every government practices it. – Frederick Leith-Ross, quoted in THE OBSERVER. - JOKES, SIN, GOVERNMENTS, CENTRAL BANKING
INFLATION: Inflation is the over issue of exclusive and forced "legal tender" and monopoly currency by the government or its central bank - beyond the quantity that a free market and competitive note issues, clearing arrangements and value standard conditions would be prepared to accept at par value with their nominal value under free market rating for such a currency, clearing certificate or account or at par with alternative value standards, if the paper-standard of the government is not suitable for marking out prices, wages and other debt contracts. For instance, in Israel, at least a few years ago, wages were frequently settled by an index standard and most prices in the shops were marked out not in the official Shekel standard but, rather, in U.S. dollars. Without legal tender and the issue monopoly refusals and discounting of any inflated currency would be wide-spread to overwhelming. - J.Z., 3/97.
INFLATION: Inflation is the product of centralised control of your money. - Peter A. Wright: Australian Campaign Against Centralism. - Rather, it is the product of centralised control of THEIR money, which is FORCED UPON YOU as an exclusive currency. -J. Z., 20.3.97. - DIS.
INFLATION: Inflation, … is a condition in monetary transactions where paper money is accepted without limits and at a prescribed value only because legal tender prevails: a coercion which makes it legally impossible to account for depreciation by discounts or refusals. - Ulrich von Beckerath, 25.1.52.
INFLATION: Lenin is said to have declared that the best way to destroy the Capitalist System was to debauch the currency. By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate secretly and unobserved an important part of the wealth of their citizens … Lenin was certainly right. There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose.” – Maynard Keynes, The Economic Consequences of the Peace. Quoted by: Paul Bakewell, Jr., What Are We Using For Money. D. Van Nostrand Co., Toronto, New York, London, 1952, p.201. - A few years later he advocated a systematic slow inflation as a cure-all. – Should we assume that he did so as a Communist? The central banks of all States do still practise this Communist suggestion, even if, otherwise, they proclaim to be anti-communists. – J.Z., 29.7.10.
INFLATION: Like with the common cold there is no guaranteed cure for inflation. - Mr. McMahon, quoted in THE SYDNEY MORNING HERALD, 12.6.l71. - McMahon was once federal treasurer and even prime minister for Australia - and well represented the wide-spread ignorance, myths and prejudices in this sphere. One should rather say that, as for the common cold and among orthodox doctors, there is no cure for commonness or monetary prejudices among treasurers and prime ministers. On the contrary, to worst of all men, like scum, tend to rise to the top. Only extremely ignorant and prejudiced voters would consider such people as if they were financial wizards and great leaders. - There is a guaranteed cure: Repeal or effectively ignore legal tender and the issue monopoly of the central bank and thus let good money drive out the bad. Emancipate all people monetarily, who can be and wish to be so emancipated. Then at least their exchanges will not longer be distorted or rendered difficult to impossible by inflations, deflations and stagflations. - Only one thing is right about the above remark: Within a system of financial despotism no cure is possible for its evils. Landsberg, in Germany, after the great 1913-23 inflation, proposed once a "gallows currency", under which the finance minister and the director of the central bank would be sent to the gallows as soon as the currency entrusted to them would be depreciated by a certain percentage, let us say 5%. But that is no more helpful than saying that rulers should fight it out among themselves, in duels, rather than conscripting and victimising millions of their subjects. Those, whom the victims leave in power over them, will continue to abuse these powers - with the sanction of the victims. - This kind of monetary ignorance and prejudice is still so prevalent that politicians do at most promise to reduce inflation - within years to decades - and not to abolish it and its preconditions, immediately. - J. Z., n.d., 29.3.97. - They even manage to speak openly of "inflation-targets" and are not instantly recalled, as they should be, in the same way as they should be if they talked e.g. about "mass murder targets" and "torture targets" and "robbery targets". The latter they usually call "budget estimates" and the former "Nuclear defence". - J. Z., 31.8.02, 3.7.11. - CURE OF INFLATION, DIS., TERRITORIALISM, STATISM, GOVERNMENTS
INFLATION: Monetary prudence is nipping inflation in the bud." - I found that remark somewhere, I did not note down where. Nor did the remark detail what monetary prudence would really require. I hold, e.g.: competitive note issues, market rating against a sound value standard, full publicity for all issues, absence of legal tender and of the issue monopoly, freedom to refuse or discount the exchange media and value standards of others. - J. Z., 22.12.94, 17.4.97. - DIS.
INFLATION: Money became so worthless that instead of being prized it was shunned. Not how to save it but how to spend it was the problem. – Roy L. Garis, Principles of Money, Credit and Banking, New York, The MacMillan Co., 1934, p.105.
INFLATION: No clearing of deposits acts inflationary. It cannot do so any more than barter can inflate prices. It just does what barter does (namely exchange goods and services), but unlike barter, not as slowly and inefficiently, but much faster, easier, more effectively, more widely, multilaterally and anonymously. Thus no clearing medium or method ought to be outlawed or made difficult or more or less monopolised or qualified and restricted. The debtors and creditors, whose debts and credits are somewhere and soon settled in a free clearing system, in several stages, may never come to meet or even hear of each other. During clearing debts and assets are mutually cancelled - in enormous amounts, daily. They do not grow indefinitely and cannot be made to grow, indefinitely and unilaterally. They are based on and depending upon the underlying sales and purchases of goods, services and labour. Mere paper profits and paper capital illusions may grow, even for prolonged periods, if there is no truly free market - in the monetary sphere as well. But, sooner or later they collapse down to the reality behind them. - J.Z., 3/97. - However, if all clearing, current accounts and deposit accounts are forced to use the single and depreciated paper "value standard" of a government's monopoly money, then they, too participate in its inflation. But they do not cause it, no more so than the increased prices and wages, coercively expressed in the depreciated government currency, do cause its inflation. - J.Z., 4.7.11.
INFLATION: Once you become aware that you can only inflate the general price and wage level with monopoly money, which has also been given legal tender power (compulsory acceptance and force value), you will no longer insist on paper monies being redeemable by their issuers in gold coins but at most being accepted by them at their nominal gold weight value, as determined in a free gold market, in all payments due to them or upon gold weight value clearing, using any exchange medium or clearing certificate at its market rate against gold, while pricing goods, services, wages etc. in gold value weight units. Ready acceptance by their issuers as if they were gold coins, can make them at least in this sphere as valuable as gold coins – and also much more easily available as exchange media. – Such exchange media would directly offer what most consumers do w or need, namely their the kinds of goods and services. They would keep this supply in balance with the exchange media competitively offered for local circulation by the retailers of these goods and services, alone or in suitable associations. – Their free market rating in general circulation would clearly indicate under-issues and over-issues. – All issue and reflux details should be fully publicized and not be treated as business secrets or as falling under privacy claims. - J.Z., 27.4.05, 4.10.10. - LEGAL TENDER, GOLD STANDARD, FREE CHOICE OF VALUE STANDARDS, EXCHANGE MEDIA & CLEARING OPTIONS, READINESS TO ACCEPT FOUNDATION, SHOP FOUNDATION, GOLD VALUE RECKONING, PRICING, ACCOUNTING & CLEARING
INFLATION: One ought to distinguish between the depreciation of one or even of several among competing currencies and the depreciation of an exclusive and forced currency. Under monetary competition some might not only provide unsound exchange media (e.g. based on land or shares, likely to depreciate fast) but also unsound value standards. Then they will have their exchanges expressed in their unsound currency issues and thus e.g. in their prices and wages. Then their exchange media would depreciate, either against any sound value standard which others are using. Then the own prices, expressed and paid in the own currency would be driven up but not the prices of others, expressed in sound value standards and paid for with sound exchange media. The inflated currency would be discounted and lastly refused in general circulation. At the same time, all other and quite sound currencies might circulate at par and their prices, expressed in their sound value standards, will remain, unchanged by the fact that some currencies have depreciated and some value standards have shown to be unreliable. The responsibility for over-issues is rapidly driven home to the one who caused it and his supporters. They alone will have to bear the damages they caused. They cannot spread them to others or over the whole country. Moreover, inflations under these conditions will be rare and limited, through the informed self-interest of issuers and acceptors - or refusers. - It is very different under monetary despotism. Then there is only one medium of exchange permitted and it has legal tender and all prices have to be expressed in it, as long as its legal tender power can be effectively enforced. All blocks against over-issues are removed: Free market rating, sound value standards, right to refuse acceptance, competing currencies, note exchanges and clearing house returns, good business reputation, value preserving clauses, publicity on issues and reflux, limited circulation period and area, limited commitments to single borrowers, discounting only of real bills or their present equivalents, a free gold and silver market, a sound and short term reflux of all exchange media issued. Moreover, in the absence of prescribed convertibility by the issuer, upon demand by the note-holders, misplaced confidence will not hide over-issues for all too long. Redemption of all competing currencies takes place in full, hourly, daily, etc., in goods, services and labour at par. The par value of competing currencies against their value standard, e.g., grams of gold, is also checked continuously on a free gold market. To that extent competing currencies are under "intensive care", but without any extra effort or high technology equipment, just by a continuous and automated as well as self-interested scrutiny by numerous people and institutions. Their strength is not run down, unnoticed, over prolonged periods, leading to a sudden discovery of its flaws and a collapse. They do not depend upon unreliable and belated statistics, on political motivations and career ambitions of a few powerful administrators of a central bank. They are not the footballs of political and military ambitions. - Note to a volume by POOR, on money, p.57. - J.Z., 1.6.85, 9.5.97, 13.9.02, 4.7.11.
INFLATION: Only government can take perfectly good paper, cover it with perfectly good ink and make the combination worthless. - Milton Friedman - My bad memory ascribes this quote to Ludwig von Mises. I read recently that when Mises once passed with a friend one of the noisy government presses during the great inflation, while they were discussing how to stop inflation, Mises said: Stop that noise! At the end of the great French Revolution its paper money had become so despised, that the government felt compelled to burn its note printing presses quite publicly. - J.Z., 8.8.11.
INFLATION: PROVISION OF A HANDBOOK OF POPULAR FALLACIES ON INFLATION & THEIR BEST REFUTATIONS SO FAR FOUND OR FORMULATED: Such a handbook is long overdue. An individual can hardly provide it because he or she would not have the time to sufficiently peruse all the nonsense written on this subject and to extract it for this purpose. The Internet could be used for this purpose and I would also like those, who might be interested to engage in this project among them, to provide me with their digitized files on this subject. It should be accompanied by a popularly written article on how to stop inflation's main cause: monetary despotism (the issue monopoly combined with legal tender: forced acceptance and forced value) and prevent it for the future by the introduction of full monetary freedom. - Collaborators for this project are wanted now. I really wonder whether the false notions on this subject are numbered merely in the hundreds or in the thousands, if not ten-thousands. Only extensive collaboration can determine that. - Notes towards an INTRODUCTION for such a handbook, written many years ago: Seeing the inflation of garbage articles on inflation and the difficulty to sift the welter of conflicting viewpoints, it is about time that an encyclopaedic approach is undertaken. Without sufficient publicity, showing the real market rate of flawed or false opinions on inflation, the bad views will flood and overpower the sound ones. Among a crowd of idiots, shouting at the top of their voices, a wise man will presently not be heard. The remnant of enlightened economists and students of money would get their chance via such a handbook. The wrong views, although numerous, would be cancelled out. Truthful or so far unrefuted statements on inflation could be specially marked. Other markings would indicate all the popular views that have long been refuted as such. But they would be reproduced in full - and with all their best refutations. - Government or central bank propaganda on money is often comparable (given the statist mentality) to giving a forced currency to flawed or false views on inflation (bad "money") and thus drive out the scarce truths advanced by a few (the good "money") through numerous untruths, advanced by the many at most occasions, especially in the mass media. Something like the popular version of Gresham's Law is here involved. Thus we ought to get a sufficiently informed free market and market rating on inflation views into operation, one that would systematically and permanently operate to publicly wipe out the errors, lies, wrong premises, dogmas and myths in this sphere: A breach for the truths on inflation to invade the citadel of monetary despotism. The handbook should enable every lover of liberty to hold his own in any public discussion with any advocate of monetary despotism, at least as far as inflation is concerned. Extended, into a general handbook on monetary freedom, it might similarly deal with other monetary freedom aspects, opinions, arguments ideas and proposals and with all relevant and provable facts. - EDITORIAL NOTE & PUBLISHING SUGGESTIONS: The first draft for such a manuscript, provided perhaps by a single person or a few, could become tested and perfected in public debates, like Beta Testing on the Internet for new software. In this way hundreds, even thousands could participate with their bits of truths they are able to contribute to this debate. Everybody is a victim of inflation. Everybody who can,should, therefore, try to contribute towards such a handbook. Develop new and better arguments, collect more relevant facts and submit them to a central compilation and editing office. It does not matter if the same ideas are expressed repeatedly in different words. The sorting out and cutting down of the length of the text could come later and even for this the readership of each version of improved drafts could be invited to add its comments and evaluations. Towards the end, when the draft is already sufficiently advanced and edited, and to the extent that it is wanted in expensive printed copies, advance subscriptions could be invited. For cheap editions, by now CDs, DVDs, online and on external large HD's, no advance subscriptions would be needed. They could be produced upon orders, i.e. upon demand. Almost everyone would be able to afford them. Short and popular versions of the handbook and pamphlet and leaflets indicating its essence, should also be drafted and published, by anyone game to try. Bets might be offered on certain views of inflation, on whether they could be publicly either proven or disproved. If anyone could prove to me that in essence my own views on inflation are quite wrong, I would gladly pay him or her A $ 100 - but I doubt that anyone would be able to make me lose that bet. However, the avalanche of wrong opinions on the subject is so large that I do not feel confident enough that I would be able, on my own, to optimally or thoroughly enough refute all of them for any particular individual, i.e., I would not be prepared to bet even $ 10 that I could convince a single individual of them, i.e. clear out the Augean Stables in his mind (on this subject) first and effectively and then implant successfully in his minds a new and clean foundation for his general acceptance of monetary freedom views. At present, the power of monetary errors and prejudices, to refuse to accept or to discount genuine truths in this sphere, is still too large. The wrong and flawed views on money have almost a legal tender power through public opinion, custom and traditions, just like most religious views. Widespread positive results in this sphere can only be guaranteed by a large and combined educational effort - like e.g. the cooperation required to compile this kind of handbook. Are there enough moral and rational dissenters among the freedom lovers to independently collaborate in the provision of such an encyclopaedia? Will they be prepared to forego any copyrights claims on their contributions? Any rightful resistance against monetary despotism must first be preceded by a period of sufficient enlightenment. Knowledge must precede actions - otherwise the same mistakes will be repeated over and over again. - J.Z., n.d. & 24.3.97. - Wouldn't it be nice if bets on the correctness or incorrectness of certain monetary ideas or arguments could become as popular as the betting on horse and dog races, which do not decide any questions of considerable importance to mankind? - J.Z., 30.8.02. - For the beginnings of such a digitized databank see e.g. www.monetary-freedom.net/
INFLATION: Salvation Through Inflation - www.entrewave.com/freebooks/docs/2166_47e.htm - Cached - 2 May 1996 – Since 1917, defenders of this reform scheme have offered arguments against free market money, private banking, and gold. ...
INFLATION: That rise in prices expressed in the value standard of legal tender money which results because stable value reckoning is outlawed by the legal tender clauses, and thus the depreciated and monopolized paper money cannot be discounted against sound value standards in case of over-issues. Due to this and the note issue monopoly almost any excessive quantity of the exclusive and forced exchange medium can be pushed permanently into circulation and it must be accepted at par with its nominal value in all payments. Thus the only option left to all acceptors is to increase their prices and wages, etc., expressed in that forced and exclusive currency - or to participate in underground transactions that are somewhat freely paid in alternative currencies to the extent that these, usually more stable other currencies, become available to them, often under great risk of prosecution if uncovered and caught and convicted. Thus the inflated paper value standard "prices" do not indicate really increased prices, rather, but the decreased value of the forced and exclusive currency. - Unfortunately, popular language use does not make this distinction or even the distinction between price increases due to shortages, or dearness, and price increases due to an over-issue of forced currency. - J. Z., 3.7.91 & 12.4.97, 4.7.11.
INFLATION: The cases where the government money was not inflated, in spite of its monopoly status and legal tender powers, for years, decades or even centuries, are rather exceptions than the rule. The rule is that such a currency provides an almost irresistible temptation and opportunity for any territorial government to abuse these powers - and depreciate its governmental monopoly paper money and thereby cause inflations. Once this is, sometimes, partly realized, then in panic and with quite inappropriate responses and measures, the opposite is achieved: deflations, depressions and their mass unemployment or stagflations. But it is only rarely that governments attempt to slow down their inflations. Then, and under monetary despotism, they see no better way to do this than to cause the seeming opposite, a deflation, with mass unemployment. Once in that situation it does not know how to get out of it without causing inflation. Not being market-based, issued, accepted, refused or discounted and returned to the issuer, not being freely valued and rated, not being under competition and the full spotlight of publicity, its exclusive and forced currency is without the natural or market limitations and indicators and can thus only be more or less mismanaged, using poor substitutes for the natural indicators. It is almost as if we put a dancer or a runner into chains and then expected him or her to perform at their best. - It is a riddle to me how people can expect to reap the full benefits of the division of labour, free enterprise, free trade and free exchange without freedom in the supply of exchange media and how they can expect a sufficient stability of value standards under legal tender, i.e., under the suppression of free choice of value standards. That's like expecting to find out and being able to spread truths by suppressing freedom of expression and information. - We have already spread exterritorial autonomy for volunteers in so many other spheres of our lives and have taken it for granted there. When will we finally, completely and consistently, apply it, experimental freedom, freedom of action and individual to volunteer group decision-making, in the last few spheres where it is still suppressed e.g. by territorial States and their central banks of issue and all their other despotic laws and institutions, despotic because they are territorially imposed upon dissenters? - J. Z., 16.9.92, 1.5.97, 12.9.02, 4.8.11. - DEPRESSIONS, CENTRAL BANKING, MONEY MONOPOLY, CURRENCY STABILITY, MONETARY POLICY, EURO-CURRENCY, DIS., TERRITORIALISM, EXPERIMENTAL FREEDOM, VOLUNTARISM, PANARCHISM, EXTERRITORIAL AUTONOMY
INFLATION: The Catastrophic Effects of Inflation - www.shtfplan.com/.../the-catastrophic-effects-of-inflation_0713201... - Cached - 13 Jul 2010 – 2) Free Market Money develops (gold and silver) 3) Government becomes involved in Free Market Process 4) Government monopolizes money and ... - GOLD, SILVER
INFLATION: "The surest way to overthrow an existing social order is to debauch the currency." – Lenin. Quoted by Paul Bakewell, Jr., What Are We Using For Money. D. Van Nostrand Co., Toronto, New York, London, 1952, p.145. – Yes, that is possible under monetary and financial despotism. When the monetary and financial freedom options are not known to and practised by the people, then it is also a means for an opposition group, to gain power, even if it constitutes only a radical minority of 5 to 7%. The totalitarian communists developed that technique and applied it successfully, all too often and for all too long. Afterwards, in spite of continuing inflation, they could maintain their rule, via terror, for decades, against people ignorant of their monetary, financial and other freedom alternatives, which offer rightful and relatively easy revolution and liberation options. One of the first actions of Lenin’s October 1917 counter-revolution was to occupy the Russian central bank in Petersburg. Since his opponents were ignorant of their monetary freedom alternatives (most of them still are!) he was then the only one able to pay his way. – As Ulrich von Beckerath used to say: His opponents, to the extent that he had not yet got them murdered, had to come to him for a loan to pay their secretary! – J.Z., 29.7.10. - COMMUNISM, MARX
INFLATION: There can be no large-scale inflation of any currency or any inflation of the general price level in all currencies, from the monetary side, without legal tender and the money issue monopoly. No inflation is possible under freedom for note issues and free choice of value standards and free clearing, using sound alternative value standards, and freedom to price one's goods, services, labour and contracts in them. - J. Z., 20.11.91, 26.4.97, 4.7.11. - Merely by observing how cheaply people with foreign and relatively stable currencies can buy goods, labour and services in countries with a galloping inflation, economists should have rapidly come to the conclusion that the essential difference between the foreign currencies with high purchasing power and the low purchasing power of the own national currency was due to the fact that the own currency was pushed into circulation by the issue monopoly and legal tender, while the foreign currency, in the inflating country, had no monopoly position and no legal tender and thus did not participate in the inflation and could not make it worse. On the contrary, it made at least some sound exchanges still possible. It had preserved its own value standard and it was voluntarily accepted at its purchasing power. - J. Z., 8.9.02.
INFLATION: There exists an all too popular but false notion that the private deposit and credit system can act itself in an inflationary way and that it could do so, on its own. (Price increases on the goods side or due to temporary speculation and hoarding attempts for goods are not permanent but temporary. They soon lead to corresponding price falls - reckoned in honest value standards. They indicate dearness from the goods-side but not inflation from the monetary side.) - Wherever, as long and to the extent that clearing occurs, which is using a sound value standard, no inflationary effect does occur or can occur. That applies to any payments carried on in books, bank-passports, bank accounts, or bank computers, too. But forcing all people to use a governmental and legal tender paper standard, one frequently or almost constantly depreciated by the government, involves all private transactions in the depreciation of this paper standard, too. But the private non-cash or clearing transactions themselves do not depreciate this depreciating standard further. I would not depreciate the government's paper currency when I cleared e.g., a value of $ 10 of my apples against a value of $ 10 of your potatoes. Naturally, the government - as the one and only culprit for every inflation - tends to blame everyone and everything - except itself. However, if all managed to settle all their transactions by clearing or private optional note issues and if all used in these transactions a more reliable value standard than most governments are able or willing to supply, then the government's "value standard" and its paper money would become worthless. They would be ignored or refused, i.e. their inherent worthlessness would be revealed. Government's inflationary paper money issues, like other forms of government spending, based on taxation or forced loans or "investments" in future tax slaves, are entirely parasitical. That is its own flaw. It cannot rightly blame the depreciation or worthlessness of its paper money on others. - J.Z., 3/97, 4.7.11, 7.7.11. - DIS.
INFLATION: When we price goods, commodities and stock-markets in terms of gold, we do not observe inflation.- Michael Trifunovic, THE SYDNEY MORNING HERALD, April 13, 11, BUSINESS DAY, p.8. - GOLD
INFLATION: Who cares about long term depreciation by slow inflation? In the long run we are all dead! - A flippant opinion ascribed to Maynard Keynes. - This point overlooks e.g. the effect a slow and steady (if it remains steady and slow!) inflation has e.g. upon old age pension claims. We cannot simply assume that after their retirement everybody will simply die off, uncomplaining and unaffected by inflation. Only after his death will he finally not care any longer. But in the meantime, often for years to decades, he is wrongly impoverished by inflation. He suffers this rightly only to the extent that he never cared about such questions at all and never worked towards monetary freedom to replace the monetary despotism that placed him into poverty. - If he were made aware how rich he could be, in his old age, after a normal working life, if bearable premiums were paid, untaxed, productively invested, credit insured, preserved by value-preserving clauses, not subject to forced loans or interest rate restrictions, in an economy neither impoverished and misled by inflations, deflations and stagflations, - that then he could, at least in his old age, be even a multi-millionaire in assets, then we would finally come close to a monetary revolution. For who would readily consent to being prevented from honestly becoming a multimillionaire by his own efforts, insurance, savings and investment arrangements (or by those who would act as his agents and trustees), instead of being continuously robbed or cheated by the governments, as happens now? Presently, there is probably not one voter in a million who is so enlightened. All governmental publicity avenues as well as popular avenues are rather closed to such ideas. Thus flippant apologists for monetary despotism, like M. Keynes, got away with it for decades and the central banking system that he favours has still got us in its claws and has invaded and occupied most minds. - J. Z., 14.4.97, 6.9.02, 4.7.11. - DIS. - WEALTH, OLD AGE INSURANCE UNDER MONETARY FREEDOM, PENSIONS
INFLATION: Without legal tender and the note issue monopoly, i.e., under free market rating for competing and optional currencies and their freely chosen value standards, no inflation is possible. A systematic historical research would soon provide enough evidence for this precondition for inflations. So many more or less silly or trivial researches are officially financed. This kind is not. I have recently challenged my State MP to initiate it through the Liberal Party's research department. But I do doubt that this will happen. The best way to convince someone else is not to try to convince him against his will by raining facts and arguments down upon him but, rather, to challenge him into convincing himself and to appeal to his self-interest for doing so. - J. Z., 19.3.97. - Alas, my own letter, to the Australian Liberal Party's research department, through the local MP, trying to follow this advice, received no response at all. One cannot effectively appeal to the knowledge and reason of politicians, not even to their self-interest, outside of their usual channels of "thought", "ideas" and "interests". However, unlike a Stalin, Hitler or Mao, they did not order my imprisonment or execution. - J.Z., 28.8.02.
INFLATIONARY DEPRESSIONS OR STAGFLATIONS: When a forced and exclusive currency depreciates considerably, during a galloping inflation, from day to day, week to week, etc., and as an investor the creditor could only be certain that, if at all, then he would only be repaid in depreciated money, then he would be a fool if he continued saving and investing. To that extent all production that depends upon further investments comes then to a stop, causing a corresponding depression and unemployment, not a boom economy and full employment. Furthermore, once prices race ahead of the note printing presses, inflations will at the same time become deflations or stagflations. Within a system of monetary despotism there are only hard and costly options of ending inflation. The moderate steps merely prolong the stagflation. The soft options of free markets in this sphere, offered by monetary freedom, are not possible under monetary despotism. Thus inflations are often continued, although not desired, out of fear of sharply increased mass unemployment, which would be politically even less acceptable. If the victimisers of this system are not prepared to give up their wrongful powers, then the victims of it should at least consider no longer granting them these powers. - J. Z., 28.4.97.
INFORMATION & MONEY. IS MONEY PURE INFORMATION? If that were true then pure scholars would be very attractive parties on the marriage market and they would have no money worries. As it is, information, particularly on innovations in the social and legislative or custom-ridden sphere and invention knowledge or any knowledge not corresponding to accepted and authority-supported beliefs or models, is among the hardest items to sell. One of the main reasons for this is that no ready and specialised and world-wide market exists for ideas and innovators. Patent offices, venture capital firms, novelty shops, catalogues of novelties offered, broadcasted inventor shows and inventors' exhibitions can only satisfy a fraction of this market requirement. An ideal market would bring all existing supplies of ideas - and of special talents - together with all existing demand for them and with all future demand for them. The Global Ideas Bank of the London Institute for Social Inventions, established on the Internet, is a good step in this direction. - As it is, money may often buy some kind of information but not all relevant information. All the relevant information is not ready cash and cannot always "buy" or become exchanged for ready cash. Money and information are not identical, even while much information can already be turned into cash and while cash can buy much information. - While exclusive information has some special value, knowledge, wide-spread, is not depreciated or less useful by becoming even more widely spread and used. (Only the rarity value of knowledgeable people can become reduced.) While knowledge is providing some kind of standard, it is often expanded and discredits former theories, convictions and assumptions. It is thus hardly useful as a standard of value. It is too changeable for that. At a time when information has been said to be exploding, it hardly makes sense to equate it with money, far less sound money. This is true in spite of the fact that money, too, expresses some relevant information and does that in some useful and round figures and some useful and widely accepted standards. The main information it expresses is that of prices, fees, charges, costs, profits and potential earnings and opportunities. - Like all vast generalizations, this is wrong in too many particular cases. It would be more correct to say that money represents an agreement on payment and debt settlement or an agreement on a particular way of mutually clearing one's debts in a very convenient way. But it is far from true to say that all information is like ready cash and coinable by its holder into notes or coins for local circulation. This in spite of the fact that every day knowledge and skills and capabilities and abilities are sold for cash - or clearing certificates. That still does not make them identical. - However, it is true that knowledge or information, combined with skills, abilities and resources are behind all goods, services, labours and capital values offered for sale, which, in their turn, can be used to issue currencies or capital securities upon. Even assuming that almost all consumer goods and capital goods were suddenly destroyed and only enough remained to allow people to survive at a minimum level, knowledge would permit people to restore to rather fast restore their former wealth, unless natural catastrophes would prevent them from doing so. The notion that information equals money or is money is no more sound than the notion that a labour standard of value would be ideal. Millions of involuntary unemployed prove that their information, skills and labour potential is far from having a ready cash value for them, under conditions of monetary despotism. Under monetary freedom, their readiness to accept their own IOUs in payment, whenever anyone buys their knowledge, skills or labour, could, indeed, to the extent that they would get such IOUs accepted, provide them with some exchange media and, finally, with paid jobs, in which these IOU's would be included in their pay packets. They would be paid with these IOU's, having anticipated their payment already when they issued their IOU's in their spending for consumer goods and services. In short, issue freedom and clearing freedom and knowledge of the sound technique for both and the practice of this knowledge and the ability to practise it, in spite of legal suppression attempts and condemnation by experts of such self-help measures, are required to turn information or ability and capacity and willingness to work or serve (labour or professional skills and services) into some form of ready cash. - But just try to coin your knowledge and information and skills now, into your own paper money and see whether people will readily accept it. Only if they know that you have some money or payment coming to you - will some accept your personal scrip or IOU and see to it that they are presented to you, in payment, as soon as possible. - J. Z., 27.4.89, 16.5.97, 4.7.11, 4.8.11. - See: IDEAS ARCHIVE & ITG: IDEAS, TALENT & GENIUS CENTRE, INDIVIDUAL ISSUERS, CLEARING FOR INDIVIDUALS, POTENTIAL ISSUERS, DIS.
INFORMATION BASED ECONOMY? As we move from an economy based on money and ownership to one based on information, the way we interpret information becomes a key issue. - Jeremy Horey, THE AUSTRALIAN. (Some text and the date was lost here.) - We can't survive merely by lecturing each other and supplying each other with literature. Try to eat the screened or printed out words from your computer - or use them as a shelter again rain, wind and snow. Is an economy based on "money" or upon production, in division of labour, tools, machines (capital) and on free exchange of products and services, in whatever form that is done, with or without money tokens? While knowledge, skills and ideas, tools and machines, as well as better communications, can increase production and facilitate exchange, we cannot live on them directly. An economy needs information, e.g. that of the free pricing system, but we cannot live by reading classified advertisements or the share prices published by the stock exchange. And how long could we survive without private property and self-ownership? How many Internet users managed so far to make their living from it? And even then they can ultimately do so only via distributing goods or services through it. (Those committing fraud through it do still live at the expense of the production of goods by others.) Some intellectuals fancy that they provide the only really required services. At least these would be over-paid, I believe, even if they received only a minimum wage. Let them live from and within their intellectual structures, with no one forced to listen to them or to read them. Their economic knowledge and interest is often all too negative and then they make such absurd statements. - The assertion that we live in an information age and that our whole economy is based upon it, is very popular. But you cannot eat information or readily exchange it for edibles in the local supermarket. Just try to do so. If you are a sufficiently skilled or strong bio-robot they might use you as a packer or stacker. If you are better educated, then you might be employed as a cashier or even as a supervisor. But, try to sell other information there! Or anywhere! An Ideas Archive and Talent Centre or Genius Employment Agency does not yet exist. The wisest men do not rule and are not used as advisors of those that do. Information to prevent war, poverty, unemployment, inflation, deflation, stagflation, despotism, or to end them, does exist - but just try to publicise it or sell it to someone. I offer lots of freedom, peace and justice information on 1779 microfiche - but there is hardly any demand for it. - Naturally, one has to distinguish between information that is popular or fashionable or amusing or part of a game or bet, and misinformation that amounts to prejudices, errors, false dogmas etc., but that may still be very popular. So far, the new information sources have not promoted all the old and new truths sufficiently nor refuted all the old and new errors sufficiently. Instead, they have added more errors and prejudices and left them unquestioned, too and even very popular or predominant, like this one, regardless of its truthfulness, merit or lack of it. - See: SYMBOLIC MONEY, ELECTRONIC MONEY. - What is transferred with these is not just information but the information that consists in claims or rights to ownership. And it is these claims that constitute a form of money. - J.Z., 29.4.97, 4.7.11.
INFORMATION REVOLUTION & MONETARY & FINANCIAL FREEDOM: Under "monetary freedom" and "free banking" Google offers numerous short hints - but no individual has the time and energy to peruse all of them for worthwhile writings, ideas, arguments, programs and platforms. That would require much division of labour among many sufficiently interested people. - J.Z., 4.7.11.
INFORMEDTRADES, Austrian Economics - InformedTrades - www.informedtrades.com/f201/ - Doug French: Interest Rates and Unemployment Gold Walter Block: Gold as Free Market Money · Timothy Terrell: Currency Failures from Argentina to Zimbabwe ...
INTEGRITY: Monetary despotism can claim its form of "integrity" only when applied among volunteers only. - J.Z., 11.5.97. - To every fool their own foolish system! That's penalty enough for them and would keep them out of our hair! - J.Z., 4.7.11. - MONETARY TOLERANCE, MONETARY FREEDOM, PANARCHISM
INTENTIONAL COMMUNITIES & MONETARY FREEDOM EXPERIMENTS: I would love to see an objective survey of all of them. - J.Z.
INTEREST & MONETARY FREEDOM: Monetary Freedom would abolish hight capital interest at most in all turnover credits - apart from a small service and insurance charge. Even this might be absorbed by the issuers, if they are a cooperative shop associations, which are more interested in assuring and increasing their sales than in recovering all the costs of their issue department. Thus it might include these small costs in its prices as it does its advertising costs. - J.Z., 20.3.97. - Actually, through the issue of their own shop currencies they would save much in advertising costs, since their own shop currency notes would, inevitably, stream back to them to pay for whatever goods and services they have to offer. - J.Z., 5.7.11.
INTEREST IN MONETARY FREEDOM OPTIONS IS STILL ONLY MINIMAL: Years ago I tested this interest with my small photocopied MONETARY FREEDOM NEWSLETTERS, which I offered for subscription together with an entitlement to a choice from my monetary freedom microfiche. This small newsletter, plus microfiche, did not even reach a dozen subscribers for its total of 4 issues over several years. Later I put out a fifth issue as an obituary for it and then digitized these 5 issues. So far probably not even one person in a million is seriously interested in monetary freedom options - and how can one reach these? (That is not even easy after the use of the Internet became popular. I still try to build up an email and website list for people with this interest. - J.Z., 5.7.11.) These few have also many other involvements that prevent them from advancing the cause of monetary freedom as much as they could or should, at least in my opinion. And with most of the few their interest is not even deep enough to let them overcome the small barrier posed by most such writings presently being only available on microfiche through my LMP - PEACE PLANS series. - (I similar lack of interest is still revealed by the fact that, to my knowledge, no one has as yet attempted to offer all such titles on a CD, DVD or external HD. - J.Z., 5.7.11.) - believe that Siegfried Schwenke had also only a few dozen subscribers to his Monetary Freedom Network Newsletter. Various projects for quarterlies came to nothing and the DURRELL JOURNAL rapidly deviated from the its initial monetary freedom path, especially after a change in management. - Financially, a newsletter on free banking etc, produced only on a floppy disc, CD, a website or distributed by e-mail attachments would be no problem at all. But who is interested? - J. Z., 9.4.97. - At least the number of articles on this subject that is offered on some websites is slowly increasing. Compare the websites listed at the beginning of the Free Banking A to Z compilation. The larger collections of digitized libertarian titles do, probably, contain also some of this kind, which I am not yet aware of. I mentioned some of them and some titles in my bibliography of digitized libertarian titles, on www.panarchy.org/zube/money.index.html. But it is still only an incomplete and flawed compilation, which I cannot complete and correct on my own. - J.Z., 5.7.11.
INTEREST MONOPOLY? Anyone could easily break that supposed monopoly, e.g. by lending me a million dollars for 100 years interest-free. Or I could break it, if I wanted to and you were to agree, by lending you $1000 for 1 year at 1000%. - Apart from the money issue monopoly and its associated legal tender power, the "interest monopoly" is, largely, only a figment of the imagination. - Recently, even the U.S. government has itself broken this supposed monopoly, by lending, to major corporations, millions to billions in US paper dollars, most of them, probably, freshly printed, at only nominal interest rates, close to zero, although these corporations may lend out this paper money to private borrowers at a much higher rate. - What is really meant with the term is, probably, that some people do have capital to lend and others don't. Those who have it are then considered as monopolist. But on a free market there is a severe competition between millions of these capitalists, including the managers of the small savings of average people. Moreover, each employee is also a capitalist, who lends his employer his work, as his working capital, until pay day - and he does so interest-free. - Both terms, interest and monopoly, are largely misunderstood and abused. - J.Z., 13.7.11, 19.7.11. - DIS.
INTEREST RATE POLICY AGAINST INFLATION? - Could any other policy be more absurd in situations wherever and when the government's note printing presses continue to churn out legal tender paper money? An artificially increased interest rate would then merely mean that all economic activities not favoured and subsidised by a government are restrained through lack of affordable credit, while the bureaucratically mismanaged public sectors, e.g. public works, national defence and welfare State actions continue to be expanded via the note printing presses. I remember periods as a public servant when I was still paid in cash and the notes I received were fresh from the printing presses and still in consecutive numbers. Such attempts to restrain inflation through irrelevant "measures" or to "balance" coercive over-supplies in one sphere through coercive under-supplies in other spheres, remind me of the hypothetical case of a Mafia gang pretending to fight crime. It certainly fights crimes committed by its competitors. And it does seem to fight crime when, unofficially, it favours even more severe "wars against drugs", which may harm or eliminate many of the small drug producers and distributors but boost the profits of the large drug entrepreneurs. The government "measures" against inflation leave its own criminal (but legalized) inflationary steps and its taxation robberies and redistribution of the loot policies untouched but do intervene with free production and free exchanges, instead, via credit, price- and wage controls etc. - Inflation presumes an exclusive and forced value standard, one that is elastic and can be manipulated like a rubber band. One that is not even properly defined but is just given an abstract name. Only when this "standard" is imposed upon a whole country can the exchange medium using it, the government's monopolistic paper money and currency, be imposed upon all transactions, i.e., can it inflate or deflate all transactions. Giving them a monopoly status means that they cannot be refused by anyone depending upon monetary exchanges. Giving them legal tender status means that their compulsory acceptance at an enforced and fictitious value, at par only with their paper standard, even though this standard is continuously manipulated and, usually inflated. Such a forced currency can be forced into the market beyond its requirements. It can force up all prices, wages & fees etc., which have to be marked-out in it. This is the only avoidance option left to those to be paid immediately or very soon. Those under medium and long-term contracts, when they were not foresighted enough or allowed to include value-preserving clauses, have no such escape option. They can be "paid off" ultimately in mere scrap paper. Even share prices and their dividend and interest rates are not upwardly mobile enough to make up for all the degrees of inflation that can occur during a rapid inflation, as was experienced e.g. in the last stages of the Great Inflation in Germany, which ended in 1923. - Without the issue monopoly and legal tender laws for its currency, competing exchange media would be issued, in accordance with the requirements of the market. These could not be over-issued as a whole and drive up all prices expressed in sound and competing and freely chosen value standards. Thus not too many exchange media could come to chase too few goods. On the other hand, any under-supply of exchange media could be then be countered by new and sound issues, competitively provided and fully covered by wanted the goods, services, debts and labour with which their issuers would cover and redeem them at any time. Only such currencies can remain stable enough to promote free exchanges and this under permanent boom conditions. Without them the law of supply and demand is not completely realized but monetarily distorted. Sound alternative exchange media and value standards are not impossible but just outlawed. We have so far put up with this, mostly even without protesting. I have never seen e.g. a demonstration against legal tender and the issue monopoly. Against their consequences, unrealised as such by most people, there were and are demonstrations aplenty. - J. Z., 19.12.89, 29.4.97, 7.7.11. - DIS., INFLATION, LEGAL TENDER, MONOPOLY MONEY, ENFORCED UNSOUND VALUE STANDARDS VS. FREE CHOICE OF VALUE STANDARDS
INTEREST RATE RETURNS OF BANKS AS REGULATORS FOR CURRENCY ISSUES? - The free market rating of notes against their own standards will regulate issues and acceptances, i.e. circulation, much more regularly, rapidly and reliably than interest rate fluctuations or manipulations among note-issuing banks would. - J.Z., 3.7.91 & 12.4.97. - See: DISCOUNT RATE, DISCOUNT POLICY, INTEREST, TANDY, Voluntary Socialism, p.122.
INTEREST RATES & CLEARING MONEY: See: APHORISMS ON THE MONEY PROBLEM.
INTEREST RATES ARE PRICES: Interest rates are just prices, indicating, under full freedom, like all other prices, the existing supply and demand conditions. Presently, they are determined e.g. for short-term turn-over credits by monopolies like the note issue monopoly of the central bank and the degrees of its abuses of its monetary powers and for medium and long term credits for conditions on the capital market. And these, in their turn, are influenced by taxation, regulations, protectionism etc. and also by monetary conditions like deflation, inflation and stagflation, i.e., symptoms generally associated with monetary despotism, which greatly influence the availability of capital and the ability of debtors to repay, as well as the interest rates. Monetary despotism, legislative interventions, protectionism, taxation, regulations, prohibitions and their degrees and risks do all too much influence profit- dividend and interest rates, wages, salaries, prices, rents, business activity, employment rates, sales and the readiness to accumulate and make available or to seek and accept capital investments. Obviously, no capital investments can be regularly profitable if the sale of the services, goods or information that they supply is not assured because of the absence of monetary freedom. Since the arbitrary nature, i.e., the non-market nature of interventionism cannot always be sufficiently calculated or estimated, it certainly increases the risk factor part of all interest rates. An unqualified opposition to all interest rates or their regulation just indicates economic blindness and is as absurd as are price-, wage- and rent controls. Once markets and contracts are all set free then we would only get competitive free market rates (prices) in all spheres and these, by their nature, will be optimal for all traders and exchangers, as are free prices in all other spheres. For competitive note issues or turn-over credits granted via clearing or non-cash payments, the interest rates could come close to the administrative costs only, like with the issuance of tickets for the attendance to various performances. In spheres with high returns for capital investments (especially when capital is no longer subjected to regulations, prohibitions and tributes) they might rise as justified shares in the additional productivity and profits achieved through an investment. (Correspondingly fluctuating interest rates would have fewer difficulties for both, debtors and creditors than fixed interest rates for long periods. - J.Z., 7.7.11.) Those who want to assure the supply of exchange media by the artificial acceleration of the circulation of the existing and monopolized exchange media, do only think in terms of monetary despotism, with its limited, exclusive and forced exchange media and value standard, of monopoly money that is usually centrally mismanaged by the central bank, according to its dogmas and wrong assumptions. Thus they remain blind to the free note issue options and possibilities, blind to sound alternative value standards, blind to free market rating and voluntary acceptance for both, blind to the sound tax foundation options for "fiat" money and to the right of free choice of value standards and the right of banking, including the issue of banknotes and clearing house certificates. The wrong definitions and notions about "capitalism", "profit" and "interest" go on and on. All economic systems are capitalistic, from the stone hammer to automatic factories. All of them do require capital, at least that of living and all-purpose as well as conscious and self-determining robots, existing in self-ownership and constituting, in somewhat developed countries, over a normal working-life, a very large productive capital. They are all the less capitalistic the more they are monopolized, regulated and legislated about, away from free contracts, free exchanges, property rights and free market and free trade conditions. The only rightful actions for dissenters are tolerant and free experiments among them, practising their beliefs among themselves, at their own expense and risk. Even when such experiments are successful, they should not be adopted and imposed by any territorial State against those who still disagree with them. - J.Z., 21.8.02, 7.7.11, 7.7.11. - DIS., SILVIO GESELL, MONETARY DESPOTISM, DIS.
INTEREST RATES The easy availability of credit and the ease in achieving sales of labour, other services and goods, are probably more important to achieve a boom condition and to maintain it than low interest rates are. Likewise, a stable enough currency or stable enough currencies are more important for prosperity than low interest rates. During inflations even a negative interest rate, with the nominal interest rate below the inflation rate, cannot boost an economy sufficiently. - J. Z., 6.11.96. - ARE LOW INTEREST RATES A PRIMARY CONDITION FOR AN ECONOMIC BOOM? - DIS.
INTEREST RATES, DISCOUNT RATES & INFLATION: Interest rates should be raised to fight inflation. - Popular opinion. - They would have to be somehow increased, anyhow, just to somewhat make up for the degree of depreciation of the capital and interest paid, due to inflation. Alas, one cannot increase interest as easily and to the same extent that one can multiply a forced currency through the printing press. When the value of a currency is e.g. halved from day to day, then even 500% p.a. interest cannot make up for it and I believe it never rose above that rate during the Great German Inflation of 1913-1923. During 1923 even a 500% interest rate was rightly considered as very moderate by borrowers. Moreover and rather obviously, no rate of interest increase does automatically stop the government's note printing presses and legal tender powers and the effects of its note issue monopoly for all depending upon monetary exchanges. - Moreover, it is wrong to arbitrarily increase or decrease the interest rate for all transactions. They should all be variable prices for variable services. - J.Z., 2.4.97. - "Increasing interest rates or tightening money supply can actually do more harm than good if all it achieves (as was the case with last year's measures) is a period of stagnation in some areas, followed by even greater inflation. Last year is was the home buyers who were hurt by the drying-up of funds." (J.Z.: Credits for daily turnovers of goods and services for consumers should never be artificially restricted, just because excessive credits were granted before - for speculations or take-over bids, that led to cash shortages or illiquidity - unless one wants to create mass unemployment in one's cover-up attempt for a careless loan policy. Sound loans should not be restricted to make up for unsound loans.) "... In any case, it can be very harmful to increase all interest rates, or staunch the flow of money in essential projects. While it might be highly desirable to curtail high-rise office developments in Sydney and Melbourne, it is most undesirable to restrain the flow of capital to mining operations and developments or to the establishment of industry in country areas. A squeeze here would really handicap growth ..." - Colin Chapman, THE BULLETIN, 13.2.71. - While high interest rates reduce the incentive to borrow, this does not matter much when much more inflation is expected. - A government might even be inclined to lend more of its forced and exclusive currency, straight from the printing press and earn more interest thereby - if and to the extent that it can find more borrowers. And the borrowers may be ready to pay the high interest because they expect to be able to repay the capital and the interest with depreciated money from much higher earnings expressed in the further depreciated governmental monopoly money. - Moreover, a higher interest rate might induce more potential savers to save, thus increasing e.g. bank term deposits and the sale of securities, and the higher savings will lend to higher lending by the banks so that at least the capital market will not be squeezed but rather expanded. - However, all interference with the market or any of its prices, including the interest rates, has also undesirable effects and usually effects contrary to associated hopes and expectations. I do not know of any government policy that is 100% effective and non-destructive at all or preventative for many productive or creative actions. - J. Z., n.d. & 2.4.97.
INTEREST UNDER MONETARY DESPOTISM & UNDER MONETARY FREEDOM: Under as different conditions, the interest rates are, naturally, also very different. Under monetary despotism they do largely express the results of its wrongful interventions. Under free market conditions they represent the conditions of free markets in every one of their spheres. Free market actions and their natural consequences are much easier to predict than despotic interventions. However, the consequences of despotic interventions with the economy are also relatively easy to predict, especially since we have such an enormous accumulation of experiences with such interventions. - I gladly leave it to someone else to point out all the differences. - J.Z., 7.7.11.
INTEREST, ENEMIES OF: Enemies of charging interest should secede- and do their own things among themselves and to themselves - like any other sectarians and true believers. - J.Z., n.d. & 29.4.97.
INTEREST, FIXED INTEREST RATES: It is wrong to imposed centrally fixed interest rates under changing and different business conditions upon a whole community. They should be adapted and haggled out between free debtors and free creditors in every case, in accordance with the business risks and expectations and should only be somewhat guided by average interest rates of the general free market but allow every required deviation from them for special cases. It is quite wrong and wrong and misguided to impose interest rates as a means to counteract some of the results of monetary despotism, like inflation, deflation and stagflation. It is wrong to artificially raise or lower interest rates, e.g., through inflation or through deflation. Interest rates should be freely determined on a quite free market, not through the various despotic policies of monetary and financial despotism or their effects. Indeed, inflation can raise interest rates somewhat and can also somewhat lower them, in certain situations or as a result of certain policies. (At a 3% inflation rate an interest rate of 6% becomes effectively an interest rate of 3% only.) (In recent stagflationary times we have even seen vast "stimulus" credits granted via the note printing presses at rates as low as 1% or even interest-free and non repayable ones. - Any foolish and wrongful action can be expected from almost any territorial government under some excuse of false pretence or the other. - J.Z., 7.7.11.) The same applies to deflation. A rational and just allocation of scarce resources and rewards to those who, supply them and use them, thus becomes close to impossible in all too many cases. It is even more wrong and absurd to impose fixed interest rates upon farmers and graziers than upon industrial debtors, since the agricultural returns, much more so than industrial returns from production, are variable with the weather. Instead, here and in most other cases, interest should become - a freely agreed upon - percentage share in the additional productivity achieved through an investment, with capital, perhaps, being considered as pre-done labour, that is also entitled to its just rewards for the values it added, once it is properly employed. Thus interest returns should be high when profits are high and low when profits are low and nil when there were zero profits. (To the extent that this can be practised without penalising efficient debtors while letting off inefficient ones. - J.Z., 8.9.02.) The best way to achieve this would be via shares, bonds or partnerships, with fluctuating dividends, dependent upon productivity - provided they are run really democratically, in the interests of all the shareholders, not only that of the managing directors, whose authoritarian position now allows them all kinds of perks and the abuse of their position, to reinvest too much of annual company earnings in their own kind of empire building, profitable mainly only to themselves, rather than to their shareholders, now often almost as helpless as the political voter is towards his political "representatives". - J.Z., 2.12.94, 25.4.97, 7.7.11. - Thus not only wide-spread shareholding should be considered and extensive shareholding by employees in their own companies but all kinds of other self-management organizational forms, e.g. partnerships and cooperatives, as well as autonomous work groups. - J.Z., 8.9.02.
INTEREST: Even now many retailers offer many expensive goods on long terms, without deposits and even interest-free for years. But I doubt that many people would be prepared to invest their savings on medium or long terms, interest free, and without any value-preserving clauses and without any kind of effective credit insurance. Those who wish to should, naturally, be free to do so. They might almost be overrun by honest as well as dishonest debtors. If savings are productively invested, why should the debtor alone benefit from the extra productivity due to these investments? Should not the creditors be entitled to their fair share? – J.Z., 5.10.10.
INTEREST: Even under degrees of monopolism and regulations for productive capital and their capital issues, interest arrangements for them do rather help than hinder making more capital available for production. Not only the capitalists profit but all their employees and all consumers. But the system would work with much less friction and often much cheaper without any legal monopolies and regulatory interventions and "safeguards", "guaranties", subsidies, prohibitions, compulsory licensing, officially imposed controls and supervisions, and interest-rate regulations, at its optimal capacity when fully free pricing and free contracts are introduced in this sphere as well. That would also require the abolition of all compulsory taxes, which simply confiscate earnings, profits or capital from their victims. Moreover, capital securities of governments (or, rather, seeing the inflation risk, their capital insecurities) should also be done away with, because they are part of the compulsory tribute system and amount merely to investments in tax slaves. - J.Z., 1.2.90, 29.4.97, 9.9.02, 7.7.11. - CAPITAL MARKET, SECURITIES MARKET, FINANCIAL FREEDOM, ISSUE OF SECURITIES, OWNERSHIP OF CAPITAL SECURITIES, TRANSFERABILITY, RIGHT TO ISSUE SECURITIES.
INTEREST: Even with regard to interest rates "the trees can't grow far into the sky". - J.Z., 24.9.89. - Enemies of interest have often calculated how much a cent, invested for 2,000 years, would have grown as money capital through an interest of, e.g. 5%. But does it correspond to human experience that heirs will forever leave their heritage untouched or that governments and private criminals will? Almost all investments have time limits and investors sooner or later want to enjoy somewhat the benefits from their investments, even if only by establishing a new benevolent foundation. - J. Z., 26.4.97. - DIS.
INTEREST: If the enemies of interest paying and taking took themselves serious, instead of merely thinking like authoritarians, then they would establish an interest-free savings and loan association for themselves, at their own expense and risk. Alas, just like communists, they want to share the property and earnings of others - without paying for them. Most of the opponents of "usury" and interest have also not made any distinction of the interest rates for turnover credits and that for capital investments. The former can be reduced to the administrative costs and the small risk cover costs involved. The latter have to cover the time differential and to reward investors for their pre-done labours, embodied in the capital they lent out. Pre-done labour is also entitled to just rewards. Fixed interest rates do not sufficiently adjust to the additional productivity of pre-done labour nor do they sufficiently account for the possibility of losses. Via partnership or other contract arrangements the fixed rates could and should be replaced by fluctuating rates, corresponding to the returns, unless the borrowers act dishonestly, stupidly or negligently. Then the losses should all go at their expense. - J. Z.,13.4.93, 11.7.11. - USURY.
INTEREST: Interest rates are simply prices for very diverse and important, needed and wanted market services. They should always be freely agreed upon and never monopolistically or coercively set, controlled or regulated. Then they will function best and in the common interest. Any monetary or financial monopoly or interventionism that drives up interest rates artificially, should be blamed and abolished, rather their symptom, the correspondingly increased interest rates. There is even a very good case for high interest rates for very productive investments, whose high returns would make a cheap an plentiful old age security system possible. In this way we could even become seriously rich at least in our old age as a result of quite bearable contributions made during our working lives, safely and productively invested, untaxed and safe from inflations. – J.Z., 24.4.09, 22.9.10.
INTEREST: Interest under the money monopoly should be distinguished from interest under full monetary and financial freedom. Only once money supply monopolists can no longer extort monopoly interest rates for their exclusive and forced currencies - and in the absence of all wrongful regulations of the financial affairs of others: financial despotism, can real market interest rates freely develop and fulfil their pricing functions, just like any other freely haggled-out prices. - J. Z., 30.3.95, 11.7.11.
INTEREST: since the discovery of America and the development of trade and the influx of gold accepted as the general money standard, money tribute has become, with the intensification of government power, the chief method of enslaving people, and on it all the economic relations of man are based. - Leo Tolstoy, What the Must we Do? Aylmer Maude translation, OUP, 1925, p. 125. The main value standard, for a long time, was silver, rather than gold. Here he does not even clearly state whether he attacks interest or compulsory taxation. The monetary freedom options and their liberating effects are also ignored, only metallic and exclusive currencies are considered. – J.Z., 19.10.10. - MONETARY FREEDOM VS. MONETARY DESPOTISM
- INTEREST: The interest (effective interest) is not too high. At 1% per month and 18 equal instalments, payable post-numerando, each instalment, including the amortization amount of 6,098%. [Spitzer’s tables.] For a DM 1,300 cash loan that would amount for each instalment to DM 78.27. Thus one can also say that, in practice, the interest upon the at any time remaining rest of the debt amounts to 1% per month. How to proceed in earlier repayments is not accurately indicated, in spite of the information in section 2. Generally, the bank’s debtor is worse off in all methods that deviate from the mathematical one. - - - The financial institutions rather employ unjust but seemingly easier to understand methods when they can save a few Marks for the acquisition of a Spitzer table or, in case that is no longer available, for a corresponding American work. - - - Moreover, the loan institutes know that the figures of Spitzer are calculated according to mathematical formulas. Therefore they say: "therefore nonsense and useless for the 'practice'.”. - What is called interest in Spitzer should, indeed, be rather called: Contribution for risk and recovery of administration costs. Upon hearing the term “interest” everybody is provoked and thinks of “usury”, meanness, exploitation! On the terms “risk” and “administration costs” the average man spends not thought. - - - With the clause on page 4, according to which the Savings Bank can, at any time, give notice for the credit, without having to state any reasons for this action, it would be unsuccessful before Berlin courts. – Ulrich von Beckerath, 8.6.59, in a note to a 4 page leaflet: Conditions for Small Credits (Bedingungen für Kleinkredite), Sparkasse der Stadt Berlin West. – Altogether, he left, probably, tens of thousands of such notes, of which I possess quite a few and of these I have already microfiched many. Altogether, properly ordered, they would have constituted an interesting handbook. – J.Z., 27.8.10. The German original follows: [Der Zins (“Effektivzins”) ist nicht zu hoch. Bei 1% monatlich und 18 post-numerando zahlbaren, gleichen Raten, betrüge jede Rate einschl. Tilgungsbeitrag 6,098%. (Spitzer) Bei 1300 DM Bardarlehen ergäbe das für jede Rate DM 79.27. Man kann also sagen, dass praktisch der Zins auf die jeweils unbezahlte Restschuld 1% monatlich beträgt." - - “Wie bei vorzeitiger Rückzahlung verfahren wird ist trotz der Angabe in Absatz 2 nicht genau zu ersehen. Im allgemeinen steht sich der Schuldner bei allen Methoden, die von der mathematischen abweichen, schlechter. - - Die Geldinstitute wenden lieber ungerechte, aber scheinbar verständlichere Methoden an, wenn sie die paar Mark für die Anschaffung eines Spitzer oder (falls vergriffen) für ein entsprechendes, amerikanisches Werk, sparen können. - - - - Ausserdem wissen die Geldinstitute, dass die Zahlen by Spitzer nach mathematischen Formeln berechnet sind. Deshalb sprechen sie: Also Quatsch und für die “Praxis” nicht brauchbar. - - Was bei Spitzer Zins genannt ist, sollte man allerdings lieber nennen: Vergütung für Risiko und Verwaltungskosten. Bei dem Wort “Zins”geht alles gleich hoch und denkt sich “Wucher”, Gemeinheit, Ausbeutung! Bei den Worten “Risiko” und “Verwaltungskosten” denkt sich der Durchschnittsmensch überhaupt nichts. - - Mit der Klausel auf Seite 4, wonach die Sparkasse den Kredit zu jeder Zeit ohne Angabe von Gründen kündigen kann, würde die Sparkasse bei Berliner Gerichten nicht durchkommen. - Bth. 8.6.59.” – I will not reproduce the leaflet here, which was for loans in the range from DM 300 to 2,000. – J.Z. - CALCULATIONS BY BANKS, BY TABLE’S LIKE SPITZER & VIA ELECTRONIC CALCULATORS OR COMPUTERS
INTEREST-FREE CLEARING: See: APHORISMS ON THE MONEY PROBLEM.
INTEREST-FREE MONEY: Whoever thinks that he is able to provide "interest-free" should be free to try to establish such a service, at the own risk and expense and that of voluntary followers. But it should certainly not be a compulsory service for those, who disagree. The same applies to all proposals for "debt-free" money. I hold that the provision of exchange media and of clearing certificates, as well as of short-, medium- and long-term capital is a service worth its price and one that earns its price, as a rule or in the average. Also, that every exchange involves mutual debts and insofar no monetary exchange can be "debt-free". However, if with "debt-free" is meant that capital values or capital asset certificates should not be turned into money in form of currency, then I do agree. For such money does not assure its immediate or rapid-enough redemption in wanted or needed consumer goods or services. Interest dividend coupons have, sometimes, been used as money towards those, who were under obligation to redeem them, soon. Likewise, tax anticipation certificates had tax foundation for due or soon due taxes. Thus their sound reflux and thereby their value preservation against a sound value standard was assured. Capital assets not immediately or soon enough due do not have a sufficient reflux to preserve the value of any monies issued upon them. Only barter transactions can be interest free. But to match-up people for such transactions can be rather laborious and thus costly, at leat in time and energy, unless the process is computerized. Thus there are, inevitably, transaction costs involved, or fees for such services involved. - J.Z., 25.4.11. - DEBT FREE MONEY? BARTER, DIS.
INTERLIBERTARIANS: Luca Fusari changed the group description to "Interlibertarians is an international political organization made up by world libertarian cultural associations and political parties-movements for a freedom perspective. Interlibertarians promotes the following fundamental goals: 1. defence of private property from attacks by ruling statalism run by both right- and left-wing constructivists; - 2. defence of freedom of entrepreneurship against over-regulations which imprison human talents; - 3. defence of free trade and free markets against protectionism, custom tarriffs and duties; 4. defence of tax competition in favour of a future society, once and for all free from taxes, founded on the grounds of subsidiarity, the voluntary sector, free associationism, responsibility and civic concord; - 5. defence of the value of saving with sound money against the monopolizers of money; - 6. defence of freedom of education as to make our children free from institutional serfdom inculcated by state school; - 7. defence of freedom of insurance as to repeal the state provision of health care, unemployment, accidents insurance and pensions; - - Interlibertarians organize in Lugano (Switzerland) an annual international conference for a serious debate about real problems that affecting the world today in a libertarian freedom perspective. Explain the initiatives undertaken in their respective own countries with the promotion of libertarian philosophy and free market proposals for the achievement of the above mentioned fundamental goals. Meet and exchange experiences with others libertarians, create a platform for exchange and communication between libertarians and free market organizations in the world. Discuss and agree the implementation of practical common actions, on worldwide level for the creation of a network for the communication of libertarians ideas and non-violent actions. E-mail: interlibertarians@ticino.com - Official website: http://www.interlibertarians.org/ - Official main page on facebook: http://www.facebook.com/interlibertarians - Interlibertarians on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/Interlibertarians - Interlibertarians on Twitter: http://twitter.com/IntLibertarians - Interlibertarians on Friendfeed: http://friendfeed.com/intlibertarians". - 22 June at 03:08 - Red stress inserted by me. - J.Z., 29.6.11.
INTERNAL MIGRATION & MONETARY FREEDOM: E.g. the Fort Collins project. - Compare the Free Country movement and the various Atlantic or Ocean Freedom projects. Mostly they do include at least financial freedom ideas, if not also monetary freedom proposals. - J.Z., 11.7.11.
INTERNATIONAL MONETARY FUND: What is the IMF or International Monetary Fund - Wealth Cycles Blog - wealthcycles.com/.../what-is-the-imf-or-international-monetary-fund - Cached - 16 May 2011 – Hopefully, the world takes this opportunity to learn a little bit about the IMF and its corruption of free market money and free market ...
INTERNATIONAL MONETARY FUND: What the Heck is the International Monetary Fund? |- propertytoolbox.com.au/property-update/?p=1007 - Cached - 17 May 2011 – Hopefully, the world takes this opportunity to learn a little bit about the IMF, and its corruption of free market money and free market ...
INTERNATIONAL TRADE: On the unfounded and even irrational fear that we might and could, persistently, import more than we export: Somehow most people seem to think that national accounts, budgets, credits and debts would be something entirely different, in principle, from those of individuals or family households. Most individuals and families can manage to pay their way, through their own productive efforts, without government assistance and protectionist policies, as long as they are not hindered or exploited by governments. Looking at the imports and exports of individuals: Would it not be nice if other people were ready to supply you with what you want, for your whole life, and you would not have to give them as much in return, through your exports, as they gave you, through your imports? Would you have any reason to complain? - What we export are our surplus items. We sell them at surplus and wholesale prices, i.e., rather cheaply, overseas, because we cannot sell them internally. Thus, what we receive for them, as statistically measured at the border posts, amounts, nominally, to less than normal internal retail prices for the same goods. At the same time, what we import, are largely items we are short of. Therefore, for these, we are willing to pay relatively high prices. (For the others, they are their surplus items. There is at least a tendency in this direction. It is, naturally, mitigated by bargains, we can achieve through large overseas purchases. And most imports are large and at bargain - wholesale prices.) But let us forget about these for a moment and think rather of the expensive luxury items: perfumes, liqueurs, expensive watches, fashions, wines, flashy cars etc. Thus, likewise, measured through the prices at the borders, what we import seems rather expensive. This basic flaw in the calculation of the trade balance is then interpreted as a trade deficit: We seem to pay altogether more for imports than we make from our exports. - If that really were the case, the exchange rate would fall, against our currency, and under the new exchange rate, the parity between total exports and imports would be achieved again, apart from the temporary movements of capital, profits and interest and dividends and apart from permanent investments which foreigners make with us and the capital assets which our citizens are prepared to sell them for fair market prices, as is their basic right. - In the long run imports and exports are always in balance. They pay for each other. The same applies to the payment balance, nicely balanced out through freely floating exchange rates. - This is to be expected. Neither goods nor service nor foreign exchange traders are in business to lose nor do they lose in the average. On the contrary: On both sides they win from the exchange, benefit their customers and make a profit. On balance, in all free trades, we have always a win-win situation, even if the official statistics do not show it. - Obviously, they do neither show the value of smuggled items nor that of the smuggled currencies. - Moreover, to evade custom duties, the values of imported goods are often understated or overstated when subsidies are paid, e.g. for exports. I never forget one experience with custom officers in Berlin. I had looked up the law on custom duties on foreign coins. Legally, a duty was payable on them. I had a few small coins and declared them to be subject to duty. The custom officer was not aware of that duty and did not charge me anything but waved me on. There is also a lot of bribery involved, whenever it comes to valuable items. Once, with my car under repair in Sydney, I got a lift back to Berrima in a beautiful new Porsche. The owner was a customs officer in NSW and he frankly confessed to me, in conversation, after he had discovered that I was a radical free trader, that he had financed this expensive car entirely with bribes received for letting items go through customs. Now, how correctly were his contributions towards Free Trade registered in the international trade statistics? He made once exception, he asserted: He never took bribes to let drugs through customs. I have long forgotten his name and never saw him again. Well, some of his colleagues had, probably a different kind of conscience regarding large bribes for letting drugs pass through. - I think that we can safely ignore the official statistics on international trading. Instead, if we wanted to, we should rather compare not the prices for goods at the border but the prices for the imported and exported goods when sold to their consumers. Then, when added up, and compared through the exchange rate, they would tend to balance, as one could easily predict simply from the basic observation of what trade means to two trading partners. To speak in the most general terms of all trading: All debts are as high as all credits. They cancel each other. National borders do not make a difference. Nor do different currencies. But government intervention with free trade does. It prevents much trading, makes goods and services more expensive and wrongly transfers earnings from some to others, wasting much in the process and sending wrong price signals to all concerned. - Now imagine a monetary freedom system where either a single national clearing house (or a federation of free clearinghouses, cooperating with each other) were to exist and negotiate international trade in international clearing certificates backed up by all the goods and services (including information and labour) that we have ready for exports. These would be clearing house certificates issued by our exporters, based on their export goods and sold by them to our importers. The prices of these export goods and the values of these clearing certificates would e.g., be expressed in gold ounces. They would thus tend to be accepted and used by our importers and accepted by the foreign exporters like their amounts in gold weight values, as if these paper certificates were metallic gold ounces of the total value involved in any such deal. Like a shop currency with shop foundation, the international clearing certificates would tend to become issued by our exporters, with ready for sale export goods, bought from out exporters by our importers and then used by our importers to pay foreign exporters for our imports. Assume further, that our importers would use only these certificates in payments for all our imports. Moreover that, to assure a rapid reflux of the clearing certificates thus spent for our imports, the clearing certificates would be given only a limited circulation period, say 3 to 12 months. All would be expressly and quite freely transferable and free of all protective duties. (Let us assume that small financial duties would still be levied and leave these out of consideration here.) Then and quite naturally and inevitably, exports and imports, so mediated or paid for, would automatically balance. Unless, of course, foreign exporters would be so foolish as to throw away or burn the clearing certificates received in payment from us or the foreign government would buy them from these exporters, at the expense of the taxpayers, to destroy them or keep them unused until they have expired and thus become valueless. In these cases we would have received imports without having to pay for them with our exports. To the extent that non-perishable goods were involved, and that those certificates, that were not returned, would have expired, we could then issue clearing certificates upon them again, and use them to pay for imports. - In many ways the present government paper monies, likewise having no legal tender value or monopoly status overseas, would act like the above hinted at clearing certificates used for international trading. - Apart from foreign central banks being foolish enough to hoard our paper money as foreign exchange, as a currency "reserve" (perhaps because it is aware that it is less inflated than the own paper currency is, also apart from foreign citizens doing the same because they have reasons not to trust the paper currency of their governments) our own paper money in foreign countries, having been used to pay for imports, would act like the above described private clearing certificates, too. It would have to return to us, directly or indirectly, to pay for our exports. But there are differences: Our paper money has not a limited period of circulation and it is not merely a clearing certificate acceptable in payment for our exports only, nor is it one that uses a stable value standard and one that is market-rated and accepted at par with its value standard, as if it were legal tender, only by our exporters, who issued it. Our State paper money is also not issued by providers of goods and services. Another difference might occur in practice: Since such clearing certificates are so obviously useful to balance exports with imports, they might be exempted from all foreign exchange restrictions. - The job of exporting would then be facilitated by selling the clearing certificates to importers, using them as means of payment, all over the world and then letting them find, with the help of an international clearing house or network, those foreign importers who could use them to pay for our exports to them. These certificates (or corresponding accounts) would be our, fast and efficient "trade representatives". Further trade negotiations and treaties would not be required. Their holders would induce their governments to let them use these clearing certificates quite freely - as means of payment against us. - Thus, instead of appearing on the world market first as sellers, seeking payment in a more or less scarce currency, we would appear on it first as buyers, with our own clearing means of exchange, optional and free market rated against a sound and agreed-upon value standard, and backed by our goods and services ready for export. Buyers are more welcome than sellers are overseas, under present conditions. Moreover, foreign central banks are less likely to hoard these short term and merely privately issued clearing certificates. - In this whole international exchange process, the law of comparative advantage, a lower tax burden upon our production and minimal to no regulations, freedom of issue and clearing, freedom from government interventions, subsidies and guarantees, free choice of value standards, the absence of coercive unionism and of other legally established monopolies, in the absence of all compulsory licensing and of quotas upon foreign trade and under at most merely some financial import duties (minimal to maximise turnovers and total receipts from them, rather than high, prohibitive and hardly covering the costs of raising them) would all serve to give us an advantage in freely trading with the world, even if that trade were only unilaterally free, from our side. - Seemingly, we would still be at a disadvantage: The world has so much to offer to us and we have to offer so relatively little to the world. Would that lead to overspending upon imports and difficulties in paying for our imports through our exports? Precisely in order to overcome these and other imagined difficulties, Prof. Edgard Milhaud, in several books, advanced the idea of international clearing certificates. - To seek out whatever trades are to mutual advantage, cannot be decided by outside observers, writers and thinkers, politicians and bureaucrats, not even by trained economists as advisors. It is the job of professionals, who have made it their life-long study. Let them do the job: namely, the exporters and importers. Between them they will arrange all the mutually beneficial trades that are possible, benefiting themselves and us. We should simply not interfere with them in anyway. Their Free Trade exchanges, combined with Monetary Freedom, can and will do the job for us, much better than any coercive and monopolistic authorities could. - There will be, as usual, some more or less sudden shifts in employment and in the use of resources. - Even if foreign exporters received subsidies and "dumped" their goods upon us, we should not protest against this and try to prevent it. Instead, we should rather welcome such discounts as gifts to us from foreign taxpayers. Under full monetary and financial freedom the adaptation to these changes will be rapid and complete. (I have intentionally avoided here dealing with trades in drugs, weapons and other hazardous goods but believe that territorial governments cause most of the problems associated with them in the first place.) - J. Z., 5/97, 14.9.02, 11.7.11.4.8.11. - FREE TRADE & PROTECTIONISM, EXPORTS & IMPORTS, BALANCE OF TRADE, BALANCE OF PAYMENT, INTERNATIONAL TRADE & PAYMENT DEFICITS, FOREIGN EXCHANGE CONTROL, FREELY FLOATING INTERNATIONAL EXCHANGE RATES, INTERNATIONAL CLEARING, Prof. Edgard Milhaud, DIS.
INTERNET DISCUSSIONS ON MONETARY FREEDOM: A surprisingly large number of search results are offered by Google when searching for e.g. "monetary freedom", "free banking" and "financial freedom". These hints are so numerous that an individual could not cope with all of them. Only a collaborative and large network of like-minded researchers could systematically tackle as much information and extract the pearls from the mud and then offer them, as cheaply as can be done with electronic files, to anyone, who is interested in them. - This is one of the numerous libertarian projects still to be listed in a common libertarian projects list, to attract enough collaborators. - J.Z., 11.7.11.
INVENTIVENESS: One size fits all is no more apt here than it is in other spheres. We need no more a single standardized and uniform means of exchange and value standard for all than we need a single and standardized kind of tooth brush, tennis racket, head cover or pair of shoes. On the contrary, the supply of needed and wanted exchange media and value standards, their acceptance as well as the refusal of unnecessary, doubtful, flawed or unwanted exchange media and value standards, should be as free as possible. Money is much too important to be left to the ignorance, prejudices and vested interests of territorial politicians, bureaucrats and their "expert" advisors. History has supplied more than enough proofs for that. Neither money, nor peace nor the provision of capital, of roads, research, education, health services, postal services, defence forces, liberation or revolution or the defeat of terrorism can be confidently left to the all too limited knowledge, ideas and abilities of territorial governments. Even in their best forms they do have severe limitations, just like absolute monarchs have. Indeed, there is nothing that territorial governments have proven to be able and efficient to supply as cheaply and well as possible under free competition, by free enterprise, private initiative, freedom of contract and voluntary association, i.e. in fully freed competition or genuine laissez fare, which tend to mobilize the creative energies of almost everyone, while diminishing the destructive and obstructive potential and incentives for most people. - J.Z., 27.8.02, 11.7.11. - Compare e.g. www.reinventingmoney.com - REFORMS, INITIATIVE, CREATIVENESS, HONESTY, FREEDOM OF CONTRACT & SELF-OBLIGATION SHOULD NOT BE OUTLAWED, RESTRICTED OR REGULATED IN THE SPHERES OF ALTERNATIVE MONEY ISSUES, REFLUX, ACCEPTANCE, MARKET RATING, REFUSALS, USAGE & VALUE STANDARDS, FINANCE, CLEARING, INSURANCE & GUARANTEES, EITHER.
INVESTMENT SPENDING: At the moment investment spending, not consumer spending, is the major factor in the present inflationary crisis on the expenditure side. - Retail sales are only growing at an annual rate of 8 % at the moment, compared with about 20% for investment ... - THE AUSTRALIAN, 11.2.71. - Neither can grow, out of nothing, under monetary despotism, without the central bank making more of its legal tender available. - Inflationary effects are always uneven upon different parts of the economy. Those spheres whose prices or wages grow fastest do not cause an inflation but merely show its effects earlier. The other sectors follow, sooner or later, sometimes a year or even two later. The fever symptoms do not cause the fever. The price rises due to the inflation of the money supply do not cause the inflation. They do not even make inflation worse but are merely part adaptations to it. - J. Z., 2.4.97. - Price rises, expressed in sound value standards and cause by shortages in the goods or service supplies do have nothing to do with monetary inflations. The terms "dearness" or shortages express their kind much more discriminatingly. - J.Z., 11.7.11. - CONSUMER SPENDING & INFLATION, DIS.
IOU'S OR ASSIGNMENTS UPON ONESELF: Free banking means freedom to issue, refuse, accept, discount exchange and trade privately or cooperatively issued assignments, IOUs, certificates, notes, tokens, etc., in as convenient forms as possible, i.e. in standardised monetary denominations, but otherwise distinct from all other monies, which makes them suitable for at least a local circulation. Each may thus freely offer, in transferable symbols, in private coins, notes or electronic messages, all his ready for sale goods, services and labour and he may also make a business out of facilitating private and cooperative issues for others and to thus help achieve and to manage them. To so assign one's ready for sale properties and services, including labour, and to do so in suitable associations with others, is a basic right and liberty, part of the total freedom to own property, make contracts, trade and exchange freely. It is also closely associated with the right and duty to as far as possible support oneself by one's own efforts and property. It is obvious that such a freedom is inherently rightful and harmless and that at least potentially it can be very beneficial if fully realized. It is also quite obvious that this monetary freedom is quite the opposite of the "fiat-money" "creation" of monetary despotism, although the under-informed do keep mixing up the two. Merely to replace the State's fiat paper money or forced and exclusive currency by a State's or privately issued rare metal currency, partly and temporarily replaced by redeemable rare metal certificates, does not go far enough in the direction of full monetary freedom. While it would prevent inflation, it would continue to institutionalize the shortage of exchange media and thus perpetuate deflation. Only whatever could pass through this artificial bottleneck could then be exchanged of the ever increasing total of all goods and services and this, in all too many instances, only at emergency sales prices. It is wrong to assume that all prices, wages etc. would always immediately or fast enough and completely adjust to the new relationships between such money and all goods, services, labour and capital assets. - Nevertheless, this errors is still dogmatically believed in by the "gold bugs", who wrongly assume that any money issues beyond their own would be inherently and inevitably inflationary. It is anther instance of the flaw in the single hypothesis approach as compared with the multiple hypothesis approach, which does take other factors into consideration. - J.Z., 11.1.96, 20.3.97, 11.7.11. - FORCED & EXCLUSIVE CURRENCIES, FIAT MONEY, GOLD BUGS, REDEMPTIONISM
IOUs: All producers and service providers could freely exchange all their products and services via IOUs freely issued by them and then cleared against each other. - J.Z., 16.5.96. - To facilitate the issues and that clearing process and make that clearing appear much more obviously in a monetary way, the IOUs should become standardised in form and appear in numbered and certified money denominations, using any value standard attractive to the issuers and the users of these clearing certificates. - MONEY SUPPLY & CLEARING, CLEARING HOUSE CERTIFICATES, CLEARING, DIS. - J. Z., 19.3.97.
IOU's: First draft of a text: I ……. owe to the holder the value of xyz grams of fine gold, but only in form of the goods, services and labour that I do have to offer, also priced in grams of gold. /// Here are some hints as to their kind: ………………/// I will supply them immediately or as soon as possible upon presentation of this IOU or clearing certificate. Currently a total value of abc grams of gold has been issued by me in this form. /// My normal charges for basic labour are … grams of gold per 8 hours, and … grams of gold for special services in the form of …… Some typical prices for the goods or produce I offer are: …. /// - The total number of such certificates already issued by me and returned to me in payment comes to … certificates and …. grams gold. The number of those already issued and still outstanding is …. and their value is: …. - - Serial number: …. Date: ……. Full name: ……..Postal Address: ………………. Business Address: ……………. Other contact options: Tel.: ……, Fax: ….. Further details on Website: …., email: …..Shop address or market stall (time and place): …………/// Hours for the redemption in goods offered at home address: ……….. /// - Currently, I am committed to labour or provide my special services for the next (1-3) weeks. - - Ponder: Who could rightfully prohibit me from thus exchanging what I have to offer? It is merely a kind of barter or clearing! Could these free exchanges be rightfully taxed by anyone by any government? Should I be free to combine my offers of this kind with several other such offers? Could our combined offers become so attractive that it could be turned into a local currency? Could all such offers more effectively cleared through a common clearing centre? E.g. a local shop association bank could discount all such IOUs of individuals with its own shop currency. - ……………. (Signature). - - Guarantors, if any: ………………. - J.Z., 24.4.11. - FREE BANKING, MONETARY FREEDOM, INDIVIDUAL ISSUERS, TEXT DRAFT, PRIVATE IOU's, IN MONEY DENOMINATIONS, FREEDOM TO ISSUE NOTES, IOUs & CLEARING CERTIFICATES, OBLIGING ONESELF TO REDEEM THEM WITH WHAT ONE HAS TO OFFER. SELF-OBLIGATIONS, READINESS TO ACCEPT.
ISRAEL'S INFLATION & ALTERNATIVE CURRENCIES: During Israel's inflations, the Shekel was often subject to official index standard adjustments but, in practice, to a large extent, the U.S. dollar was used as a value standard and the Shekels only accepted at their current market value against the US dollar. I got multiple hints on this but did not see a detailed report on this development. Perhaps it is offered, somewhere, online. I leave it to others to search and compile such information and offer more hints to it here. - Israel's "currency policy" is evidence that the anti-Semitic conspiracy theory of Jews as the "masters of money" is as nonsensical as their many other false assumptions regarding Jews. - Parallel currencies are flawed as long as one among them is a monopoly money with at least some legal tender power. - Then even numerous black market transactions cannot make up for the remaining flaws of such monetary despotism. - If Jews in Israel had really mastered money issue and reflux as well as value standards, i.e., had introduced full freedom in this sphere, the world would already be a much better place. Instead, most of them adopted the errors and prejudices of monetary despotism and still uphold them, regardless of the numerous economic, political and military difficulties this has caused them in the past and in the present. - Dr. Walter Zander was once influential on behalf of Israel, although unofficially only as a representative of the University of Jerusalem. But as such he was, according to Ulrich von Beckerath, almost an unofficial ambassador. However, monetary despotism was so prevailing in his Jewish and other contacts, that he saw never any opportunity to spread his monetary freedom views, now represented e.g. on www.reinventingmoney.com - Alas, in spite of his long friendship with Ulrich von Beckerath, the latter was not able to convey his panarchistic views to Dr. Zander. - (Instead, he concentrated "only" on spreading the ideas of religious, cultural and racial tolerance.) Maybe, if he had been so influenced by U. v. Beckerath, then Dr. Zander might have influenced the politics of Israel from its territorialism in the exterritorialist direction. (This job, however, might have been as difficult as converting territorialist Nazis to exterritorialist and thus tolerant Nazis.) Judging from several texts that I have read, the Israeli armed forces managed to mobilize good ideas from all its ranks and this very fast, even in emergency situations. Obviously, the Israeli territorial government has, otherwise, not mentioned to mobilize the best or all good ideas of its subjects, but, instead, showed the usual flaws of all territorial governments. - J.Z., 11.7.11.
ISSUE OF MONEY: If everyone were free to issue banknotes then everyone could cause an inflation, i.e., inflation would be inevitable. Thus money issue must be monopolised and centrally regulated by a sound monetary policy. - Dogma of the popular religion on money. - If you could issue your IOUs only at 10% discount and would have to accept them, immediately, from anyone, at 100%, would you then issue many more of them? Moreover, I would no more be likely to accept your IOUs at all than you would be likely to accept mine at all. Both our IOUs or notes or certificates would not have legal tender. If everyone could issue legal tender notes then and only then could everyone cause an inflation. Our cheques are not legal tender. Thus neither of us can cause an inflation with them. Apart from the regulations of the Securities Exchange Commission, everyone of us could issue shares, even in small denomination, 10 cents to $ 1 each. Their issue and even over-issue could only depreciate these shares, not the shares of others. Our depreciated shares, if we tried to use them as money, could be freely refused or discounted. They could not drive up the prices of any consumer goods when they are expressed in a sound value standard. The same applies to any competitively issued currencies. What made inflations possible, likely and frequent is precisely the issue monopoly and the legal tender privilege. They must be repealed or become effectively ignored. This requires a monetary revolution. Only towards the issuer must legal tender still be applied. Then over-issuers may dirty their own nest, to a limited extent, but will not be given a chance to dirty the nests of others. Self-help and self-responsibility are needed in monetary matters, too. - J. Z., 2.4.97, 11.7.11. - MONEY MONOPOLY, MONETARY PREROGATIVE, FREE BANKING & INFLATION, DIS.
ISSUE PRINCIPLE & FREEDOM: Under monetary freedom any owner of wanted goods and services can issue his kind of money based upon them. Such an issuer issues his competitive money to buy goods or services from someone else. That someone else could have issued his own money. He might insist in being paid rather with his own money. Both monies could be fully covered by goods and services. - If they really want to trade, they will come to an agreement. Which of the two monies will be found more acceptable or at least partly acceptable? That is a subjective and individual evaluation and decision. When many local people decide in favour of only one local currency or of "only, let's say, half a dozen different local alternative means of payment, then that is that for them. No one can rightly prescribe to them that they should have made another choice. At most another potential issuer, disagreeing with them, can try to establish a local circulation for his own issue, too, in addition to that of the others or, perhaps, replacing one of the others. The common principle for all issuers and acceptors is: Between us we will drive out the bad and not good enough currencies and replace them by the better ones. One could predict that e.g. the private currency of a single local baker or shoemaker or butcher would, on its own, have a hard stand against the shop currency of a local shop association or department store or supermarket. Thus they ought to join the "gang", becoming a member of the local shop association bank of issue, or get their own short term IOUs discounted by it, or be satisfied with a much reduced trade, or simply accept the currency provided by the others, to the extent that others buy from them with it, and use it for the own expenditures, too. Most will come to declare, by big signs in their shop windows and at their cashiers, which other currencies they will readily accept, for the time being, at par, because they do stand, presently, at par on the local markets. - Since acceptance is voluntary, except for the issuers and, by contract, for his debtors, no locality will accept more different exchange media than it finds sound and convenient enough to use. Nobody has to plan and direct the local circulation. Under full monetary freedom it is self-regulating. - J.Z., 5/97, 11.7.11.
ISSUE PRINCIPLE IN THE MONETARY SPHERE & IN THE CAPITAL MARKET: The right to issue and its principles can be applied not only in the monetary sphere but also in the capital market. There it can finance e.g. a libertarian take-over of a bureaucratic democracy, a libertarian revolution in a dictatorship, or one only regarding e.g. education, innovation and research, desert irrigation, even space exploration. Its monetary as well as its financial applications are essential for the financing of a rightful defensive war and of a rightful revolution. - J. Z., 77 & 97, 11.7.11.
ISSUE PRINCIPLE, DIFFERENCES BETWEEN THE MONETARY & THE FINANCIAL ISSUE PRINCIPLE: (Still to be clearly enough described here. My knowledge and experience are much to limited to fill out all the blanks here and in numerous other spheres. After all, a new science of full monetary and financial freedom is involved and it requires input from many. - Obviously, I can fill in the A to Z compilation only as far as I can. - J.Z., 11.7.11.)
ISSUE PRINCIPLE: Allow the producers and owners of goods and the providers of services to also produce and offer vouchers, warrants, purchasing- and clearing certificates (in convenient money denominations but distinct from other monies) - BASED UPON THEIR READINESS FOR SALE OFFERS. Such notes would only oblige THEM to accept them at any time from anyone at par with their nominal value, in payments. A huge daily demand or reflux for such notes can thus be achieved, quite freely and honestly, naturally and beneficially, for the issuers and acceptors. The balance between all the goods and services offered for sale and the purchasing power to sell and buy them, could thus be achieved quite easily, almost as part of the process of production and as a result of the readiness to sell. By rights no one but the producers and owners of goods and providers of services (including labour) have the RIGHT to issue money tokens to purchase them with. - J.Z., 20.9.91. In this way not only the problem of production could become freed from its major and quite wrongful restraints but also the process of distribution. - J.Z., 11.7.11. - DISTRIBUTION, TRADE, EXCHANGE, CRISES, SALES, ISSUE & REFLUX PRINCIPLE, READINESS TO ACCEPT FOUNDATION, COVER & REDEMPTION BY WANTED CONSUMER GOODS & SERVICES
ISSUE PRINCIPLE: Assets like consumer goods and services ( Also other debts very soon due!) can be "coined" or printed into at least locally somewhat acceptable means of payment: e.g. petrol money, ticket money, railway money, shop foundation money, canteen money, electricity money. Capital assets like buildings, machines, real estate can be used for issues, too, but only for issues of capital securities, not currencies. These capital securities and their capital assets are interchangeable, like currencies are with the goods and services they are based upon. When an attempt is made to turn capital assets into currency, then the current cover of such a currency in daily wanted consumer goods and services is missing. No one is obliged to so redeem it. Thus such "currency" is not current and will depreciate. Legal tender for it may seem to give it a value - but only an artificial one, as long as the legal tender lasts and at the expense of the providers of the goods and services and of their right to issue their own currencies instead. The least suitable "assets" to issue any currency upon are government securities or insecurities, i.e. investments in tax slaves, and quite at their expense. - All assets become more easily transferable through standardised certificates (or accounts) based upon their values. Issues upon consumer goods and services and issues upon capital assets do have that much in common. - Comparisons between turnover-credit or clearing certificates or banknotes and "asset currencies" have at least one value: They can help judge the dangers and risks of imparting any legal tender power and any exclusive status to a currency, which is intended to promote the sales of goods and services and to be safe from abuse and mismanagement. One can, as a thought example, apply the exclusive status and legal tender to one form of shares, bonds or mortgages or the other. Obviously, if one issuer of capital securities were given a monopoly for the issue of capital securities in a whole country and if, moreover, his securities were given legal tender power, then he could over-issue and cause an inflation with his shares, bonds or mortgages. Moreover, with them he could lay a claim to all the real capital assets in a country, as legal tender currency does now to all its consumer goods and services. Moreover, by under-issuing his securities, needed for financial transactions in this system of financial despotism, he could cause a deflation in capital securities. And if they were to be used as well as exclusive and forced exchange media, then, with his powers and in the absence of all natural limits and pricing and evaluation of his asset currency he could, by his measures, bring about inflation, deflation and stagflation. In the absence of legal tender and an exclusive currency status or issue monopoly, he could not do so. - What he also could not do, in spite of his great power and privilege is to supply all capital owners with just right number of sound securities to make all their capital assets optimally transferable. However, with his powers he could expropriate all of them. By analogy, by this application of monetary despotism to the issue of capital securities, one can learn about the effect of monetary despotism upon currencies, which are basically intended mainly to promote the daily sale of consumer goods and services and of labour. Such analogies are the greatest service that any "asset currency" theory can supply. They can teach us what not to do to and with our exchange media. - J.Z., 7.12.92, 29.4.97, 11.7.11.
ISSUE PRINCIPLE: No issue without clear, sound, honest, immediate and well enough expressed and publicised reflux arrangements to the issuer and legal tender power towards him. - J.Z., 13.11.93, 1.5.97.
ISSUE PRINCIPLE: Only readiness to sell and willingness to buy can form the sound basis for a corresponding quantity of alternative private or cooperative exchange media and this only for as long and to the extent that these conditions persist. But the offered and wanted goods must be exclusively or predominantly daily wanted consumer goods and services. Only these can act as the ultimate and most important and immediate redemption and convertibility fund. Beyond this no other is required to maintain the value of an alternative currency at par (with its sound value standard), at least locally, around the centre of issue. All such assets not only could but should be monetised, not by a central bank, which has no right to issue and impose a monopoly currency, but, instead, by their owners, but only up to the limits set by the their par acceptance of such currency. The actual total backing by consumer goods and services is likely to be much higher than the amount of "shop currency" that can be issued at any time at par. Stores stock goods not only for immediate sales but also for the sales in the near and intermediate future. Moreover, these items and services ready for sale are constantly replenished by current production. The fact that most of these goods and services offered can be rapidly replenished, would open at least the theoretical possibility of keeping at par a larger volume of store currency than could at once be covered by all the ready for sale goods and services, if all consumers were to spend all their shop currency immediately. So, where is the limit for such issues? The time factor involved, combined with free market rating for these media will determine it, rightfully, a central bank could not. It's knowledge, understanding and foresight are as limited as is that of an individual or a committee. Under freedom the issues and their value standards are determined by the self-interest of the issuers and sellers as well as that of the acceptors and buyers. - Failure to monetise such assets up to the limits of one's supply ability for goods and services in any short term period, and up to the limits set by the free market rating, acceptances and refusals of such alternative currencies, does in effect deprive other exchange spheres of some of their exchange media, which they have issued for themselves, for their turn-overs. Here, too, each should cover, serve or clothe himself with his own "clothing" or tissues rather than robbing the clothing or private currencies of others. Just like each should feed himself rather than steal or beg his food. Each should become, as far as is humanly possible and convenient, become self-reliant in this sphere, too. There is no rightful and sound substitute for self-responsibility in this sphere, either. The territorial State - and its centralized monopoly bank, with its legalized coercive powers, are the worst possible substitute for the assumption of a self-responsibility for all traders, producers and consumers in this sphere. - J. Z., 23.9.93, 24.4.97, 8.9.02, 11.7.11. - REDEEMABILITY, CONVERTIBILITY, COVER, FOUNDATION, BACKING, REFLUX, READINESS TO ACCEPT FOUNDATION, SHOP CURRENCY
ISSUE PRINCIPLE: The issue of sound exchange media by the providers of daily wanted consumer goods and services, ought to be done in accordance with sound banking principles, to productive debtors only, who can shortly expect to be paid for what they have already produced and sold but are, until then, in liquidity difficulties. Each may already have been "paid". but so far only with a short term promises to pay, as was the traditional for a long time, i.e. with a sound commercial bill. With that they could, indeed, pay their suppliers e.g. of raw materials, but hardly their wage, salary and tax bill. For that purpose, under the soundest form of the "banking principle", they have simply to get this large bill "cut up" or temporarily replaced by small bills or notes in standardized money denominations, all with sufficient shop foundation. This a note-issuing bank or shop association can do, by either buying the commercial bill or lending its bank notes upon it as a security. When the short term security falls due, it can then be redeemed with the notes issued. To that extent it acts as a vacuum cleaner for them, achieving their reflux or exerting a demand for them, one which is corresponding to the quantity of bank notes that was issued for the bill (including the commission of the bank, expressed in the bill discount, which the bank will spend for its expenditures and profit in its own bills). The issue principle is balanced by the reflux principle, the inherent cover, security and redemption in the banking principle practice. It does not require rare metal redemption by the issuer. Redeemability on the free gold market would be even better but only shop foundation i.e. goods and service redeemability would be essential. All money is used to pay debts and to that extent it can be and should be based on a debt foundation or obligation foundation or readiness to accept or shop foundation or tax foundation. Whatever is acceptable in a payment community as a means of payment or clearing or settlement is suitable for it as at least one form of its kind of money. As such it can be issued by suitable members of that community of their association or by an outside agency hired for this purpose. - J.Z., 27.8.02. The limits for such issues are indicated by their optionality and their free market rates. Ticket-money is not a bad term for such issues and it does indicate their limits more clearly. - J.Z., 11.7.11.
ISSUERS, POTENTIAL ONES: Any money that is, in practice, and in most cases, to be redeemable by its holder in consumer goods and services, can be issued in the first place by the providers of these goods and services, i.e. by retail traders, their associations or agents. This can be done even when there is not a single gold or silver coin or bullion bar left in a country. These issues do then merely facilitate clearing or an indirect, multilateral and anonymous barter exchange, almost with the ease of monetary transactions and, sometimes, make payments even easier. Compare the rapidity with which cash payments can be done to the cashier when the customers has already the right cash amount in his hands. These payments go faster than those mediated through a digitized payment. This kind of "commodity money" does not require any other kinds of "redemption" or "convertibility", "cover", "reserve" or "guaranty fund" or "securities" or "backing" or "capital". (However, when they issued in short term loans, e.g. for wage payments, then these turnover credit loans, as opposed to capital loans, require suitable short term securities, arising from the sale of goods already produced, sold and on the road to the retailers. In these cases the notes do have a double cover: shop foundation plus the bill of exchange foundation or that of the other short-term turnover security that is involved and had been "monetized. - J.Z., 5.9.02.) (At least some of the digitized circulation charts that I offer as an email attachment do show, graphically, how all the mutual debts are settled or cleared in the process without the need for any rare metal cover or redemption, even while rare metal weight units are used as value standards. - J.Z., 11.7.11.) Apart from legal restrictions, this kind of local currency could always be made rapidly available where there are wanted goods and services whose sale might otherwise be difficult or incomplete, although the local community is not oversupplied with them. - J.Z., 8.4.97. - With the help of instant printing machines such sound alternative means of exchange could be produced and used within hours, thus overcoming any local shortage of means and exchange, with its inherent unemployment and sales difficulties. If you live in a somewhat developed country and wander through one of its shopping centres, then you can easily visualize the potential for the issue and acceptance of sound shop currency, quite independent of any "currency" policy by any governmental central bank. - Self-help is possible within hours or days at most but so far outlawed and prevented by great ignorance and numerous popular errors prejudices. Under certain conditions even the outlawry could be rapidly overcome. To overcome the ignorance, errors, prejudices and lack of interest that are involved is much more difficult and time-consuming. - J.Z., 11.7.11. - AND THEIR REDEMPTION OR READINESS TO ACCEPT FOUNDATION
ISSUERS, POTENTIAL: Any centre that receives many payments and has many payments to make, can act as a centre for the issue of bank notes and clearing certificates. - J.Z., 20.3.97. - A remark that merely translates a frequent statement by Ulrich von Beckerath, 1882-1969. He explored the monetary freedom options at least from 1908 onwards and at least some of his writings have been preserved and are online, most of them still only in German. Some of his correspondence are in the possession of Eckard Duewal, who runs a large Antiquariat in Berlin-Charlottenburg, but is very possessive about it, although he has, to my knowledge, made no attempt so far to publish it. He was, like myself, a follower of U. v. Bth and inherited his library and papers. But at least he let me photocopy much of it, a few years later and most of that material, together with some other, was microfilmed by me in my PEACE PLANS series. Only a fraction of this material appeared online at www.reinventingmoney.com and a much smaller fraction of his shorter writings have been translated so far into English. His three classical monetary freedom books, in German, English and in French, can be also be found on that website. If anyone knows of any still better monetary freedom writings - please, do let me know of them. At least from my own and somewhat biased view, since he was my mentor, much more than my father was, most of the modern monetary freedom writings are still behind those of Ulrich von Beckerath, on many important points. However, decide for yourself, simply by reading some of his texts, among those already online. - J.Z., 11.7.11.
ISSUING CENTRES FOR COMPETITIVE & OPTIONAL CURRENCIES: Any payment centre, where regularly many payments are made and received, is, potentially, also an issuing centre for its own notes or clearing certificates, in convenient money denominations, that are subject to voluntary acceptance or rejection and free market rating and also valued by an optional value standard. Whatever IOUs it would issue, would tend to quickly stream back to it. Its notes would have no other value. Its debtors would express a demand for these notes in the local market, by offering their goods, services or labour for them. - J.Z., 28.5.94, free after many remarks, in correspondence and in discussions, by Ulrich von Beckerath. - See: PAYMENT COMMUNITIES.
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JAMES, LOUIS, How to Own Physical and Paper Gold as Trend Continues Towards $1500 - September 8, 2010.- Brian Sylvester Interviews Louis James. - "In this exclusive interview with The Gold Report, Louis offers tips on how to own physical gold and "paper" gold, and even picks some junior gold and silver plays with significant potential." - Roy Halliday, in section on gold.
JEFFERSON, THOMAS, Against the Constitutionality of the Bank of the United States - 1791 - Jefferson. - "To take a single step beyond the boundaries thus specially drawn around the powers of Congress, is to take possession of a boundless field of power, no longer susceptible of any definition. The incorporation of a bank, and the powers assumed by this bill, have not, in my opinion, been delegated to the United States, by the Constitution." - Roy Halliday - CENTRAL BANKING
JOB CREATION: See: FULL EMPLOYMENT, MAKE-WORK SCHEMES, GOVERNMENT SPENDING, UNEMPLOYMENT, PUBLIC WORKS PROJECTS, UNEMPLOYMENT, CRISES
JOB LEVY: All job levy attempts are conceptually wrong. The money levied did already provide jobs, the natural way. These jobs were provided with this money - which the consumers want and entrepreneurs are willing to offer. These jobs are destroyed by the job levy. Moreover, these jobs are productive and self-supporting jobs, in which the employed really earn their way and please voluntary buyers of their goods and services. By taking these funds from these channels, the job levy first destroys job opportunities. Then it provides some jobs, indeed, but often only unproductive bureaucratic jobs and other more or less unproductive or even counter-productive jobs by people mostly unwilling to work hard in them and make them their career. (Even in spite of, or, rather, because of forced labour and centralized controls, minimizing individual incentives, productivity in the Soviet Union was low and thus its standard of living. - J.Z., 11.7.11.) It is another form of pyramid building. In balance more jobs and more productive efforts are destroyed or prevented thereby than are provided. (Nevertheless, that old fallacy is still all too much alive and realized even in most of the democratic and somewhat free countries, under all kinds of fancy new cover names. - J.Z., 11.7.11.) Good intentions and misleading terms are not substitute for rightful and positive actions. It merely expresses the all too wide-spread fallacy that money spent by governments does provide jobs and that the same money, if left in private hands and spent by them, does not. Bureaucrats and politicians do not and cannot "create" productive jobs, not even at your expense. They destroy jobs and severely burden the remaining jobs. But they do manage to get themselves fat cat jobs at your expense - because all too many are still territorial statists and keep voting for such "representatives", most of whom have no clue on essential points of full economic freedom, least of all of full monetary and financial freedom. Thus I would not call that levy or any other tax or tribute, under another name of false pretence, a creative action. - J. Z., 17.12.93. 23.8.95, 25.5.97, 11.7.11. - All that has been said about job levies does also apply to unemployment "insurance". Unemployment, being caused by government intervention, is not an insurable list. Interventionism can rise to almost any degree. Only the abolition of interventionism with peaceful production and exchange can end the unemployment and other troubles that it causes. - J.Z., 17.9.02.
JOB LEVY: Any funds forcefully levied by a government and then distributed by it under the pretence that it would thereby provide extra jobs, tends to provide less jobs and less productive jobs than would have been provided if the funds had remained in the hands who rightfully earned or owned them. Nevertheless, tax and public works proposals are going on and on, mistaking the intention or even the name for the results and ignoring the other side of the coin. - J. Z., 22.11.93. - Bank robbers, spending the money they robbed, could likewise claim to provide jobs! - J.Z., 11.7.11.
JOB LEVY: If $ 3 billion could be taken from the remaining employed, without thereby creating new unemployment, then why not 30 billion or 300 billion? Actually, the tax levy or penalty on the remaining jobs could be made so large that no one could be employed any longer. However, already any tax on employment, no matter how small, tends to destroy jobs or prevent new jobs from coming into existence. Any job levy and any other tax is a penalty upon employment and renders labour to that extent uneconomical. These wrongs and damages are not balanced out by a few more jobs for bureaucrats and other subsidised, i.e. not self-supporting jobs. - J. Z., 14.12.97, 25.5.97, 11.7.11.
JOB LEVY: In Australia, some time ago, a job levy of $ 3 billion was proposed. As usual, at the expense of the tax-payers, or as a result of further public debt, thus at the expense of future tax slaves (or as a result of further inflation of the State paper money of the Reserve bank. (At the expense of the inflation tax.) In all these forms purchasing power and job opportunities would simply be shifted but with the disadvantage that the thus expropriated would, to that extent, not be able to finance with their money wanted and productive jobs but the bureaucrats would, instead, buy with these funds, raised by tributes, less wanted and less productive jobs, in new pyramid building efforts, mere showcases for people to gawk at and builders to boast about but with few comprehending all their costs in lost opportunities or their destructiveness of property rights jobs and liberties. If, instead of this $ 3 billion job levy, the government would have declared that the retailers of Australia and its other service providers would, between them, be set at liberty to, between them, $ 30 billion worth of shop currency, at any time, if only they could manage, by their readiness to accept it, to keep it at par with its stated sound value standard (that would exclude the paper "standard" of the government's Reserve Bank), then it would have no objection. On the contrary, the government should invite the retailers to make short term loans with these notes to all potential employers for the employment of additional employees, paid only in this kind of private or cooperative money, at market rates or, perhaps, even at a slight increase to make them more ready to accept such alternative local currency in wage and salary payments. Assuming that there are 10 million employed in Australia, all at an average weekly wage of A$500, then this would require a weekly wage bill of ca. $ 5 billion. Assuming 1 million unemployed in Australia, their additional wage bill, if employed, would come only to $ 500 million a week. Much more exists in ready for sale goods and services for shop foundation money. But, naturally, no more should be issued than could be spent for ready for sale goods and services, and upon the immediate payment for productive jobs, that would continuously replace goods currently consumed and keep up the supply of currently wanted services. Woolworth department stores on their own have a turnover of ca. $ 10-15 billion p.a., let us say 1 billion per month and for Coles/Meyer the figures are similar. (By 2002 both have turnovers of around A $20 - 25 billion, p.a.) The total turnover of retailers in Australia is very roughly estimated by me to come to somewhere between $ 150 & 250 billion p.a. (By all means, try to compile current and correct figures! - J.Z., 11.7.11.) It may actually be much higher. Moreover, that would only be the basis for shop-foundation currencies, not for all the other monetary freedom options. I am waiting for someone, like a national retailers association, to provide me and all other Australians with more correct figures. But for the time being these hints may have to do. Under easy sales for goods and services the total weekly and annual turnovers could also and soon become much larger. Shop currency issues would not have to be the equivalents to annual turnovers but at most only to the weekly to monthly turnovers. The same amounts, in different note issue series, could be issued over and over again and increased to the extent that the shop foundation - or other foundation - would be increased and that more sound currency would be wanted in circulation - or its equivalents in deposits, cheques, credit card arrangements etc. The government's one-off job levy of $ 3 billion and the spending of this money over a period, would be quite puny, even if it had only positive and no negative effects at all - something that is certainly not the case. - J. Z., n.d. & 24.5.97, 11.7.11. - DIS.
JOB LEVY: Just because a tax, payable in exclusive and forced currency, is called a "job levy" and there may be every honest intention to spend the money so taxed only upon the "creation" of new jobs or their financing, does not mean that its levying and its spending will not destroy existing jobs or prevent them from coming into existence or from being maintained. Essentially only a TRANSFER is involved of potential wage payment means, from one group of workers to another. In balance only the bureaucratic jobs might become further increased in the process, and this only by impoverishing all people working in productive jobs. Make-work schemes rarely support their costs, far less are they profitable, as a rule. They are no substitutes for market supplied and needed jobs, paid for by the exchange media of monetary freedom. - J.Z., 14.12.93, 1.5.97. - Currently, the government, "in its wisdom", can think of nothing better than e.g. a "mining levy" and a "carbon-dioxide" levy, both as wrongful and irrational as the "job levy" proposal was then. - J.Z., 11.7.11. - CAMOUFLAGED STATE SOCIALISM, UNEMPLOYMENT
JOB LEVY: Lift the job levy high enough - and you won't have any jobs left to levy anything on. - J. Z., 28.11.93, 24.5.97.
JOHNSSON, RICHARD C. B., Why Gold? - October 7, 201. - "There are a number of reasons that make gold special and it turns out that most of them are quite natural." - Roy Halliday, in section on gold.
JOKES ON MONEY: Austrian people, after too many inflations used to joke: Governments never go bankrupt - only its creditors do. - While this is true regarding the wrongfulness of its monetary despotism, with its issue monopoly and legal tender power (compulsory acceptance at a forced value), in times of inflation, one should add that governments, via their compulsory taxation and numerous other wrongful interventions, do also drive all too many otherwise sound debtors into bankruptcy. - J.Z., 12.8.11.
JOKES ON MONEY: Why is Poland just like the U.S.? - In the U.S. you can't buy anything for zloties and in Poland you can't, either. In the US you can get whatever you want for dollars, just as you can in Poland." - Source unknown. - Mind you, the zloty has legal tender in Poland but even that does not help it enough at this stage. It does not have only legal tender in the US but at most a low rate of exchange on the foreign exchange market, not accompanied by readiness to accept it at all on the general market. While the U.S. dollar, in spite of all its flaws and even without legal tender power in Poland, is, nevertheless, the preferred currency there to the national one with legal tender. - To that extent such jokes and practice do have something to teach about monetary freedom, even though they do represent only a small fraction of its potential. - J.Z., 14.5.97. - In how many years will the US dollar be treated just like the Pollish zloties were then? - Who will help compile a critical and enlightening collection of jokes on money, on a disc or published online, one that can help to lead people towards the monetary freedom alternatives? - J.Z., 13.7.11. - PAPER MONEY, INFLATION, USA, POLAND, COMPETING CURRENCIES, CHOICE IN CURRENCIES, MONETARY FREEDOM, VALUE STANDARDS JOKES
JON, Jon's Political Ramblings, on Gary North, Academia's War against Free Market Money, - Jon's Political Ramblings: Academia's War Against Free Market Money - jonspoliticalramblings.blogspot.com/.../academias-war-against-free-... - Cached - 1 Dec 2008 – Academia's War Against Free Market Money. Gary North wrote a beautiful essay on how mainstream economists marginalize followers of Austrian ... - All too many still manage to call a money market that is legally confined to two rare metals a "free market money" market. That is like mixing up territorial States with free societies, representing the choices of sovereign individuals. - J.Z., 27.7.11. - FREE MARKET MONEY, TERRITORIALISM
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: Download Judge Napolitano : Free Market Money Vs. Government ... - www.savevid.com/.../judge-napolitano-free-market-money-vs-gove. - Cached - Download Judge Napolitano : Free Market Money Vs. Government Terrorism! video on savevid.com. Download videos in flv, mp4, avi formats easily on ... Terrorism or monetary despotism. Admittedly, monetary despotism can lead to terrorism. - J.Z., 27.7.11.
JUDGE, PHILIP: The Arrival Of Free Market Money - The Arrival Of Free Market Money by Philip Judge - www.24hgold.com/.../news-gold-silver-the-arrival-of-free-market-money... - 31 May 2007 - 24hGold.com. - Genuine free market money has never as yet fully arrived. - J.Z., 27.7.11.
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KARLSSON, STEFAN, Stefan Karlsson's blog: Austrian Business Cycle Theory And ... - stefanmikarlsson.blogspot.com/.../austrian-business-cycle-theory-an... - Cached - 27 Mar 2008 – In a free market, money is neutral, since it affects prices evenly. That said, a discovery of a large gold deposit is unlikely to cause a ... - The understanding and realization of all monetary freedom options will NOT have a neutral effect. While under it, due to the free use of all kinds of sound value standards no inflation will take place, the increased turnovers and the full employment made possible by it and the increased savings and investments that it will promote, will tend to reduce consumer goods prices while increasing wages and salaries. Capital accumulation will occur faster and might lead to lower interest rates. On the other hand, so many productive opportunities might then arise that interest rates might also rise. - Anyhow, prices never rise quite evenly, as can be seen by any careful and penny-pinching shopper. - J.Z., 27.7.11.
KEMMERER, EDWIN WALTER, What Constitutes a Gold Standard - "The generic gold standard may be briefly defined as a monetary system where the unit of value - in terms of which prices, wages, and debts are customarily expressed and paid - consists of the value of a fixed quantity of gold in a large international market that is substantially free." - Roy Halliday, in section on gold.
KINSELLA, STEPHAN, Fractional-Reserve Banking, Contracts of Deposit, and the Title-Transfer Theory of Contract - August 13, 2009. - "Someone asked me the proper way to view deposit contracts, in the context of a discussion about fractional-reserve banking (FRB)." - Roy Halliday
KIYOSAKI, ROBERT, The “7 Steps” to The Life Cycle of Money! | Robert Kiyosaki Blog - www.richerdaddy.com/the-“7-steps”-to-the-life-cycle-of-money/ - Cached - Next, a Free Market Money emerges. This is a Need due to the fact that ... Due to its lack there of and difficulty to mine, free market money ...
KIYOSAKI, ROBERT: Robert Kiyosaki Rich Dad | Manifest Your Dreams With Curt "CBiz ... - manifestyourdreams.biz/tag/robert-kiyosaki-rich-dad/ - Cached - 19 Oct 2010 – Next, a Free Market Money emerges. This is a Need due to the fact that different quantities of different items have a “different value”. ... Any money supply limited through monetary errors and prejudices should never be called a "free market money". - J.Z., 27.7.11.
KLING, ARNOLD, Break Up the Banks - "Big banks are bad for free markets. Far from being engines of free enterprise, they are conducive to what might be called "crony capitalism," "corporatism," or, in Jonah Goldberg's provocative phrase, "liberal fascism." There is a free-market case for breaking up large financial institutions: that our big banks are the product, not of economics, but of politics." - Roy Halliday, in section on Government-Regulated Banking. - They do not have to be broken up. - Just remove their exclusive governmental licensing, which gave banking "privileges", even of the present all too limited kind, e.g. without the note issue right, only to a few and relatively large banks. - J.Z., 11.8.11.
KNOWLEDGE, COMPLETE & IN SMALL DOSES: Knowledge which is worthless in small quantities becomes immensely valuable in complete form." - Brian Stableford, Rapsody in Blue (SF), p.33. - As a fan of the "Ideas Archive" project, this remark appealed to me and is generalisation seems to me to apply also somewhat to the sphere of monetary freedom. However, even here some distinctions ought to be made: A) Assume almost complete knowledge of monetary freedom options a) under conditions of monetary despotism and b) under conditions of monetary freedom. B) Assume a knowledge in small doses only of monetary freedom options a) under conditions of monetary despotism and b) under conditions of monetary freedom. A) Would be required to overcome monetary despotism for sure, e.g. in a monetary revolution. Under monetary freedom there would be sufficient practitioners of it and a sufficient reference literature would have been built up, so that full knowledge of it in a sufficient number of heads, would be achieved and become self-maintaining. B) Insufficient knowledge of monetary freedom options, under monetary despotism, would lead only to too small, inconsistent and flawed monetary experiments, which would not sufficiently enlighten even the participants and might merely support the prejudices and suppression attempts of their opponents. That is one of the reasons why the hundred-thousands of all too limited and still prejudiced and flawed monetary freedom experiments over the last few hundred years did not develop into full monetary freedom. However, under monetary freedom it would not matter if a few or most people had only a vague notions of most monetary freedom theories and practices, as long as there would be enough enlightened specialists to run the centres of issue. The others have just to be able to distinguish notes that are readily accepted at par, at least in the local shops, from those which are not. And the test for this is as easy, cheap and fast as an enquiry at the nearest shop. And if they remain completely prejudiced against ALL "mere fiat" or "mere paper" money, as, I suppose, Rothbard was, until the died, then they should, naturally, be at liberty to refuse all such payments and only deal with those able and willing to pay them in gold coins or 100% gold covered gold certificates. In other words, they do not have to know much under monetary freedom. They simply have to express their dislikes and preferences, or take their choices. When one surveys, whatever monetary freedom literature one can get access too, to the extent that an individual can do so, over decades, then one will find, I believe, that no comprehensive handbook on all monetary freedom ideas and techniques and experiences has ever been compiled or published as yet. This is somewhat surprising, since, supposedly, most people are more or less "greedy" to get their hands on more and more of almost any kind of money. In practice, however, they considered under "any" money only any money of monetary despotism, at least for most of the last few decades. Before that their thinking on monetary freedom options was mostly quite blinkered by the examples of currencies that consisted mainly only out of rare metal coins or certificates for them, while the understanding of clearing options was, for centuries, rather limited to the practice of bills of exchange, still entangled in notions of their ultimate redemption in coins, even while most of them were already cleared. A close to comprehensive enough understanding of the clearing options for all kinds of monetary exchanges and that even cash is essentially merely a clearing facilitator, is something relatively new, even in the heads of most economists, for the last 200 years. For every insight in this sphere there are, probably, thousands of errors, prejudices and myths, even in the heads of most of the supposed experts and writers or lecturers on this subject. Rittershausen's ultimate theory of money: "Geldtheorie", remained unfinished and unpublished - an unfinished manuscripts. Its essential teaching, when I dare to sum it up in one sentence, is: Money is clearing. - Naturally, he was aware, as a monetary freedom advocate and associate of Ulrich von Beckerath of the value standard function, too but also, more than the vast majority, of the necessity and possibility of separating these functions while uniting them in a rightful, non-fraudulent and non-coercive way in the same paper certificates and other accounting and clearing methods. Their German, but also Swiss and Jewish School of Monetary Freedom aimed clearly at maintaining freedom to issue exchange media, accept them, discount them or refuse to accept them (unless one had issued them oneself) with the right of freedom of choice of value standards for all, even if personally one would favour e .g., a gold weight unit as a value standard in all one's contracts. Outside of my PEACE PLANS series and the old issues of Prof. Edgard Milhaud's ANNALS OF COLLECTIVE AND COOPERATIVE ECONOMY, only very few and more or less obscure references to this kind of monetary freedom thinking can be found in the literature. Neither Rittershausen nor Beckerath ever got around to publish a handbook on all monetary freedom options, although they have provided some monographs and guides to the understanding and techniques of sound competitive paper monies. Their pioneering writings are still largely unknown to or unappreciated by most modern academic advocates of the denationalization of currencies, since Hayek wrote about it. At least some of them are now accessible at www.reinventingmoney.com. Their writings were the product of years, even decades of discussions and can, perhaps, not be fully grasped without a similar effort. Thus I try to alphabetise and sum up some of their basic concepts and proposals as well as I can with my much more limited knowledge and abilities in this sphere, hoping that others will correct and supplement my statements sufficiently to ultimately provide an excellent guide towards all monetary freedom ideas and sound monetary freedom practices. - A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. I have had such a book in mind for decades and accumulated thousands of notes towards it. They have all to be gradually keyboarded in here and somewhat revised according to my current thinking on the subject. - J. Z., 15.4.97, 13.7.11. - A digital attempt of this kind is presently undertaken by Klaus Falke, Thomas Greco et al, under www.monetary-freedom.net - I postponed any collaboration with it until I have finally finished updating the FB AZ as far as I can. - J.Z., 13.7.11. - ON MONETARY FREEDOM OPTIONS & THE REALITIES OF MONETARY DESPOTISM, HANDBOOK ON MONETARY FREEDOM & FREE BANKING
KRIEG, Dr. ADRIAN A., The Daily Bell - Adrian H. Krieg - www.thedailybell.com/2169/Adrian-H-Krieg.html - Cached - Dr. Krieg believes in a free-market money system of gold and silver and has stated that the only way to save the world economy from total collapse is to go ... - Oh, yea of little faith! - The redemptionist gold standard is only ONE of the free market alternatives and rightful only for its voluntary victims. Territorially imposed upon dissenters, it amounts still to a great wrong and an great problem for free exchanges. One might as well demand that the only personal transport permitted should be Rolls Roys or Mercedes cars and buses. - J.Z., 24.7.11.
KROOS, HERMAN E., Documentary History of Banking and Currency in the U.S., ed. by Herman E. Kroos. "The most comprehensive documentary history of American money and banking ever published, containing over 300 key documents spanning nearly three and a half centuries. The set contains all the major federal laws and regulations, excerpts from official government publications etc., and presents revealing events in state legislation, such as New York's Safety Fund and California's Branch Banking Law. Also included are important selections from the writings of such influential thinkers as Benjamin Franklin and John Maynard Keynes. An introductory essay by the Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul A. Samuelson, provides a clear overview of the work as a whole. 1976, 4 volumes, Bowker International Marketing Services, complete catalog, 1980-81, $ 186. - I mention this title here only on the off-chance that it might contain something of interest to monetary freedom advocates and be it only details of monetary despotism. Confinement to official views and those of the two quoted "experts" does not count as a recommendation to me. - J.Z., 30.5.97.
KRUG, STEFFEN: The Euro Crisis and Gold As Free Market Money - Video - www.metacafe.com/.../the_euro_crisis_and_gold_as_free_market_... - Cached - 20 Jun 2011 – Watch the whole 21-minute video at http://www.goldmoney.com/krug-turk-interview - Steffen Krug (http://www.ifaam-institut.de/ ) Also: The euro crisis and gold as free market money - www.goldmoney.com - Gold Research - Cached - talks to James Turk about the euro. They talk about how the ECB is subject to political influence, as witnessed with its buying ... - WHY ONLY gold? - After all, he tries to talk about FREEDOM! - Why only gold as value standard and only gold as means of exchange, instead of competitive free enterprise and consumer sovereignty towards both? - J.Z., 23.7.11
LLLLL
LABOUR AS VALUE STANDARD? While much of labour, except e.g. that of politicians and bureaucrats, is productive, to different degrees, and some labours of some people are very valuable indeed, worth that of many other and ordinary workers, e.g. those of inventors, discoverers, innovators, when they are free to apply their intelligence, judgment and experience in order to greatly increase productivity or to provide a new commodity or service, machine, way of collecting, transforming or storing energy etc., under fully free market conditions ( which would have to include e.g. full monetary and financial freedom, free trade and a fully developed transport and communication system to get the maximum of value out of them), the use of “labour”, even if “measured”, but only by the hour, is, because of the different value of the labour hour of different people - and even of the same people at different hours - just about the worst kind of “value standard” imaginable, apart, naturally, from the fictitious and forced (above its free market value) value standard of government paper monies as soon as they are being fast inflated. Even the minimum wages keep changing upwards, not to speak of the salaries of high executives. Nevertheless, as a primitive notion, it has retained its popularity. To some extent, representing mining labours and also the pre-done labour involved in modern mining equipment, gold weight units do represent labour value. But at measurable and free market evaluated value standard units they are much more reliable value standards than are time periods of ill defined “labour”. –Seeing the vast variety of views on value standards, the only sound, just and rational “policy” in this sphere amounts to free choice of value standards for all, especially for all private payment communities and all private contracts. - J.Z., 11.1.10, 1.11.10.
LABOUR & GOODS EXCHANGES, ISSUING THEIR OWN GOODS WARRANTS, ON A TIME, LABOUR HOUR OR OTHER FLAWED VALUE STANDARD: One of the conceptual mistakes of such experiments - like those by Josiah Warren and Robert Owen - was, that they try to establish new and separate stores that attempt to help the whole local economy by their inevitably limited issue potential, while they bypass the huge stocks of goods, services and labour that are offered by all others in the community, which would provide the necessary shop foundation for an effective local currency alternative. Any local bank of issue should not appear as a competitor to the existing shops and businesses but as a helper to all of them. It should not attempt to concentrate all goods and services and all turnover in a new kind of business, the labour exchange, but, rather, leave them were they are and help to sell them from there, through its issue of labour notes, goods warrants and ticket money or purchasing certificates etc. The experiment should right away aim at establishing a local shop association as an issuing centre, discounting short term notes of local shops, and try thus to monetize or liquidify as far as possible and desirable (with the limits indicated by refusals to accept and the market rating for these tokens against their value standard) all the local ready for sale assets, labour and services, which at present are difficult or at least partly impossible to sell. Thus it could win friends almost everywhere instead of making right away more enemies than it has already naturally, as a radical reform. The issue association might immediately publish its evaluations of all local businesses, their goods stocks and service potential and of all local unemployed and underemployed and state for each of them the limits to which they would be prepared to grant them short term loans if they are prepared to accept the local currency in all payments due to them and to repay these loans after a short period, with the local currency. But the most important targets for short term loans with such shop currencies would be local employers, for their wage bill, for their continued and expanded employment. The greatest obstacle in this effort, apart from the legal obstacles established by monetary despotism, might be to overcome the usual objections of trade unionists to wage and salary payments in other exchange media than the governmental ones. (However, as the great experiment in Sydney, during the final period of the building of the Roselands Shopping Centre, has demonstrated, even this obstacle of the usual trade unionist mentality, can be overcome. The raise, which the trade unionists demanded under the threat of a crippling strike, was paid in shop currency, accepted like cash in many associated stores. The strike was averted and with it a financial crisis for this very large building project. The participants, including John Ducker of the NSW Labour Council, managed somehow - in my opinion, in the real public interest - to hush up the illegality of this procedure, which, after all, did not harm or wrong anybody but served everybody very well. - The sum total of these possible and desirable local short-term turnover loans should also be publicised as the extent and limit for the local economy to help itself - pulling itself up by its own bootstraps: its own potential turnover credit assets. No attempt should be made, initially, to provide for the needs of medium and long term capital, too. But at least studies should be undertaken, to provide them, in the future, on a stable value standard basis, by contracts, also payable and repayable in the local currency and, once the local currency is fully functioning, to accept term deposits and bond purchases in it, to mobilise whatever capital the local community could - in additional savings and investments. But even the long-term loans must only be granted when backed by corresponding willingness to save and invest and they must be paid only and repaid finally, in local currency of short term validity, so that the turnover credit character of the local currency remains preserved, and thereby its liquidity and reflux foundation or debt foundation or clearing function. The local issues should clearly express that they are to be usable only for clearing settlements and short term due debt payments, including especially wage- and salary payments, or purchases from the local members and suppliers. No redemption in legal tender, foreign exchange or rare metals should be promised. - As soon as possible the payability of local rates and fees with the local currency should be aimed at, too, but only at its market rate, not at its face value. Instead, the local government should be induced to issue its own sound tax-foundation currency. Local gas-, water-, electricity- and bus companies should also be induced to issue their own notes, backed by their service capacity. Local tradesmen might be induced as well to issue their own service vouchers in money denominations, with acceptance by all members of their association. Every potential issuer should be asked to fill his niche with his own clearing- and exchange media certificates, to the limits of his ability and of the readiness of the local community to accept them at par. None of these issues is to have legal tender power - except towards the issuer and, by contract, towards his debtors. Only under this condition can it be achieved that all local labour, services and goods, for which there is a local and still unsatisfied need or demand, can be expressed in effective local monetary demand or purchasing power, i.e. can be easily and soon sold, after first having been used to purchase additional labor, services and goods. Once the local turnover has reached its maximum, with optimum ease, additional savings will occur in the local currencies and these can then be saved and invested in the traditional manner, but still using the local currencies in the process, as means of payments and repayments, corresponding to the ability and readiness of the local people to save and invest, using this currency and its by then, hopefully, much improved value standard, instead of the government's all too unreliable and usually depreciating paper standard. - If the experiment is undertaken fast, understood well and publicised well enough, then it will be difficult to impossible for the State- or Federal government to suppress it, especially if it is undertaken shortly before an election and when the numbers of local underemployed, unemployed, bankruptcies and social service recipients have been greatly reduced by it. Then other local communities will demand their right to follow this successful model and will not tolerate its suppression, expressing their sympathies with it on election day. (Thus, optionally, such monetary freedom and self-help or monetary revolution experiments should be undertaken shortly before an election, when local unemployment or inflation are severe.) The newly elected will have to grant an amnesty for all breaches of laws and regulations that were involved and have to legalise these actions a.s.a.p. - J.Z., 18.10.84, 19.3.97, 28.8.02, 13.7.11. - MONETARY EXPERIMENTS
LABOUR EXCHANGE BANKS, See: FULCRAUD-MAZEL, M., & TOPOLOBAMPO, Colony, COSME, PARAGUAY. - See: BRAY, JOHN FRANCIS.
LABOUR MARKET, UNEMPLOYMENT, MONETARY FREEDOM: It is wrong to speak of a free labour market when only the offer of labour is free on the market, not the monetary demand for it. The monetary demand for labour is the other side of the coin of a free labour market, the one that is, usually, overlooked. So far we were not free to turn up that side of the coin - or to produce the kind of coins or notes that would constitute a free, sound, reliable and competitive monetary demand. Instead, we have left the demand for labour to be supplied by the greatest monopolist, who, in the absence of sufficient free market indicators for his forced and exclusive currency, has either over-supplied or under-supplied the national economy with his monopoly product and sometimes has done both, at the same time, in different spheres and channels and managed even to depreciate the forced and exclusive currency so fast that this seemingly extra demand for labour did, in reality, cause involuntary mass-unemployment. Nobody wants to invest any more when he can be legally and juridically repaid in "worthless" scrap. Then production and monetary exchanges come almost to a stop or are greatly reduced. Then the ignorant, prejudiced and helpless politicians try to stop inflation by artificially creating unemployment through credit restrictions and deflations, price or interest rate controls. When they have thus and otherwise established and maintained mass unemployment by their "measures", then they can think of nothing better than heavily taxing the few still employed and in business, in order to subsidise make-work schemes and unprofitable enterprises. Within the framework of monetary despotism no real solution is possible. It is a bottleneck for the monetary demand for labour or prevents much possible and desirable demand for labour from arising at all, because the means for it are outlawed by it. To free the labour market the market must be freed with regard to the supply of sound and honest exchange media and value standards. Nothing less will suffice to overcome all involuntary mass unemployment (apart from e.g., natural catastrophes) when the obvious steps are taken, like free pricing, free enterprise, free trade, free wage determination, freed interest rates, free entry into all jobs, no closed union shops, no punitive and transfer taxes - or, best of all, no taxes at all. Monetary freedom is the most neglected factor of all. Even after Hayek has pointed it out in The Denationalisation of Money, in 1976, many still overlook that factor and can only imagine an exclusive and forced gold coin currency or gold redemption certificate currency as the supposedly only sound demand for labour. They do not comprehend or simply deny the deflationary conditions such a well-meant but quite insufficient "reform" could cause. Nor can most of them imagine that free clearing does not require gold coins as an exclusive exchange medium or any kind of gold cover or reserve at all, that it is quite sufficient, if gold weight units are wanted as value standards, to merely adopt them as such for all their clearing and accounting purposes. For this purpose the participants do not even have to possess even a single gold coin. Nevertheless, with this value standard, they could exchange goods, services and labour to the value of millions to billions of gold coins. They do not have to possess and uses them as exclusive means of exchange, but may use them only as optional ones, when they do possess them and wish to use them as such. But a very wide-spread collective blindness and deafness seems to persist towards this solution. - Free coinage, free note issue, free choice of value standards, free clearing - for all demand for labour, goods and services. Without it you will all too often get 20 or even 200 job applicants for a single open job, payable in monopoly money. - No extra capital is required, just short term turn-over credits with means of exchange suitable for wage and salary payments and with sound goods-supply and service foundation. (The presently existing capital will already suffice for the time being. Its capacity would simply be used to a much higher potential. If necessary, 24 hours a day at full capacity. Once it is so used, new and additional capital can fast be built up.) Allow all the potential issuers to supply this monetary demand - in their own interest, that of the unemployed, under-employed, their families - and of everybody else. For prolonged mass unemployment not only impoverishes a whole country but it has extreme political, revolutionary and military consequences. So have the inflations of monetary despotism. Remember, Hitler made his first putsch in 1923, during the galloping German Inflation and his second one, ten years later, during one of the worst deflations. Monetary despotism could not prevent both crisis and their consequences. On the contrary, it caused both of them. This alone should have sufficed to call it into question, examine it thoroughly and to abolish it. While the Nazis prosecuted dissenters and Jews and others, which they had selected as scapegoats, gypsies, half-breeds etc., other countries closed their borders against political refugees from Germany, because they feared their competition on the labour market. We are almost at the same situation now. Those who have managed to escape despotic or totalitarian regimes, often risking their lives in the process, are hunted by police and military forces, using high tech, then imprisoned and, often to mostly, deported back into the merciless hands of their victimizers and exploiters. The supposedly free countries do no longer welcome refugees with open arms - because they have failed to liberate the monetary demand for labour. If they had, they would even organise the smuggling-in of more refugees (via official people smugglers, official on our side). - Then they or libertarians could help to organise the financing of genuinely liberating military insurrections and revolutions against the remaining despotic regimes. - Since international clashes with despotic regimes can by now lead to holocausts, carried out with small and cheap but high tech mass extermination packages, carried around the world on IBM's, automatically, in minutes and accurately targeted against centers of population as if these were enemies, our very survival is involved. If a billion unemployed and underemployed are not enough to get us to rethink and reform our laws, ideas, opinions, errors and prejudices, institutions, methods, programs and actions in this respect, then our survival instincts should. Alas, it takes understanding and vision to see this threat and its solution. And that is missing here as in all too many other spheres -. See my "An ABC Against Nuclear War", in PP 16-17 (now available at www.butterbach.net/epinfo/abc.htm - J.Z., 8.9.02, 13.7.11.) and my series "On Panarchy", also offered digitized by me but not yet online. - J. Z., 25.4.97, 13.7.11. - MONETARY DESPOTISM AND THE DEMAND FOR LABOUR, IMMIGRATION RESTRICTIONS, HITLER'S RISE, ANTISEMITISM, SCAPEGOATISM, UNEMPLOYMENT, CRISES, FINANCING LIBERATING REVOLUTIONS.
LABOUR MOVEMENT: Few members of the labour-, left-, communist-, socialist, and modern liberal movement have pondered the consequences for labour and the economy in general of letting the supply of the cash demand for labour become monopolised by a central bank. - If the monetary despotism had, instead, insisted that only a church hierarchy would be authorised to issue money tokens and decide upon a standard of value for all contracts, then they would, probably, have rebelled by now. But their statism and continued and misplaced confidence in politicians, bureaucrats and their laws, their parties and reform movements, their central planning and legally, administratively and juridically imposed measures, in short, their statist religion, their popular errors, myths and prejudices, combined with their lack of interest in genuine economics, has prevented them from rebelling against monetary despotism, no matter how much, how many of them and for how long they suffered and still suffer under it. - About one billion unemployed and under-employed exist now in the world. - And some still believe that private charities and enforced transfers of earnings and property can help these victims and their dependants sufficiently. - J. Z., 26.4.97, 13.7.11. - CENTRAL BANKING, FED, MONETARY DESPOTISM
LABOUR NOTES AND LABOUR EXCHANGES: 1.) Such experiments should attempt to leave the goods and services where they are and sell them from there, through their owners. They should not try to replace all of the market through one labour exchange. That will never be successful. - 2.) The easiest approach would be to allow all the owners of goods and services, prepared to offer them in this way, to issue notes, tickets, tokens, IOUs, clearing-certificates etc. upon them. That would correspond to their self-interest and they would be able to manage that, alone or in association with other shops in their shopping centre. - 3.) A more convenient and much easier determined value standard should be chosen than the vague standard of the supposed average number of hours or minutes spent upon the production of each article. - 4.) Neither profits nor interest charges should be frowned upon. - 5.) The goods so offered and the goods warrants should be sufficiently publicised. Signs should be well displayed in every shop about its readiness to accept such alternative means of exchange and clearing. - 6.) One should stress that these tokens are optional, refusable, discountable, in general trading and that only the issuers have to accept them at any time at par. - 7.) A free market for these tokens and for their value standards should be established. - 8.) Employees should be persuaded to accept payment of at least part of their earnings in these private and cooperative local currencies, as long as they are quoted and circulate at par with their nominal value - as a precondition for the security of their jobs, which would thereby become independent of the provision of a monopolised government paper money, which is also often rapidly depreciating or in too short supply. - 9.) Debtors of the issuers should be contractually obliged to accept them at par at least to the extent of their due or soon due debts to the issuing centre. - J. Z., 2.5.96, 20.3.97, 13.7.11.
LAISSEZ FAIRE WITH & WITHOUT MONETARY FREEDOM: Laissez Faire, based on sufficient knowledge on how to make the best use of monetary freedom, has never existed. There never was a genuinely free market for all private exchange media and value standards. Thus free market exchanges were never as free as they could and should have been. - J.Z., n.d.
LAND BANKS OR REAL ESTATE AS COVER FOR MONEY & INFLATION: As long as money is fully covered by real estate or other properties there can be no inflation." - This is one of the oldest fallacies in the history of doctrines on paper money. Many experiments of this kind were made and to my knowledge they all failed. Sometimes, under the pretence of a cover by land, as with the German Rentenmark of 1923, quite different foundations are, actually established. The Rentenmark had tax foundation and it accounted in gold weight values. That permitted it to remain at par, while it had only a limited circulation. I had also no legal tender, at least not initially, and so an excess issue could not be forced into circulation through legal tender while this was the case. Alas, it was still an exclusive currency and this would have permitted over-issues beyond the tax foundation, even in the absence of legal tender. - A cover in land is not enough because people buy land only now and then, or via fractions of their incomes, in instalment rates, gradually repaying credits for the purchase of land. But they do buy needed or wanted consumer goods and services daily, all the time, with most of their incomes. This is what their currencies should allow them to do and what they should be based upon. Any further cover would be irrelevant or unnecessary. When I hold a note "based" on or "covered" by your house, I cannot redeem it in a brick of your house and, mostly, I would not want a brick of it, either, for it. Why should anyone be willing to offer anything else for it or why should he be forced to do so? All issuers of "land-based" notes soon found that their notes depreciated because they had not sufficient current reflux for them and the holders could not buy with them what they wanted most and almost all the time. That motivated the governmental issuers then to introduce legal tender and an issue monopoly, i.e. a privilege at the expense of all others. Their victims should not have granted them the sanction of the victims. - However, e.g. the interest coupons on mortgage bonds could, to a limited extent be used as currency, when they would and could soon be transferred into the hands of those who have pay that interest. Also the produce of agriculture (not the agricultural capital itself!), in the right mixture, assembled e.g. in green grocers and other shops, also as processed food, can well provide a sound basis for competitively issued local currencies. But land, agricultural buildings and machines, as well as future harvests can't be, because they do not constitute immediately available produce or food conserves, which the note holders need or want for their notes. - J.Z., 24.3.97, 30.8.02. - Compare the Assignats of the French Revolution. They were to anticipate the proceeds from the sale of lands of the former monarchy, aristocrats and clergy, that were confiscated and placed on the market, a market already depleted of metallic currency before the revolution and more so through the revolution, which almost always leads to extensive hoarding of cash and to refuge money crossing borders. Turning the Assignats very soon into legally "valid" payment claims upon all goods, services and labour as well as all so "liberated" real estate capital, did not increase the supply of goods, labour and services or provided enough sound and trusted exchange media, to mediate all wanted and possible exchanges, but merely led to the over-issue and rapid depreciation of the Assignats - helped by their forgery through groups of emigrants. Refusals to accept them at par, combined with a few curses against those who tried to force them upon others, were leading to most of the denunciations of "enemies" of the republic and to most of the resulting public executions or murders via a guillotine, as one researcher discovered and recorded. - A hint by Ulrich von Beckerath, whose reference was, probably burnt with his library in Nov., 1943. - J.Z., n.d. & 13.7.11.
LAND BANKS: See: APHORISMS ON THE MONEY PROBLEM.
LAND, SPECULATION IN LAND & INFLATION: Land speculation is inflationary and should be countered by the community's collection of site rent, i.e. of the unearned value of unimproved land. - Some, especially most Georgists, consider this to a and even the most important factor of inflation. - To the extent that increased land prices reflect merely an increased land shortage or, rather, an increased demand for land, due to increased populations, they have nothing to do with monetary inflations. To the extent that increased land prices indicate inflation, they do indicate that inflation has already taken place and driven up land prices accordingly. Moreover, while investments in land, like in rare metals, jewellery and works of art, remain among the few options to safeguard savings from inflation, inflations will drive up their prices more than the prices of other goods and services. People use land ownership as an inflation hedge. Can they be blamed for this? It is absurd to consider this defensive act as inflationary by itself, unless one makes the wrong assumption that any price increase is by itself not only indicating inflation but causally contributing to inflation. The high prices of land during an inflation are effects not causes of inflation. Far less are they the only or the main cause of the inflationary rise of all prices and wages, sooner or later, even when they do, perhaps, indicate inflation earlier than most other price and wage rises do. - That the land monopoly, however dispersed among many monopolists, or, rather, oligopolists, permits the land holders to collect unearned value increases due to their location and due to community expenditures on services - and due to private investments nearby, this has also nothing to do with inflation. Employees do also receive unearned incomes, due to increase in capital investments, technical and scientific progress. They could earn relatively little if they were not aided in their muscle and mind use by tools and machines, as well as by intelligent management. Most of their output is due to these aids. Nevertheless, the employees do usually get 85 -95 % of the total of the firm's profit, if one includes fringe benefits and social service charges on their behalf, after taxes. The tax authorities have become the major exploiters. Should this "profiteering" or "unearned income" also be taxed away? All benefit to some extent from the economic activities of others, e.g. from the division of labour, from scientific management, from technological and scientific progress. Should that individually "unearned benefit" also be taxed away, as belonging to the community, not to the individual producer, as allocated by free market forces? - One better alternative to "single taxes" in a single territorial community, with compulsory membership, would be "proprietary communities", where the proprietor, a private or cooperative company, collects all the value increases due to the own improvements, in form of rent charges. - Another option would be "open cooperatives" as proposed especially by Theodor Hertzka. Many other "solutions" of the "land problem" have been proposed, e.g. the "Community Land Trust". No particular and presumed solution to the "land problem" should be imposed upon any dissenters. All land reform proposals could and should be practised only tolerantly, among their true believers and at their expense and risk. - The single tax is neither the only nor a real solution to the land problem and it is not anti-inflationary but a measure quite irrelevant to monetary inflation. - The only direct connection between land and inflation are the inflationary issues of land banks, which reveal that the supposedly best cover, namely by land, is just not good enough for the issue of stable currencies. (However good this cover is for soundly issued and maintained mortgage letters, in convenient denominations, perhaps reckoning on gold weight values.) The value of agricultural land is, roughly, the equivalent of its earnings power over the next 15 years. That earnings power consists in the value of its produce during the next 15 years. Obviously, if one issued, in form of banknotes the present market price of the land, equivalent to the produce of the next 15 years, then these notes could only buy the current harvests on the current market, not the future harvests expected or hoped for. Thus this kind of money would, inevitably, depreciate. Few are eager to buy land with such notes, too, because they, too, would have difficulties in selling more agricultural products on a market that is frequently flooded by them. Some crops return less than they cost. The whole agricultural sector, in spite of special concessions and subsidies and partly because of them, and because of monetary despotism, is in a crisis. - All over, it is a victim rather than a victimiser and exploiter - at least under present conditions. One might as well accuse newly born babies of causing inflation by the additional demand for consumer goods which they cause. Likewise, if your appetite is strong, then you might be accused of arbitrarily and unilaterally increasing food prices in an inflationary way! - Check what monetary inflation really means and at least try to distinguish it from price rises on the goods side or dearness. - J. Z., n.d. & 2.4.97, 13.7.11. - DIS., PRICES OF LAND, INFLATION, TAXATION, EXPLOITATION, SPECULATION, GEORGEISM, SINGLE TAX
LANDSMAN COMMUNITY: See LETS.
LARA, L. CARLOS & MURPHY, ROBERT P.: A free online book, "How Privatized Banking Really Works" by L. Carlos Lara & Robert P. Murphy is at http://consultingbyrpm.com/uploads/HPBRW.pdf - Hint by George Thomas Kysor, email of 22.7.11. - 4.46 MBs in PDF. - Alas, as with most such books, their monetary freedom views are rather limited, according to us quick glance through it. - If you find anything more than the usual "gold bug" views in it, please, let me know. - The only positive thing that I see about it is that it is another modern book that is at least trying to deal with such problems. - J.Z., 4.8.11.
LAWFUL MONEY: Dr. E. C. Simmons discussed "lawful money" in the JOURNAL OF POLITICAL ECONOMY, 1938, pp.108-18. - I have not yet got a copy of this article but merely a follow-up by IRA B. CROSS. - The term "lawful money" as a substitute for "legal tender" money is even more misleading. Cheques, for instance, are not lawless money and there exists even an all too extensive interventionist legislation about them, which prevents e.g., cheques-for-clearing-only to be issued and freely accepted, issued in money denominations, upon a value standard that issuers and acceptors find quite acceptable for their transactions. The money of monetary despotism is so full of wrongful and misconceived laws that its "lawfulness" contributed to the rise of quite lawless or totalitarian regimes. The "lawful" money of governments caused and causes inflations, deflations and stagflations, with their humanly worst aspects of mass unemployment and wide-spread poverty. - It is almost criminal to cover up or try to defend such an evil with the term "lawful money". - J.Z., 26.4.97, 13.7.11. - See: LEGAL TENDER.
LAWS & REGULATIONS RESTRICTING MONETARY FREEDOM: Here many volumes could or should be added. But why bother? They do, largely, only demonstrate what should not be done. - J.Z., 13.7.11.
LEGAL PLUNDER: Bastiat's classical commentary on government, THE LAW, was published in 1850, a few months before his death. In that short book he explained his concept that plunder is plunder, whether done illegally by a robber who hopes to profit directly, or legally by a group of legislators who profit indirectly by thus maintaining their government jobs. - Dean Russell, Government and Legal Plunder. Bastiat Brought Up to Date, FEE, May 85, ISBN-0-9106614-70-9, 116pp, p.13. - POLITICIANS, REPRESENTATIVES, LAWS, LEGISLATION
LEGAL PLUNDER: What did Bastiat mean when he used the phrase "legal plunder"? Does democracy (mass voting) justify an act by government that is immoral and illegitimate on other grounds? By what logic can a group of persons legally do something that no individual within the group claims a right to do? And so on. - Dean Russell, Government and Legal Plunder. Bastiat Brought Up to Date, FEE, May 85, ISBN-0-9106614-70-9, 116pp, p.11. - TAXATION, VOTING, DEMOCRACY, LEGISLATION, IMMORALITY, RIGHTS, GOVERNMENT, JUSTICE, PLUNDER BUND
LEGAL RESTRICTIONS ON MONETARY FREEDOM: At least some of the worst restrictions, paragraphs and clauses should be compiled. I leave that job to the few legal minds who might be interested in this subject. - J.Z., 13.7.11.
LEGAL TENDER & GOVERNMENT PROMISES: Government promises are like its legal tender: All promise and no fulfilment or only under-fulfilment. - J.Z., 6.7.91, 13.7.11.
LEGAL TENDER & GRESHAM'S LAW: Without legal tender and under the competition of monetary freedom, each exchange medium, being subject to voluntary acceptance, free market rating and the right to refuse it altogether, the good types of exchange media and value standards would soon drive out the bad and inferior ones. The economists of the Swiss, German and Jewish monetary freedom school of the 1930's recognized this truth, long before most of those of the Austrian School of Economics - and other modern economists, did. - However, I would gladly hear about others with the same and even earlier and deeper insights, if there are any of them. - All the views on Gresham's Law, Legal Tender and the other aspects of full monetary freedom, with all their pros and cons, may still have to become properly assembled and evaluated. - A beginning of such an effort can be found e.g. in www.monetary-freedom.net/ - J.Z., 77 & 97, 18.7.11.
LEGAL TENDER & MARKET RATED CURRENCIES: Refusable and discountable currencies can't rule us or exploit us, like the government's or the central bank's legal-tender- and monopolized paper-money can. - J. Z., 11.8.94, 17.4.97, 18.7.ll.
LEGAL TENDER, VARIETIES OF - : In PEACE PLANS No. 19 A I listed what seemed to me to be 19 varieties of legal tender practised in the past or present. There may be more, there may be less. I would like to see this listing corrected or supplemented by YOU! - J.Z., 11.4.97.
LEGAL TENDER: A means of payment without legal tender, one that merely promotes clearing and that reckons in stable value standards, cannot inflate the general price and wage level. This, in itself, is a very simple thought or observation, also one that has always been confirmed by the history of money. Nevertheless, only a few have as yet fully grasped that truth. - Among the critics of modern money most are still mainly concerned with rare metal convertibility and ignore free market rating vs. legal tender and a territorial monopoly for currencies. For them any optional and market rated competing currency, no matter how sound its value standard and its issue and reflux arrangements are, is merely an "inconvertible" or "fiat" paper money, just as bad as any governmental legal tender and monopolized paper money, even if it adopted e.g. a gram of gold as its accounting and clearing value standard and referred all those, who desire convertibility from the small gold or silver stocks of the issuers to the total gold and silver stocks of the world's rare metal markets. Indeed, that greatest redemption fund of all is NOT under the obligation to redeem any notes issued at any time at par, upon demand. But it is prepared to redeem all notes that are so soundly issued that they stand at par with their nominal gold weight value. And its ratings of all other competing currencies, not circulating at par with their nominal value in the general money markets, do recommends to all potential acceptors, unless they are debtors of the issuer, do refuse to accept competing monies that do not use a sound value standard and those which do not stand at par with their nominal sound value standard, at least at and near their centre of issue, as a local currency. - J.Z., 12.10.80 & 9.5.97, 18.7.11. - MEANS OF PAYMENT & INFLATION
LEGAL TENDER: Bad money should be refused - not forced into circulation at par with its legal paper value standard. - J.Z., 19.6.85, 9.5.97. - Legal tender means compulsory acceptance and compulsory value, usually for an exchange medium that is also issued by a monopoly issuer like a central banking system. - J.Z., n.d.
LEGAL TENDER: der fuer das “gesetzliche Zahlungsmittel”charakteristische “Zwangskurs” “nicht etwa den Zweck, ein normal funktionierendes einheitliches Geldwesen zu schaffen oder dessen Entstehung und Ausgestaltung zu foerdern, sondern (unter Preisgebung der Zwecke, denen ein normales Geldwesen dient, zumeist sogar unter Preisgabe der Stabilitaet der Rechtsverhaeltnisse) gewisse pathologisch gewordene Geldsorten zu einem ihren Wert uebersteigenden fiktivenWerte dem Verkehr aufzunoetigen.”- C. Menger, Grundsaetze der Volkswirtschaftlehre, 2. Aufl., Wien, 1923, S. 323.
LEGAL TENDER: E. C. Riegel's VALUN MUTUAL MONEY PLAN « Beyond Money - Legal tender laws obliterate any objective definition of the value measurement unit .... because the criticism of the former is due entirely to financism. ... beyondmoney.net/resource.../e-c-riegels-valun-mutual-money-plan/ - Cached - 1 of about 65,400 results, 4.10.10.
LEGAL TENDER: Fed up: the problems of the Federal Reserve. - Free Online Library - Clinton himself is gingerly with his criticism, for fear of scaring the bond markets. But coming up with a technical definition of neutrality is a lot easier than free of legal tender laws that enforce a single standard. www.thefreelibrary.com/Fed+up%3A+the+problems+of+the+Federal+Reserve-a016075304 - Cached - 1 of about 65,400 results, 4.10.10.
LEGAL TENDER: Governments could not, of course, pursue the practices by which they forced bad money upon the people without the cruellest measures. As one legal treatise on the law of money sums up the history of punishment for merely refusing to accept the legal money: "From Marco Polo we learn that, in the 13th century, Chinese law made the rejection of imperial paper money punishable by death, and twenty years in chains or, in some cases death, was the penalty provided for the refusal to accept French ASSIGNATS. Early English law punished repudiation as LESE-MAJESTY. At the time of the American revolution, non-acceptance of Continental notes was treated as an enemy act and sometimes worked a forfeiture of the debt." - Hayek, Denationalisation of Money, p.28. - DEATH PENALTY FOR THE REFUSAL OF LEGAL TENDER PAPER MONEY.
LEGAL TENDER: HÜLSMAN, GUIDO The Ethics of Money Production - Legal monopolies, legal-tender laws, and the legalized suspension of payments. While virtually no section of society has escaped their scathing criticism, ... To cooperate voluntarily in our definition means to provide mutual ... www.scribd.com › Books › Non-fiction - Cached - Similar – Clicking on Cached I got at least most of the text, in an unattractive format, crammed together, without gaps, but still readable, ca. 700 KBs. – He is still bitten by the gold bug and in denial regarding deflation. (He even wrote a separate book on this, mentioned in one of the Google adv.!) However, he defends monetary freedom in general terms and his bibliography is extensive and, possibly, the best feature, with many titles not yet in my Free Banking bibliography, online at www.panarchy.org . - It even mentions my 1976 brochure against Legal Tender, in PEACE PLANS 19a. Richard C. B. Johnsson was kind enough to convert my digital WORD or RTF version of this brochure to Adobe Acrobat & sent me a copy with yesterday’s email. Alas, G. H. he did not try to formulate, like Ulrich von Beckerath did, all the individual monetary rights and liberties. – The Mises Institute offers a review of Hülsman’s book. - I found the text of both by looking through the first 20 pages of my search for Legal Tender with Google, 65,400 results by clicking on the Cached link. - J.Z., 5.10.10.
LEGAL TENDER: I deny the power of the general government to make paper money, or anything else a legal tender. - Thomas Jefferson. - He should have replaced "power" by "right", for, as monetary history has shown all too often, governments have, indeed, usurped the power to make their paper money legal tender, often with sudden and catastrophic results, including galloping inflations and mass unemployment and their consequences: tyrannies, violent revolutions, terrorism, wars and civil wars, genocides. Even if they inflated only slowly, they largely expropriate all creditors in the long run, including all wage and salary recipients and pensioners, apart from all the other damages their inflations caused. Without legal tender and the note issue monopoly no government could inflate all prices and wages, not even with the worst intentions. People would remain free to accept its currency only at its market value or to refuse it and to trade with each other using sound alternative currencies, value standards and clearing avenues. Legal tender, i.e., compulsory acceptance and compulsory value and, usually, also an exclusive currency, amount to monetary despotism and this leads to other forms of despotism. It expropriates and impoverishes. Only a few benefit from it - at the expense of all others. - This power is based on monetary ignorance, prejudices and lack of interest in monetary matters. The "experts" of legal tender, paper value standards and central banking are the priests of the popular religion on money, as Ulrich von Beckerath used to say. J.Z., n.d. & 24.8.02, 18.7.11. - PAPER MONEY, MONETARY DESPOTISM, CENTRAL BANKING, GOVERNMENT, RIGHTS VS. POWER
LEGAL TENDER: If you continue to insist upon being paid in Legal Tender cash then you do thereby either help to make yourself unemployed or bankrupt or lose much of the money values that are owed to you. - J.Z., 18.1.95, 17.4.97.
LEGAL TENDER: It leaves the monopoly issuer in charge of every monetary transaction in a country, not the actual and potential acceptors of all possible and desired payments. It allows all debtors, first of all the government, to cheat all their creditors. The Austrians had a joke on this: "A government never goes bankrupt. Only its creditors do!" - Legal tender power gives the monopoly issuer a second unfair advantage for his issues and disadvantages all creditors correspondingly. With market rated, optional and competing currencies the situation is quite different. The potential acceptors remain in charge regarding the kind of means of payment and value standards they are accepting and at what value they accept them, when, if and to the extent that they do. They are no longer confined to a monopoly money only, if they want to engage in monetary exchanges. No money that was not issued by themselves, has forced acceptance and forced value for them. The consumer or user or hirer of a kind of money remains sovereign or independent. Monetary freedom turns "single convenience relationships" into "mutual convenience relationships", to use Don Werkheiser's terms. "This money may be freely refused and rated by all but the issuer and those of his debtors who are contractually obliged to accept it" - could be one of the inscriptions on competing private and cooperative currencies. - J. Z., 12.8.94, 18.7.11, 18.7.11.
LEGAL TENDER: It means that - in spite of many demerits of any legal tender currency - you may still legally force it upon (in this respect) helpless creditors, in nominal debt payments; also in paying for goods and services you leave them no other option than to increase their nominal prices more or less in correspondence to the depreciation of the legal tender money. This reaction to the prior depreciation (over-issue, possible only through Legal Tender, which outlaws refusal and market rating) is then called Legal Tender - and all to often one or the other group of its victims are blamed for it, whilst those, who pass the laws of monetary despotism, and who put them into operation, are held blameless and are even considered as leaders and heroes by an ignorant and prejudiced population that knows nothing better than monetary despotism and wants it rather more severely enforced than abolished. - J.Z., 24.1.95, 16.4.97, 18.7.11.
LEGAL TENDER: Legal tender acts of a government do not indicate a government's credit but, rather, a lack of it. Only sound, e.g. gold or silver weight accounted and market-rated tax-foundation money could (apart from the immorality of compulsory taxes) mobilize the existing (and enforced) tax credits of a government and could, to that extent, be a credit money. But even then only the government itself should have to accept it as legal tender, at its face rare metal value, no matter how much of a discount it may have suffered in general circulation. One must accept one's own IOU at par. Everything else would be dishonest or fraudulent. - J.Z., 5.9.92, 16.3.97.
LEGAL TENDER: Legal tender allows bad money to drive good money out of circulation. Without it the creditors are free to refuse or discount bad or inferior money. As a consequence, the worse monies are driven out of circulation by the good monies. - This observation, known for centuries, should on its own have been sufficient to throw out legal tender legislation everywhere. Nevertheless, few are aware of its existence and consequences, even among the professional economists. One can browse through hundreds, even thousands of economic textbooks before one comes across a single one with some awareness of the close relationship between legal tender and inflation and of the exclusive currency aspect of legal tender and deflation. - Monographs on legal tender are also rather rare still, although it has done and still does immense wrongs and damages. It is almost as if medical experts were not bothering to study an almost universal disease, like cancer or tuberculosis, in attempts to find cures for them. - J.Z., 10.11.92. 26.4.97, 18.7.11.
LEGAL TENDER: Legal tender amounts to taxation without consent and representation. - J. Z., 10.8.96, 16.4.97. It amounts to a great infringement of consumer sovereignty, of freedom of contract and of genuine individual monetary rights and liberties. - J.Z., 18.7.11.
LEGAL TENDER: Legal tender and the legalized money-issue monopoly do give governments the opportunity to expropriate their subjects through inflation. They requisition earnings and property of their subject citizens or serfs - to the extent that governments do inflate their exclusive and forced currencies - but not only to their own benefit but the short-term benefit of all debtors. To that extent, like protective duties, not just a one-sidedly levied tribute is involved but also a coercive redistribution of property among their subjects, here especially the property rights of all creditors. (As wage and salary recipients the workers and other employees are among these wronged and harmed creditors. All too often do their pay cheques or cash payments limp behind the inflation rate, even though their nominal amounts seem to be the same, even when they are somewhat increased (via trade union "action"), but only nominally, not be their purchasing power. - J.Z., 12.9.02. - I have only ever heard of one case in which a union demanded salary payments determined by a sound value standard. It was a public service union in the U.S. I have not heard about the outcome of this demand. As a rule the union bosses rather welcome inflation, since it gives them a seeming justification for more and more of their anti-industrial union "actions" and power games. In spite of the huge wrongs and damages thus caused, again and again, monetary despotism has remained part of the popular religion on money and even part of the academic teachings on money - with all too few exceptions. This response should not surprise anyone, who sees the numerous wrongs and evils still occurring in this world and yet at the same time the persistence in the belief in an "almighty and benevolent God." or in a supposedly almighty territorial government, the "Big Brother" or "Welfare State". Facts have little influence upon such unfounded faiths, at least not with most people, so far and in the absence of competition from quite free and much better self-managed free , i.e. exterritorially autonomous societies, all self-chosen by all their members, societies which are not impossible but, so far, merely outlawed and not even seriously considered as yet by those, who still think of themselves as genuine "social scientists". - J. Z., 5.9.92, 1.5.97, 18.7.11. - MONEY MONOPOLY & THE EXPROPRIATION OF CITIZENS BY THEIR GOVERNMENTS - THROUGH INFLATION, PANARCHISM, SOCIAL SCIENTISTS, EDUCATION, ENLIGHTENMENT
LEGAL TENDER: Legal tender is a cover name for a great wrong, even a great crime. It would be more accurately and honestly described as a "legal imposition" or "legal requisitioning" or "legal depreciation of a debt" or as a "part expropriation" or "part annulment of a debt", or as a "part repudiation of a debt", corresponding to the degree to which a currency has been depreciated as a result of the legal tender privilege, combined with the money issue privilege, which increases the legal tender power because we are so dependent upon whatever money is available to us. - J.Z., 2. 4. 97.
LEGAL TENDER: Legal tender is not constitutional, lawful, juridical, moral or fair but outright despotic and criminal. - J. Z., 6.7.91.
LEGAL TENDER: Legal tender is the legal prescription for every recipient of monetary payments to accept inferior paper money or coins at its legally fixed value, regardless of its market value. This forced exchange rate for general means of circulation, prescribed for every citizen, must not be mixed up, as happened in Berlin in the discussion of West & East Marks, with a fixed or controlled exchange rate for foreign exchange. The word "Zwangskurs" (legal tender) is far older than 100 years and was always used in the way here described, in royal Prussian edicts, in imperial Austrian regulations and even by Marx. Another use of it proves only ignorance of the terminology of economics. - Ulrich von Beckerath, 25.1.52.
LEGAL TENDER: Legal tender laws form a strong case against monetary authorities (central banks), parliaments, supreme courts and the territorial political voting, representation and mis-education system. Parliaments were originally intended to prevent, not to legalise financial and monetary despotism and other forms of despotism. At least they were expected to thoroughly discuss it and its alternatives and to throw out any despotic measure, once it had done its job, namely immense wrong and harm to millions of people. Instead, these supposedly representative institutions and methods consider such wrongs and evils as self-evidently justified and necessary and do not even question them at all. If, on the other hand, they knew the consequences of their despotic acts, then they would have to classed among the greatest criminals of all. - J.Z., 5.9.92, 24.4.97, 18.7.11.
LEGAL TENDER: Legal tender only towards the issuer! - J.Z., 26.12.88. - But in his own interest and that of his debtors, he might contractually oblige his debtors to accept his notes, too, at par, at any time, from anyone, if someone buys anything from them, at least as long as these debtors do owe something to the issuer. - J. Z., 15.5.97.
LEGAL TENDER: Legal tender? Yes - but only towards the issuer! - J.Z., MFNL 3/4.
LEGAL TENDER: No government proposal more complicated than "This note is legal tender for all debts, public and private" ever works. Than that doesn't work. - Page 280 of: P. J. O'Rourke, Age and Guile Beat Youth, Innocence, and a Bad Haircut. Twenty-five Years of P. J. O'Rourke, Picador, 1996, 341pp, ISBN 0 330 34740 3. - GOVERNMENT BILLS, LAWS, PROPOSALS, PROGRAMS
LEGAL TENDER: One can inflate a currency even if it is not legal tender. - Popular opinion. - Just name a single example of an inflationary effect upon the general price level of a currency that was not legal tender! - See: GOLD, GOLD STANDARD, GOLD PRICES & GOLD INFLATION. - Over-issues are indeed possible, as a result of ignorance among voluntary acceptors and mistakes of issuers. But they cannot, under monetary freedom, increase the general price level, expressed in other currencies or in other and stable value units, any more than your own over-drawn cheques could. - J.Z., n.d., & 2.4.97. - DIS., OBJECTIONS
LEGAL TENDER: The dollar was made legal tender in Cuba in 1993 (Cuba operated under a dual-currency ... www.wordiq.com/definition/Cuba - Cached - To me that is very interesting. So Cuba has two legal tender currencies, side by side. At what exchange rate? – J.Z., 4.10.10. - GOOGLE SEARCH RESULT, DEFINITIONS & CRITICISM
LEGAL TENDER: Some see in legal tender only the honest, juridical and legal possibility of fulfilling debt contracts with the legal tender currency, not the dishonest and coercive and expropriating authority granted to all debtors at the expense of all creditors. It permits them to pay, nominally, in full, while in reality only with a fraction of what they morally still owe. Moreover, legal tender, together with the issue monopoly, prevent sound alternative currencies from coming into existence and justly mediating all the possible and wanted exchanges, which monetary despotism does not and could not mediate justly,. A creditor who would refuse all forms of sound debt settlement offered to him by his debtors would be a rare creditor, indeed. These hypothetical creditors should include a clause in their contracts specifying the payment means or method. The creditors and debtors, to safeguard their interests and rights in such dealings in futures, should insist upon a withdrawal premium in case the debtors cannot provide, at a future date, the particular exchange medium which the creditor insisted upon in the contract. When nothing is agreed upon then the presumption is in favour of a local currency that stands at par with its nominal value. - J.Z., n.d., & 9.5.97, 18.7.11. - Legal tender currencies make not only inflations possible but also deflations, when they are interpreted as or legalized as the only permitted exchange media. - J. Z., 13.9.02, 18.7.11.
LEGAL TENDER: The Continental Congress passed a resolution for legal tender paper money: "Therefore, any person who shall lose all virtue and regard for his country, as to refuse said bills in payment, shall be deemed as an enemy of his country and precluded from all trade or intercourse with the inhabitants of these colonies." - When "honest" Washington dissolved his close to mutinous army, because it had never been paid in time, and fully and honestly and demanded its back-pay, after the War of Independence, he made sure that he ordered its units first into distant regions. There their rightful claims were "paid off", again with fraudulent paper money, with legal tender force, not at the rare metal value of their wage claims. Being thus dispersed and war-weary, too, they did not act, in combination, against the centre of power, demanding payment in full, with paper money accepted - but only at its market value. That was a bad start for the new republic. Washington, although then and thus scheming to cheat his soldiers, and succeeding with his crooked behaviour, had demanded that his own lease-holding peasants pay him in rare metal coins, not in paper money. He knew and appreciated the difference. And Congress did not levy taxes or issue government securities with value preserving clauses, but relied simply on the still more crooked and deceptive taxation via forced State paper money to "finance" this war, never minding the cost of this procedure to the whole economy and that thereby its soldiers were severely short-supplied (Instance: The Valley Forge winter camp) and, probably, the war was this quite unnecessarily prolonged. The English forces did not, as a rule, plunder or "pay" with requisitioning certificates or mere paper promises with a forced "value", but with rare metal coins. That kind of payment difference increased the number of "loyalists" and improved the provisioning of the "loyal" forces and worsened the supply situation for the republicans. - For more such details see especially: G. Holzhauer, Barzahlung in Besetzten Gebieten. (Cash Payments in Occupied Territories.) - J.Z., n.d. & 18.7.11. - ACCORDING TO THE CONTINENTAL CONGRESS DURING THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR PERIOD
LEGAL TENDER: The legal tender acts are wrong and harsh, not "tender" at all towards all creditors. Through them the law does no longer even tries to protect but, rather, expropriates property at the rate at which a legal tender currency is inflated. It says, in effect, to all debtors, including all employers, who owe wages to their employees: We not only permit you but order you to loot your creditors, to the same extent as we have inflated the exclusive and forced currency. - In spite of this, most legal and economic commentators treat legal tender only as if it were a necessary convenience for debtors, or a guaranty for creditors, so that they could be certain that they could pay their debts or be paid with the legal tender medium, supposing it to be a stable and honestly administered currency and value standard. - As if creditors would refuse good or the best means of exchange if they had no legal tender power! - Moreover, most of the "expert" writers do not see or do not state the connection between legal tender and inflation: Without legal tender no inflation! Legal tender makes inflation possible! - Check 100 or even 1000 textbooks - and you will be lucky to find one among them that would point out this connection - quite clearly. Most writers, speakers and thinkers on the subject are conditioned to think only in terms of an exclusive and forced currency - and thus become unable to judge it and to see sound alternatives to it and the monetary natural laws that would apply to these alternatives - The opposite to legal tender is free market rating against value standards that are subject to free individual choice and optional and competing exchange media, i.e. media that can be discounted or altogether and refused and that are also competitively or cooperatively produced and offered, including all forms of free clearing, those via clearing certificates, book entries or only digital signals. Only, by natural rights and the nature of promises, an issuer himself cannot refuse to accept or discount his own exchange media whenever they are offered to him or her in payment. Towards their issuers they do have a natural and just legal tender, in the juridical sense, one that does not have to be imposed by legislation in order to function well enough. - If no particular means of payment has been declared in advance in a debt contract then the juridical assumption might be that any local currency that stands at par with its sound value standard could be used by the debtor to settle his debt with it. This was a proposal by Ulrich von Beckerath, 1882-1969, the one who has explored the monetary freedom options much better than anyone else I know about. - J. Z., 2.10.91, 27.4.97, 8.9.02, 18.7.11.
LEGAL TENDER: The U.S. Constitution stated: No STATE may make anything but gold or silver coins legal tender. - This leads, inevitably, to the question: Is or is the U.S.A. federation a State? - When the constitution was written is was, probably, not considered as a State by itself but merely as a federation of sovereign States and only the States it federated were considered as States. - However, it might be worthwhile to start a test case before the Supreme Court on this - but without great hopes that this Court will be just in its decision. It has not been, very often, in its history, particularly in monetary matters and it has not paid much attention to the literal interpretation of the words of this Constitution but, rather, imposed its own meanings and interpretations - to such an extent that even the clear wordings of the bill of rights have been negated by it. Nevertheless, those who have the time, energy and funds, might attempt this approach there. As an individual rights declaration the statement should be different, too: No one and no organization has the right to declare ANYTHING to be legal tender - except towards itself and towards all its voluntary followers, while they have not yet seceded from it. - J.Z., 16.8.94, 17.4.97.
LEGAL TENDER: The very nature of legal tender turns an exchange medium, which has been given legal tender power, from an EXCHANGE medium into a REQUISITIONING certificate. A free and just EXCHANGE can no longer be mediated by it. For in a free and just exchange no side has an unjust advantage through a legalized monopoly and wrongful coercion. Moreover, monies with legal tender power and a nominal value standard, does no longer have a VALUE STANDARD that deserves the term "value standard". Its value does then become non-standardised, fluctuating, manipulated by stop-and- go policies. Would we call the kg a weight standard when by legal intervention today it might be only 500 grams tomorrow and next month 2 kg? Would a meter be a length measure when, by legal coercion, today it might be declared to be only 50 cm long and in a month 2 meters long? - It is hard to understand how millions of people could allow their governments to thus abolish, fool around or manipulate a value standard that all people in a country are, by legislation, made to depend upon. - J.Z., 27.4.97, 18.7.11, 4.8.11.
LEGAL TENDER: The very passing of legal tender laws is already an admission by governments that they are aware that citizens are not so foolish to indefinitely continue to accept the government's paper money at par with any stable value standard. Thus, from the point of view of governments, they must be forced to do so, the more so, the more rapidly and obviously the government, or its central bank, deteriorates its paper money. In the German Banking Enquete of 1908 it was freely admitted that the government did not expect to be able to finance the next war without legal tender for its paper money. So legal tender was introduced, effectively from 1.1. 1910. It helped to finance two wrongful and extensive wars for two German governments, the German Emperor's and Adolf Hitler's. It also "achieved" the greatest inflation Germany ever had and its greatest depression, each of which cost the German economy about as much as did WW I. Moreover, this monetary despotism and its consequences did lead to the rise of the Nazi regime and to WWII and their consequences. Legal tender leaves the recipients of it only one defensive step, namely to raise the price of his goods, services and labor. Under price and wage controls, combined with force labor and compulsory quota deliveries and rationing, even this defence option is largely abolished. Black market dealings can supply some substitutes but bring their own inherent problems. Illegal or black market monetary actions must also be engaged in, in something like a monetary revolution, using the monetary freedom options, to rapidly and fully overcome monetary despotism. But this requires sufficient interest in and enlightenment on this liberation and security option among the victims of monetary despotism. They are certainly not taught their monetary freedom rights and liberties, and their potentials, in government-run or regulated schools and universities. - J.Z., 1.8.91, 27.8.02, 18.7.11. - INFLATION, UNEMPLOYMENT, DEPRESSIONS, BLACK MARKETS, MONETARY REVOLUTION
LEGAL TENDER: There are so many different false, flawed and correct ideas on aspects of the problem that I do not want to enter into any discussion of them by correspondence. Perhaps they can be gradually and effectively sorted out via digital “argument mapping”, without getting too much lost in the jungle of opinions and writings on the subject. Today I merely loaded down the first 20 pages of 65,400 search results that Google offered and browsed through them, inserting some of these hints here. For the time being, you stick with your definition and I will stick with mine. We have, unfortunately, no effective say on the subject, i.e., cannot change this legislation and jurisdiction for a whole country and cannot even freely exempt ourselves from it, by opting out or seceding. – In the former case, we would try to impose our definition upon a country’s population, which is also wrongful. – We should become exterritorially autonomous only in our own affairs and those we have in common with like-minded people. - J.Z., 4.10.10.
LEGAL TENDER: Through legal tender and motivated by its ever-increasing spending habits and inclinations, territorial governments can force much more of their forced and exclusive paper currencies into circulation than is warranted even by the largest tax-foundations for them. The resistance against taxing the whole economy through inflation is also minimal, much less than against other direct or indirect taxes. Moreover, so far they were always able to wrongfully blame others for the results of their inflations, under the false pretence that they are not the culprits themselves. They even represent their despotic central note-issuing banks as "guardians" for their forced and exclusive currencies. Have there ever been more and worse "guardians" than these institutions? (Compulsory State education or State controlled education did not enlighten its victims in this respect, either. It teaches nothing about monetary freedom but distributes instead publicity releases for the central bank, full of its usual self-serving propaganda. It also wrongly assumes territorialism to be quite rightful, rational and peace-preserving.) Thus they tend to resort to the inflation tax, even more wrongful and destructive than other forms of taxation are and, so far, they got away with it. None of the culprits was so far imprisoned or hanged for his part in inflating, deflating or stag-flating - the national monopolised currency. Citizens are not given class action rights against this abuse, either, and, before government courts they would have little chance in this respect, also before any supreme court whose judges are former government men or government appointees and thus share the usual statist prejudices or readiness to cover up crimes by government officials, under the pretence that this would be "in the public interest" or the "national interest" and that they had thus been committed quite legally. In the U.S., one of the worst inflation taxes was imposed by the "Continentals" currency, given legal tender power and issued to "finance" the War of Independence, while the States and their confederation were unwilling or unable to levy any taxes to give this paper money at least some tax foundation. As a result this war of independence was unnecessarily prolonged and bloody. Thousands of books have been written on it but I know of not even one which considered all the monetary freedom options that could and should have been applied in this as in all other revolutionary or civil war attempts that at least aim at liberation, even when not always practising liberation in every respect. Ulrich von Beckerath produced a manuscript on the proper financing of rightful revolutions. An air raid on Berlin, in November, 1943, destroyed it, together with most of his library. However, some of the ideas of this manuscript were preserved in the book by his friend, Gustav Holzhauer, missing in action in Stalingrad, called: "Barzahlung in besetzten Gebieten." (Cash Payments in Occupied Territories). See PEACE PLANS 532.) - Others can be found in U. v. Beckerath's other writings, those relatively few ones that have been preserved or produced after WW II. Revolutions, too, become unnecessarily prolonged, bitter and bloody when not properly financed and without full monetary and financial freedom this cannot be done. A central banking system would not always be suitable or willing to finance a revolution against a despotic government. But it is often able and willing to finance and indirectly can even cause the establishment of a still more despotic or totalitarian government by a revolution or putsch or temporarily somewhat popular take-over bid against a less despotic or somewhat democratic government. Compare e.g. the rise of Lenin and of Hitler. - Sound tax foundation for tax foundation money (although on the immoral and unsound foundation of compulsory taxes), would limit the issue and circulation of State paper money, reckoning in a sound value standard (not subject to legal tender in general circulation but only towards the tax offices), to the amounts required to facilitate the payment of all taxes. It would distinguish the means of payment from a sound value standard and allow the means of payment to get a discount against its value standard - everywhere except at the tax offices. It would also require that the rate of taxes is expressed in sound value standard units, so that the tax payers, not the government, would benefit by the government issuing notes below par and having to accept them, the next moment, from any tax payer at par. - The money issue monopoly constitutes its own kind of legal tender power. People depending upon monetary exchanges do have to accept the monopoly money even when it is depreciated, for want of anything better being available to them. Thus, under these conditions and due to this fact, governments can issue their legal tender money, a forced and monopolised currency, beyond the amounts required for tax payments. - Once the issue monopoly and the legal tender power are either officially and legally or juridically abolished - or ignored in a monetary revolution, then the government's paper money will be correspondingly depreciated. The government will be less able to unable to collect any more taxes, payable in it and will be unable or less able to force it as the only monetary exchange and value standard option upon a whole country's or population's economy. More and more people would become involved in a tax strike against such a government and would refuse to accept any government paper money at all. Instead, for all their free exchanges they would prefer, instead, whatever sound alternative currencies the market would provide for their exchanges. Only to the extent that a territorial government could still enforce its taxes would they pay it "in its own coin", its depreciated paper money, and would insist that the government would have to accept it at its own and original nominal value, not at the depreciation rate that the government itself has caused. Naturally, the government will then blame the sound new issues for the depreciation of its own paper money. But it had already achieved the depreciation of its paper money by over-issues beyond its sound tax foundation volume before. Now that over-issue would simply become revealed, because the whole economy would no longer be forced to accept it at all and at par and would be liberated to substitute for it the own sound exchange media and value standards. Like other criminals, and their apologists, the government experts, the culprits, here, too, would like to blame "society", i.e., the victims of their crimes, for the crimes committed by the official territorial criminals with involuntary victims. These criminals are likely to assert then that the monies (exchange media) of monetary freedom and their sound and freely chosen value standards, would destroy the government's currency and thus free notes issues and free choice of value standards ought to be suppressed. But what really happens is the removal of a cover-up, of coercion, of a monopoly and of a fiat or forced value. The prior inflation crime and inflationary tribute extraction would become revealed as such. The "emperor" would then be seen as naked, without his forced currency "clothing" or cover. This fraud and deception would finally be ended. The good money would then be free to drive out the bad. Bad luck, but deserved bad luck, for the bad money, without a sufficient sound foundation for it. The sooner all monopolized and legal tender monies are rendered worthless, or totally refused, by all their victims, the better. - However, as exterritorially autonomous panarchists, in their own volunteer communities, the true believers in the monetary despotism of central banking should remain at liberty to choose all the wrongs and mistakes of it for themselves, at their own expense and risk - until they finally wise up sufficiently, individually, and opt out of these messes, too. - J. Z., 4.3.95, 25.4.97, 18.7.11. - Deterrent examples can also be helpful and there are enough utopists and true believers among us so that, among themselves, they will tend to repeat them, at least now and then - for the enlightenment or amusement of other people and, perhaps for their own enlightenment, soon, as well. - J. Z., 8.9.02.
LEGAL TENDER: To force a depreciated paper money upon creditors (e.g. labourers, clerks, pensioners, land lords), at its nominal value, as if it were not depreciated, is an immoral act of legalized expropriation without indemnification. - J.Z., 6.10.85,9.5.97.
LEGAL TENDER: to make that paper currency legal tender for the payment of all debts, both public and private. That would destroy the very basis of freedom and of civilization itself. - Paul Bakewell, Jr., What Are We Using For Money. D. Van Nostrand Co., Toronto, New York, London, 1952, p.196.
LEGAL TENDER: Without legal tender one cannot inflate a currency. - Ulrich von Beckerath, 25.1.52.
LENDING & BORROWING: All becomes different when we change from the money of monetary despotism to the monies of monetary freedom. "When I lend I am a friend, when I ask I am a foe." - Proverb, 16th century. - Here, too, no distinction is made between the money of monetary freedom and that of monetary despotism. - Even if the one who lends you money, his own money issue, is your friend, you will, at least at first, consider this kind of money loan offer with great suspicion. He will have to prove to you that it is liquid enough by being fully usable against him and his debtors for things that you want. When it comes to repaying his loan, it will be much easier to repay it to him in his own money than in legal tender money. It would be still easier for you if you could repay it in your own IOUs or clearing certificates, to mutual satisfaction. - J.Z., 18.4.97. - Not all money is good enough, quite good or rightful money. The ability to pay depends on the kind of means of payment that is used. - J.Z., 18.7.11. - CREDITORS & DEBTORS, CREDIT & DEBT, FRIENDS & ENEMIES, ABILITY TO PAY.
LETS: Michael Linton, founder of LETS, made an appearance for a speech and demonstration of his clearing or accounting system, a while ago, here in Bowral, in the Southern Tablelands of NSW., my own neighbourhood (10 min. by car), trying to gather more support for the local LETS group, then still operating without a computer, perhaps still. They strongly objected to my attempt to distribute some leaflets on monetary freedom to the people who attended, arguing that it would merely "distract" them. The LETS secretary finally persuaded me to desist and promised to deliver all my leaflets to the signed up members. Either he has done this or not. The response was zero. I had wasted a day on writing and photocopying them! I paid for and was promised a copy of their former newsletter - and am still waiting for it. About 30 to 50 people were present. He gave a talk and a playful demonstration of his "green dollar" system, in which those present participated, by fictitious spending and earning. I raised some objections to Michael, which he did not respond to. He merely invited me to join. In vain did I point out that none of the members had goods or services to offer which I wanted and that I had none which they wanted. Nevertheless, he merely insisted that I join. Why should I join for the sake of joining? He expressed high and and almost unlimited aspirations and promises and predictions for his kind of computerised "garage sale and baby sitter exchange" (my description), which has spread in Australia as a result of a prolonged depression, leading to more than 1 million unemployed. But one of the most "successful" LETS exchanges, in the Blue Mountains area, N.S.W., Austrlia, with 6,000 asserted members, could only boast of an annual turnover of $ 30,000. That would be much for one person but came only to $ 5 for the average member. He ignored legislation that would prevent him or other participants from issuing wage payment means and currency that would be suitable for general shopping in the local shopping centre. He did, somehow, assume that these spheres would simply pick up his medium and would be free to do so. But it was interesting to find out from him that he had so far been neither bothered by the FED nor by the Reserve Bank of Australia. Only the revenuers troubled some of the members and wrongly equated one of his green dollars in market value with central banking dollars. Thus even if his system could and would be widely enough adopted, people would still be forced to charge, partly, in central banking dollars to enable them to pay their taxes with them, even upon their "green dollar" earnings. If they earned only "green dollars" this tax demand for government paper dollars would drive them into bankruptcy. His knowledge of and interest in monetary freedom theories and practices was rather limited - and that of most of his followers and listeners was still much more so. He showed no interest at all in any of the monetary freedom information that I have to offer. I expect no breakthrough from him and his circles, even if they become more popular than they are already. "There isn't any more terrible sight to behold than ignorance in action!" - said Goethe. - LETS
LETTER EXCHANGES ON MONETARY FREEDOM: Offered e.g. by LMP on microfiche. - Some of these letters are offered at www.reinventingmoney.com
LIBERATION AT WORK: One of the most formidable tasks before us is the re-kindling of the urge for responsibility and autonomy in industry; to put workers' control back on the agenda. … - Editorial, "Moving With the Times … But Not in Step", ANARCHY 3, May 1961, pp.65-72. - Quoted in: Leonard L. Krimerman & Lewis Perry, Patterns of Anarchy, Anchor Books, 1966, p.122. COOPERATIVES, SELF-MANAGEMENT, WORKERS CONTROL, EMPLOYEE SHAREHOLDING, CAPITAL OWNERSHIP, PURCHASE OF ENTERPRISES, EMPLOYER-EMPLOYEE RELATIONSHIP, PROPERTY INCENTIVES, PARTNERSHIPS, EMPLOYEE-SHAREHOLDING, EVERYONE A CAPITALIST, MONETARY & FINANCIAL FREEDOM.
LIBERTARIAN NEWS: Free Market Money | Libertarian News - www.libertariannews.org/2010/10/12/free-market-money/ - Cached - 12 Oct 2010 – I shall begin with the premise that anything which must be rammed down the public's throat at gun point is bad. Things that are good do not ... - Even gold- and silver coins should not be turned into exclusive currencies. - J.Z., 27.7.11.
LIBERTARIAN PARTY, CALIFORNIA, LPC :: View topic - The Gold Standard - www.libertarians.ca/lpcbb/viewtopic.php?p=5669 - Cached - 15 posts - 4 authors - Last post: 20 Jan 2009. Their argument is that fractional reserve banking is free market money that would emerge in a genuine market. ... - - That seems to be a rather small output for a country which at one stage contained, probably, the largest number of libertarians. - Could they think of nothing still better? - J.Z., 24.7.11.
LIBERTARIANS, FINANCIAL FREEDOM & MONETARY FREEDOM: Most libertarians are only in favour of FINANCIAL FREEDOM, i.e., the right to issue and hold, trade and price financial securities freely, without let or hindrance by governments and without being taxed. Regarding money most favour merely another exclusive or even forced currency, namely a rare metal one, e.g. in form of gold coins and gold certificates based upon gold coin redemptionism, whether fractionally or 100% covered. They do not favour MONETARY FREEDOM, i.e. the right to issue, accept, refuse, discount, hold and use private money tokens, notes, clearing certificates and use clearing accounts, using agreed-upon value standards, keeping these exchange media as stable, honest, useful and acceptable as it is possible and in their own interest and that of their voluntary acceptors and users. - J.Z., 16.10.87.
LIBERTY, RESISTANCE: See RESISTANCE, LIBERATION, REVOLUTION, FINANCING
LIBERTY ASYLUM: Liberty Asylum - www.libertyasylum.com/ - Cached - We need free market money - probably gold and/or silver - run by free market institutions. Government's one role would be to protect private property and ... - Has any territorial government ever been a sufficiently rightful and effective protector of anything? For all too long and quite wrongfully, they have always only preserved their own wrongful powers. - J.Z., 27.7.11.
LIBERTY DOLLAR COIN COMPANY: Free Market Money vs. Government Terrorism. - Free Market Money Vs. Government Terrorism | ChaoticFate.com by qew - www.chaoticfate.com/2011/.../free-market-money-vs-government.h.... - Cached - 11 Apr 2011 –. from ChaoticFate.com by qew. Apr 8, 2011. - 3:06 - ALSO: Free Market Money Vs. Government Terrorism - YouTube - www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFY0X67XcQg - Cached - 11 Apr 2011 – Apr 8, 2011 - Owner of the Liberty dollar coin company who was convicted and accused by the government of economic terrorism for making ... ALSO: Revolutionary Politics::Revolutionary Politics : Free Market Money ... - revolutionarypolitics.tv/.../viewVideo.php?...free-market-money... - Cached - 12 Apr 2011 – Rayzz, Apr 8, 2011.
LIBERTY DOLLAR: The Liberty Dollar is a waste of money. - www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?6084-The-Liberty... - Cached - 11 posts - 5 authors - Last post: 8 Jul 2007. - The Constitution gets legalized ... gold/silver/commodity becomes nationally accepted, free market money producers get involved ... people ... - Let the voluntary participant decide that, as they should about any other monetary experiment. - Let sovereign individuals also decide which constitution, laws, jurisdiction and protective associations they wish to adopt for their own affairs. Territorial nations and governments are wrongfully imposed fictions. They should not have the exclusive right to determine anything for free and peaceful individuals, who would rather do their own things. - At present all constitutions, laws and jurisdictions are wrongfully, because territorially, imposed upon all too many dissenters, even in the best democracies and republics, not to speak of the other States and their governments. - J.Z., 2.7.11.
LIBRARY OF MONETARY FREEDOM TEXTS: It should at least be aimed at, and should include editions in alternative media, especially CDs, DVDs and external HD's. - J.Z., n.d. & 18.7.11.
LIFE CYCLE OF MONEY: The Life Cycle of Money Many are becoming increasingly alarmed by ... - aheadoftheherd.com/1Articles/.../The-Life-Cycle-of-Money.htm - Cached - After a barter / exchange economy is well-established, a society progress to the concept of free market money and a currency system emerges. ...
LIMITED LIABILITY: No limited liability for the issuers of exchange media, but, instead, full responsibility for all their actions, with all their property assets and future earnings, whenever they would not have provided sufficient short term credits with suitable debtors, who have wanted consumer goods and services ready for sale and whose credit repayments would sufficiently withdraw the issues of the bank of issue. As long as note-issuing banks or clearing houses do only discount short term real bills or their modern equivalent, for wanted goods already produced and sold and on the road to wholesalers and the retailers or already on the sales shelves of the latter, such note issuers or clearing houses should never run into difficulties. Those who run such a bank of issue or clearing centre would not have to possess any capital of their own or have some capital subscribed to by others. That would not be necessary for them at all. All they would need is some office space and equipment and ability to pay their note printer or have a credit with him. Their staff should be paid out of the interest and fees they charge for their transactions. Thus no own capital would exist, of the bank of issue, in favour of the bank's creditors, its holders of notes or certificates, when criminal dishonesty or negligence has led it into unsound issues or investments, which were not discovered in time by the voluntary acceptors or by full publicity for its issues and accounts. (I think that this is a hypothetical case only. - Shop foundation can be tested so easily and fast and note exchanges can be made daily and electronic clearing with other issuers can be done almost instantly, so that over-issues would be discovered fast. Competing issuers would also examine its issue and reflux records frequently, in their own interest. In cooperatively owned or run banks the members would be able to choose their own auditors and the bank's customers might send their own. - In the absence of a government guaranty, a redemption fund, a deposit and credit insurance contract and of capital of the bank, the directors should be held responsible even with their homes, furniture, clothing, jewellery, cars and, naturally, all other assets. I do not think that this ultimate backing, in case of bankruptcy only, would be frequently required, for there are other safety precautions that can and ought to be taken for note-issuing banks and other issue centres. E.g., they would grant short term turnover credits only for enterprises in their vicinity, no more than x km away. None of their loans to any customer should exceed a certain percentage of all their loans, i.e. not more than 5-10% at most. They must also be under obligation to use all other means of payment received to buy up their own and this at par, in the open money market. They should know their local customers and their business well enough to distinguish between a sound commercial or real bill and a financial or accommodation bill, i.e. behind which there is no real exchange or turnover. Anyhow, under full monetary freedom many less people will ever be driven to such desperate resorts for free clearing and freedom to issue would permit them to monetise their own capacity to supply and service to a considerable extent, even if only at a discount, to satisfy all their creditors from previous sound trades. Gambling and speculation debts would be another matter. For banks issuing local currencies such abuses would be rare under the publicity they would be subjected to. Gambling casinos and betting shops as well as stock exchanges etc., would only show a very limited readiness to accept local shop currencies in payment whenever there is the least doubt about them or the one who offers them. - J.Z., 17.4.97.
LIMITING FACTORS FOR PRIVATELY ISSUED EXCHANGE MEDIA: They would be optional currencies, not legal tender. Everyone but the issuer would be free to refuse them or to discount them. They would be measured in their value, against a sound value standard and would tend to be accepted only, in most cases, while maintained a par-value with it. The issuers oblige themselves to deliver goods, services and labour for them, at their nominal values. Over-issues would go beyond their capacity and their long term interest in being able to continue to issue their own sound exchange media. Note exchanges with other issuing centres would occur. In them any excess issues by one or a few of them would become obvious. They would have fewer notes of sound issuing centres to offer in exchange. When the notes are not physically exchanged then the clearing exchanges would also show up balances against them. All details of their issues should become publicised (largely on the notes themselves). Acceptance notices and refusals to accept notices should be displayed in all their goods- services and debt payment redemption" centres. Each could easily check the readiness-to-accept foundation in one of the nearest stores and their gold-weight-value by either paying with them for goods and services or labour priced in gold weight units or by buying gold with them at a local agent of the gold market. Local exchange offices would display tables indicating the value of the local currency in terms of other currencies and its own and other value standards. They are the equivalents to tickets and vouchers and as soundly based as these are and as little over-issued, in the interests of the issuer and due to the refusal right of the potential acceptors. - Limited liability should not apply to them. The issuers should not only have to guaranty them with all their ready-for-sale goods, services and labour but, ultimately, should these run out, in case of over-issues (if these are possible and would actually happen), with all their other possessions and all their future earnings. - J.Z., n.d. & 27.5.97, 18.7.11.
LIMITS FOR THE CIRCULATION OF EXCHANGE MEDIA: So many artificial and legalized limits have been set for their issues while the naturally inherent limits for sound exchange media continue to be widely ignored or remaining quite unknown to most people. The false notion that anyone who could issue his own money could thereby cause an inflation – is still wide-spread. It simply ignores the fact that in the absence of an issue monopoly and of legal tender for its notes, they could simply be discounted or altogether refused, while pricing and payments reckoning in sound value standards and paid in sound means of exchange, standing at par to their nominal value, would go on undisturbed, together with the general price level expressed in these sound monies. Only prices paid in the unsound money would be inflated – by the depreciation of such money against sound value standards used by the acceptors. Alternatively, unsound means of payment would be well publicized and thus widely known and altogether refused. Most people are so conditions to “thinking” only in terms of forced and exclusive currencies, that they do not apply the old saying: “It takes two to dance tango!” in this sphere. Here, one who offers a means of payment and one who accepts or refuses it, and if he accepts it, it is still a question whether he will accept it at par or only at a discount. Only the issuers will be obliged to accept their own notes always at par with their nominal value. – In practice, only those will be potential issuers who do, between them, have enough wanted consumer goods and services or debt payment receipts to offer. The others would be treated as if they offered the play money of the game “Monopoly” in payment for real goods and services. – Full publicity for all details of the total issues, the current reflux and the still outstanding notes would be published daily. Any sudden fall in the exchange rate of any well known alternative currency would be extensively publicized. Limited liability clauses for managers and investors in companies that issue their own currencies would be abolished. During the German big inflation of 1914 to 1918 one then well known economist proposed a “gallows currency”, which would lead to the death by hanging of any issuer who was responsible for issuing any currency at par, which later fell considerably in its local exchange rate against its value standard and could not offer sufficient wanted goods and services, accepted by him at par, to withdraw all his notes from circulation. However, I doubt that this kind of deterrence is really required once the monetary freedom options are sufficiently known and practised and the public has become used to deal, carefully and cautiously in several currencies, none of them will be guaranteed by any territorial government and none of which could be forced upon unwilling creditors, who had not themselves issued them. No more could be issued, as a rule, than the potential acceptors would be willing to accept for their short-term spending intentions. That could also be assured by a) turning them into mere clearing certificates or ticket money, or clearinghouse cheques, with their inherent limited circulation period, or b) stamping a period of a limited validity on all the notes. The reflux of these notes, when issued in discounts of sound short-term debt certificates (representing wanted goods and services) would be assured by the repayment obligation of these debt certificates. The fact that only the issuer would always have to accept them at par would limit the readiness of potential issuers to oblige themselves beyond their own delivery capacity of goods and services. – J.Z., 2.11.10. – BANKING PRINCIPLE, REAL BILLS DOCTRINE, SHOP FOUNDATION, TAX FOUNDATION, OPTIONAL MONIES, MARKET RATED & REFUSABLE, AS OPPOSED TO MONOPOLISTIC & FORCED CURRENCIES WITH LEGAL TENDER POWER (COMPULSORY ACCEPTANCE & FORCED VALUE), REFLUX FOUNDATION, DEBT FOUNDATION, ACCEPTANCE FOUNDATION, READINESS TO ACCEPT FOUNDATION, PUBLICITY, GOODS- & SERVICE COVERS FOR MONIES, OPTIONAL CURRENCIES, FREE MARKET MONIES
LINTON, MICHAEL: See: LETS.
LIQUIDITY & ILLIQUIDITY: One could be very liquid for all one's payment requirements if one were free to clear or to pay with one's own clearing certificates or notes, optional and acceptable to others, because they stand at par with their nominal value standard and are acceptable at par for daily wanted consumer goods and services. In the absence of this monetary freedom the same potential issuers could and often would be rather illiquid with regard to rare metal coins, legal tender cash issued by a monopolist like the central bank of issue and to any foreign exchange. With the stroke of a pen (by legislative repeal of monetary despotism) or by the act of a monetary revolution, the existing illiquidity of the victims of monetary despotism (not that of the victimisers and their supporters and favourites) could be turned into a self-initiated, self-managed and self-perpetuated liquidity. One might also call it an "ability to pay" to the extent that one is able and willing to offer wanted goods, services and labour, all at market prices. - J.Z., 16.8.92, 1.5.97. - To that extent there is no limit to the volume of these exchange media, clearing certificates or clearing accounts. - Under free choice of value standards and free market rating for currencies, voluntary acceptance and the refusal option any over-issues are almost impossible or only very limited and temporary. The issuers would still have to accept their issues at par but could no longer issue more notes while they stand below par in local circulation. - J.Z.,18.7.11. - ABILITY TO PAY.
LIQUIDITY CRISES: Even if banks had wrongly and inefficiently invested short term funds on long terms, then, under free clearing options they could arrange for a considerable percentage of the long-term invested funds becoming mobilised, in instalments, through clearing certificates, that could immediately be used against the long term borrowers, at least shortly before any instalment repayments of these borrowers become due and to the amounts of these instalments. - J.Z., 3/97.
LIQUIDITY PROBLEMS: Most liquidity problems, business losses and bankruptcies are caused by governments, by their legislation (hardly any of it deserving the term "law") on taxation, exchange media, value standards, legal tender, credit, capital securities, prices, wages, rents, interest rates, foreign exchange and international trading. - Free clearing or full monetary freedom could avoid most liquidity problems, leaving only those caused by ignorance, miscalculations, frauds and catastrophes. - J.Z., 7.6.91, 26.4.97, 18.7.11.
LIQUIDITY THEORIES: They are so numerous that all should be listed - and confronted with the facts and contrary theories as far as is possible, in order to enable the patient researchers to finally sort the wheat from the chaff. - J. Z., 19.3.97. - Perhaps there are as many spleeny liquidity-, money-, credit-, interest-, banking- and "clearing"-hypotheses as there are religious faiths. This may have happened in spite of the fact that all these hypotheses try to deal with facts instead of dogmas, myths, faiths and imagine beings. - J.Z., 18.7.11.
LIQUIDITY: The owners of ready for sale goods and services should not be made dependent for their liquidity requirements and sales options upon the forced monopoly money of a central bank and whatever more or less misinformed and inapt monetary currency policy and measures it does presently apply. Instead, they should be set free or liberate themselves, e.g. through their own local shop associations, to monetise these short-term turnover-assets themselves. They could pay their employees and suppliers with their notes and clearing certificates. They should also be free to pay their taxes with them, until they can abolish these imposed tributes. Moreover, they should be free and would be advised to make short term loans with their private monies, mainly for wage and salary payments, to other local employers, through their own local bank of issue. Such shop foundation currency, spent or lent out on short terms, would soon stream back into the shops. The shops could use them to repay their loans from their issuing centre and also pay their wholesalers for orders to restock their shelves. The wholesalers could redeem with them their commercial bills, or other short-term debt certificates or account-IOU's, which they had initially used to pay the employers for goods received. Such bills etc., in payment for already produced and sold goods, should be the securities, discounted in the granting of short term loans, especially for wage and salary payments. This basis for banknote issues, as clearing certificates, or "cut up" small bills, in convenient denominations, to substitute, temporarily, large commercial bills, not in money denominations, was at best called the pure "banking principle" or note issue upon the " Real Bills Doctrine" (RBD) and was long seen, at least by some genuine economists, as an essentially self-limiting and self-liquidating turnover process, especially while all prices were marked in gold- or silver- weight units and no banknotes had forced acceptance and a forced value - except towards the issuer. Alas, in most people's minds and in that of most modern economists, too, this system was and is still mixed up with notions of the currency principle and thus even for sound banking principle banknotes a threefold security was demanded, namely 1.) redemption into gold by the issuer, upon demand of the note holder, 2.) sound or real commercial bills for mere turnover transactions and 3.) shop foundation, although objectively and economically, such triple convertibility, cover, redemption or clearing was not necessary or even wanted in most cases. Well, ignorance and prejudices on this subject predominate even in our times still. - Once the suppliers of consumer goods and services are legally and juridically free to make themselves monetarily liquid, in this way, and are sufficiently informed on this option, then, indirectly or directly, they will make liquid their suppliers, tradesmen, and landlords, too and the local employers and their employees, most of them customers of their shops. - The above circulation option is a traditional one but not the only possible one. Other potential local issuers exist in most local centres of population, production, transport and trade and they could also form their issue-, payment- and clearing communities, in parallel or merge with the shop association bank, as they please. - The local market would accept as many sound competing currencies as it would find convenient enough to handle. - Those less convenient for general local circulation would have to be discounted by those issuing more convenient local currencies - and then, by these centres of issue, placed into the hands of those who have something to pay to these other and limited note issuers. - J.Z., 2.5.97, 12.9.02, 18.7.11.
LITERATURE ON MONEY: Most such writings are describing or advocating, alas, just a variation upon monetary despotism, a centralised and exclusive and authoritarian system, supposedly ideal, imposed upon all people in a territory, via a monopoly and legal tender legislation. Or they do simply take it for granted, as if it were natural, rightful or necessary. Diverse authors of this kind just want to run their kind of monetary despotism somewhat different from that of most others. - Who is to blame for this? The monetary freedom advocates themselves have not yet got their act fully together. They have so far failed even to provide e.g. a complete bibliography, abstracts and review service, far less have they provided all their texts in affordable editions, upon demand or some handbooks on monetary freedom, explaining all the terms, concepts, practices and techniques, experiences and various traditions sufficiently. I have gone further in that special publishing direction than anyone else has so far, to my knowledge, but in the past I could afford to do this only on microfiche, which most people refuse to utilise. - (Now I could afford to put much of this onto a disc, after scanning in all these texts, but so far I have not found the time and energy to do this for tens of thousands of pages or even to so combine, properly, all such texts which I or others have already digitized. Copyrights claims by some are another obstacle. They could, however, be overcome, at least somewhat, through abstracts and reviews. All too many people still believe that a "uniform" currency with the widest possible circulation area would already thereby be ideal. They manage to forget that almost all such currencies over the last 100 years have been mismanaged, country-wide, by inflations, deflations and stag-flations - and that they have helped to finance all too many wrongful regimes, wars and uncounted wrongful and irrational government interventions. Such monopolized and forced currencies had to be severely protected against competition from the better ones of full monetary freedom, which free people would have found much more acceptable, useful and reliable. - J.Z., 28. 8.02, 19.7.11.
LITERATURE ON MONEY: Mostly, when one browses in it, not monetary wisdom is predominant but, rather, dogmatism, prejudices, errors, wrong observations, false hypotheses and misunderstandings, not only by the dozens but by hundreds to thousands. Its quantity is so large and so few truths are contained in most books on this subject, that the errors etc. ought to be extracted, alphabetized and confronted with the best refutations so far found, to produce, gradually, a useful encyclopaedia on the subject. When scanners and computers are used for this and, at least, few dozen people collaborate much on this project, such a work could be compiled rather fast and could be frequently supplemented and updated. No one has time and energy enough to peruse all the relevant literature on his own and deal with it in this way. - J.Z., 16.3.97. - Klaus Falke, with his www.monetary-freedom.net/ has made a start in this direction but, unless he gets sufficient support, he may give up in frustration, after having expended already much money, time and energy in this effort. - J.Z., 19.7.11. - HANDBOOK ON MONETARY FREEDOM
LOAN CERTIFICATES & EXCHANGE MEDIA: See: APHORISMS ON THE MONEY PROBLEM.
LOAN FUND CREATION: When any bank, somewhat rationally and responsible run, grants a short, medium or long-term credit, in form of a deposit entry, it does not draw or suck that deposit out of thin air, but takes all its other deposits, already on-hand, into consideration and uses them, anticipating the repayment by the debtor, when due, plus its profit and that of the other depositors, who, in effect, provided this loan, only mediated by the bank. Nor does it provide this credit for thin air but only for a sufficient security, which will assure the repayment, in most cases. Admittedly, the timing is often done wrong in practice, misleading the participants and establishing, quite unnecessarily, considerable repayment risks, at least for crisis times. But precisely the mistake of long-term investing the short-term deposits of others, about which critics do rightly complain, indicates already, contrary to the other dogma (thin air transformation into effective and even inflationary deposits) that deposits of others ARE used, or abused, quite wrongly and irrationally, instead of using all or some of the available thin air. One cannot have it both ways. - Depositors with current account deposits expect their accounts to be used by the bank for the provision of short term liquidity to others. If not, they would just hire a bank's safe-deposit facilities and expect to have to pay for this service, instead of sharing in the bank's interest received, when lending out some of these funds. Otherwise they could not earn any interest on their deposits and would be subjected to bank charges for safely hoarding the deposits. If a bank could endlessly multiply deposits, short-term, medium-term, long-term, creating them out of thin air, it would never run a timing risk at all. It would not need any deposits by other its clients. Then it would not need any capital, either. It could "create" it - simply out of "thin air", possibly even more where the air is relatively thick, e.g. at see level. Why then should it bother to attract deposits, at relatively high interest rates? Why should it bother to advertise for depositors at all? Then it would not need them at all. Thin air would be enough as its raw material or capital. It could "transform" it and lend it out and collect interest on it! - How unrealistic this whole notion is, is already indicated by the term used: thin air. Thin air is thinner than ground level air. Mountain-top air, cloud level air and the air jet liners cruise in, is relatively thin compared with sea level air, but most banks are not located high up in the air. Do the various "social credit" "thinkers" really propose that the nefarious bankers first capture such "thin air" and then turn it into their kind of paper gold and paper profits? One of them assured me once that hardly two Social Credit advocates, among their, probably, tens of thousands, do fully agree with each other. - If any bank really could "create" deposits and make loans from them, then it could also create medium and long term deposits "from nothing". It could make itself entirely independent from savers and depositors. Why should it then even bother asking its debtors to repay loans - since then it could simply "create" new deposits and spend them? - Why should it engage in the banking business at all, rather than merely creating its kind of credit and money or deposits from nothing and merely enjoy spending them? There is no reality or intelligence behind this notion at all. It is the equivalent to a religious spleen or a superstitious notion. - J.Z., 3/97, 19.7.11. - CREDIT CREATION? DEPOSIT CREATION? MONEY CREATION OUT OF THIN AIR? DIS.
LOCAL CURRENCIES, EXPLORATION FOR THEIR ISSUE POTENTIAL: One should not only examine the legal and public opinion obstacles but also the technical and economic obstacles and opportunities that do exist in any locality. - For example, modern mines, established by foreign companies in remote areas of Chile, where a ready workforce may not have existed before or only some subsistence economy villagers and while Chile's government practised only central banking, with all its flaws, had to consider attracting, keeping and paying their employees in alternative ways. They did so by providing very well supplied cantinas or general stores, with much more choice in competitively priced consumer goods, than existed in local stores, if there were any of these available at all. They kept these shops well stocked and, although nominally paying their employees in government paper money, allowed wage advance payments or small credits payable in warrants upon these stores. These private means of payment were called "fichas". The total of these advances and credits were later and soon deducted from their paper money wages. Thus the workers had a wider choice of consumer goods than they would otherwise have had, and this at lower prices, too, and the firms had their suitable wage payment means. Otherwise, their workers might, e.g., have had to travel long distances, to reach a town and many might there have e.g. drunk or gambled their earnings away or would have been robbed and not returned at all. No one was forced to accept these "fichas", anticipating his paper money earnings in this way or to take out small loans (advances upon their wages or salaries) in these local media of their own employer - but many to most preferred to do so. It gave them a better lifestyle than they had before and minimum transaction costs. This practice went on at least for decades in the 20th century. I do not know to what extent it is suppressed now, nor whether e.g. the government's paper money was also accepted at these cantinas or stores and at what rate, if it was severely inflated. - Ideally, the workers should have established a consumer coop and issued these fichas themselves, in loans to the employer, for wage payment means, taking in exchange the bills of the recipients of the ores produced at the mines. And with these they could have restocked the consumer coop stores from the wholesale markets, just like their employers did for their canteens. - What were or are the total local turnovers? Does a sufficiently great variety of local shops exist? How many consumer goods and services have still to be obtained from shops in other localities? To what extent are local shops stocked by local producers? How much of all present trading is local and how much is foreign trade? What potential is there for increasing local production and local trade - and "foreign trade" with other localities or nations? How many local people are unemployed or under-employed? What sales difficulties exist for local service and goods providers? What is the total value of the ready-for-sale local goods, services and labour? To what extent could that total be increased, in the short term, medium and long term? One should also enquire about the number of credit applications that had been made by locals, at the nearest conventional banks, and how often they were refused credits and why. To what extent is the local community dependent upon foreign trade, tourist trade, weather, the seasons? Are there sufficient transport and communication facilities and energy plants? How high is the tax burden? How well or badly is the local community supplied with government paper money and coins and government bank credit? Etc. No advanced monetary exchange system can be established in a vacuum, e.g., in a desert or a jungle, with no economic opportunities and people able and willing to work at market rates. Local mores and customs are also important. When sharing with non-productive relatives or friends remains a counter-productive habit, destroying individual initiative, nothing much can immediately be done for such people with the options of economic liberty. They have at least to be able and willing to work in a division of labour process and largely for the benefit of themselves and their nuclear families. Otherwise the incentives for continuing productive efforts and the accumulation of productive capital are insufficient. In areas where no other production would be as profitable as the growth of drug plants, their processing and sale of drugs, and thus subject also to the powers of the drug war campaigners and of the local warlords, not much positive other economic development can readily take place, not even under full monetary and financial freedom. - J.Z., 6.4.93, 27.5.97. - Richard R. H. Timberlake, Jr., has written at least one article on such issues: Free Market Money in Coal Mining Communities, 8pp, in THE FREEMAN (now online), Oct. 1989, citing many references. I reproduced it on microfiche, in PEACE PLANS 1248 and was surprised how many such issued occurred, even in North America. They come to tens of thousands in all and some may still be continued in our times. - J.Z., 19.7.11.
LOCAL CURRENCIES, MONETARY DESPOTISM & MONETARY REVOLUTIONS: Governments have managed to prevent or suppress sound, because market-issued and market-rated and market-secured competitive local currencies and to replace them with their exclusive, non-competitive, coercive and centrally mismanaged currencies, that are "local currencies" only in the national sense. This they still consider to be a rightful and valuable achievement rather than a wrongful and harmful monetary despotism. They even try to combine several of these despotic impositions into a single one, like the Euro-currency. Left to their own merits, if any, and to the judgement of sovereign consumers and competitors, their bad monies would soon be driven out by good alternative currencies. However, legalized monetary despotism has so far prevented that and it has so far nowhere and permanently been overthrown by a monetary revolution, one that would have introduced full monetary freedom. In an age where revolutions and insurrections become more and more frequent and bloody, the bloodless monetary revolutions, which could make other pro-freedom revolutions much easier, and which could solve many problems which mere political and social revolutions so far failed to solve, should finally be seriously considered, prepared for and then realised. - J.Z., 19.8.92.
LOCAL CURRENCIES: Any alternative new local currency, competitively issued and accepted, with or without permission by the local, State or federal government, might, initially, adopt the same value standard that the central bank of the country uses or abuses, to facilitate the introduction of the new local currency. Unless, of course, the main initial attraction of the new local currency would be that it offers a much better value standard right away than the inflated official currency does. However, the new currency should never promise cover by or redemption in the government currency but merely readiness to accept the own local currency, for the time being, at par with the government’s currency. Later, just like the value of e.g. the governmental US, Canadian, Australian and New Zealand dollars came to differ in value, and since these local currencies would be free market and competing currencies, not exclusive and forced ones for a whole country, they would get different exchange rates, especially against the currencies of central banks, even if they still were to use the term dollar for their value standard. A full emancipation from the government’s forced monopoly currency would require that they do adopt another and better value standard, also another term for it and not only a quite different appearance for their notes, coins and clearing certificates. Computers even in small shops would make pricing, reckoning and accounting in several different currencies relatively easy. To settle with the existing territorial tax authorities would be more difficult as long as individual secessionism remain suppressed and also exterritorial communities of volunteers, neither an ideal declaration of all genuine individual rights and liberties has been adopted and no ideal militia of volunteers, exclusively for the protection of these rights, to the extent that they are claimed by new and competing communities for their members) has been organized and trained. (The various welfare “rights”, claims and entitlements that some of these communities grant to their members they would have to pay for and protect themselves as best as they can, just like religious communities have to bear the costs of their rituals and dogmas.) Naturally, these local currencies would not have any legal tender power in general local circulation. Only the issuers, and, by contract, their debtors, would always have to accept them at par with their nominal value. Unless, of course, a particular local currency would be made so widely acceptable, that it would be locally quite generally accepted and become, at least for the time being, a customary local currency, for which the customary acceptance is always assumed to exist, unless something else is expressly stated in a contract or by a corresponding sign in sales premises. Then and only to that extent would it be, locally, a juridical or legal tender currency in effect, even if it has not been formally declared or decreed to be one. To impose it in the latter way would be another act of monetary despotism. Unless, of course, such an act or juridical decision is only applied among the volunteers of an exterritorially autonomous community or within a private payment community which imposes such a duty upon all its members. At least in the transition period to quite free societies, Local, State and Federal governments might still demand that their taxes, rates and other charges are paid to them in the currency they have issued or adopted. Those subjected to such tribute payments would have to purchase these currencies on a free market for them. If they only earn their incomes in local currency then they would become more inclined than they are so far to consider their tax strike options for themselves and other local people. They are then obviously able to run their own business without government “help”. – The first and later issues of local currencies should be very cautiously done. The daily exchange rate of it against other currencies should be constantly watched. At the first sign of a discount in local circulation (not in other districts or countries, where they would, quite naturally, develop their own foreign exchange rate, i.e. have a lower purchasing power than they have in their local issuing sphere, which would help to steer them back fast to where would be accepted at par with their nominal value) further issues should be stopped until that discount has disappeared. The discount will speed up the payment of debts to the local issuing centre, with the notes discounted in general local circulation and thus the discount will tend to be short, disappearing with the paid in discounted notes, all paid in to the issuer or his debtors (at least up to the value of his debt) at their full nominal value. – J.Z., 22.6.10. - PANARCHISM
LOCAL CURRENCIES: Either there will be a single major issuer, a large department store or a shopping centre association, then no major problems are to be expected with such an issue, apart from the legal and juridical ones and general ignorance and prejudice. However, when the scope and penetration of a local currency experiment is much smaller then the danger exists that e.g. one general store becomes the major acceptor for the currency issued and that it would have difficulties in using the local currency received in its local and other payments. Thus such participants should be free to declare right away that they would limit their daily acceptance of a newly issued local currency to certain total amounts only, let us say $ 50 or $ 500, at least until the new issue has become a widely accepted local currency. Then such potentially very valuable and even essential participants will not be forced to shoulder too much of the risk of the new issues and will not be turned off, very early, from participating in such an experiment. Anyhow, they would, probably, be better off by issuing their own token money, their own ship currency, as far as they can, completely under their own control and that of its voluntary acceptors. - The resistance among local wage and salary recipients against the new currency will also be reduced if they remain free and are even asked to declare how much of their wages they are willing to accept in the local currency. Sometimes and initially, only e.g. Christmas bonuses, may, be paid in a local currency or wage increases. Only in extreme cases will an employer be forced to declare to his employees: My situation is such that I have either to dismiss all of you and close my business down, or you will permit me to pay you, in full, in the newly issued local currency. - It will also be necessary to establish an exchange bureau, in which the local currency is market-rated and exchanged against the established national and perhaps even some foreign currencies. Every case of a discount of the local currency - while the shops of the associated issuers remain fully stocked with wanted goods and have idle service capacity at competitive prices, would then lead to extra sales for them, as if they had all started a discount sale, due to people buying the discounted local currency at this exchange and using it for their local shopping. One of the first steps of local businessmen, examining this option as a self-help measure, would be to find out their combined offers for sale and with this their potential issue limit. - J.Z., 3/97. -INTRODUCTION, TRANSITION PERIOD
LOCAL CURRENCIES: Freedom to issue local currencies, official, private and cooperative ones, all competitive and optional, i.e., without legal tender (except towards the issuer) and using agreed-upon alternative value standards, if they are desired. They are to be freely market-rated against their own chosen value standards - and all others and all details of their issue and reflux, readiness to accept foundation and short term securities, as their cover redemption and clearing backing, ought to be sufficiently publicised. In the main, they should be based upon the local goods and services, offered e.g. by local shopping centres and public utility companies, like gas, electricity and water and sewage services, transport facilities, like those of local bus companies, petrol stations, tradesmen- and professional services, insurance services, and even on local rates, to the extent that these are for wanted local services, by voluntary customers. Otherwise, all tax-foundation monies are, essentially, based upon wrongful because imposed tribute levies and, as such, they are as wrong as these levies are. Voluntary contributions, as membership fees for local communities of volunteers only, are quite another matter and can lead to contribution-based local note issues, all without legal tender power, without a monopoly and using an agreed-upon value standard. Local currencies could and should be issued for all local ready-for-sale potentials which are immediately or very soon available and to the extent that these are locally wanted. Clearing and note-exchange arrangements should be aimed at with other, especially neighbouring communities, which do also issue local currencies. A common clearing centre might be established for a few to many local currencies, taking the modern mobility of employees and shoppers into consideration. A local currency in a tiny village like Berrima, N.S.W., Australia, where I live, which is, mostly depending upon tourist trade, and on jobs and shops in three nearby small towns, Moss Vale, Bowral and Mittagong, could not circulate much in form of a local currency. However, Berrima Tokens might be attractive to note and coin collectors and at little cost to the issuers could bring them a relatively high return. - A shop association embracing the whole district, especially these three small towns, could achieve, under monetary freedom, a considerably large issue of shop currency, amounting to many millions every months to every quarter, locally accepted at par with its nominal value, while in other districts it might get a foreign exchange rate, determined by a free market for exchange media. - J.Z., 19.7.11.
LOCAL CURRENCIES: HOW MANY DIFFERENT ONES COULD COME TO EXIST SIDE BY SIDE? Firstly, as many as there are localities with shopping centres. But that would not confine us to one local currency in each locality. E.g., local rate, gas, electricity, school, rent, hospitality, entertainment, tradesmen's and professional's note issues, transport and petrol monies, might add to the variety. In general one could only say that the number of various notes locally accepted would depend upon how many varieties the potential note acceptors, holders and users would find convenient to use. No one has the right to make prescription to others on this matter. Free enterprise offers and sovereign consumer choices, i.e., the local individuals, will decide this matter for themselves, to their own advantage, just like they decide about their investments in mortgages, bonds, fixed deposits, shares or other securities, their consumer purchases, their reading, clothing, foods, drinks, entertainment, jobs etc. - J.Z., 24.4.97.
LOCAL CURRENCY POTENTIALS: What kind of local currency or alternative or competitive local currency would you be able to issue, alone or in association with others, if you were free to do so? Up to what amounts could you issue it, for a period from 1-3 months, judging by your current turnovers for forced and exclusive currencies and the business expansion that you consider possible for you, once sales are no problem for you any longer? Up to what percentage of your total money income would you accept in payment in local currency? What percentage of your ready-for-sale goods and service capacity could you use for local currency issues? How often do you turn over your total stock in goods and your service readiness now, within a year or a month? Naturally, the own judgement would not be final in this respect, rather that of the local community would be or that of individual local acceptors or that of the local shop association acting as a common note issuer for its members. Have you got local debtors who would gladly accept your own notes, to enable them to pay their debts to you? What kind of value standard would you use for your notes and prices, if you were free to choose among all of them? Would you like to become free to pay your local-, State- and federal taxes as well - in your own issues? Should you put pressure upon your local government to accept your local issues in its rates and use them for local payments, as far as it can, at least while your issues are at par in the general local circulation? Would you be prepared to pay a bit more if you could use your own currency in payments? How much of your total spending is local spending? - ABILITY TO PAY, USABILITY OF LOCAL CURRENCY. - J. Z., 26.3.93, 27.5.97, 19.7.11.
LOCAL SOLUTIONS: Mercantilist notions are not only found on the national level, as now expressed by "Buy Australian" or indirect appeals stating on goods: "Australian made". We can find them on the smaller levels of local communities, even within families. Alas, from these primitive self-help notions there seems to be a large step, one that most people, apparently, are unable to take, towards local businessmen issuing their own money, based on whatever goods and services they have to offer between them, and spending it for wages and supplies, granting short term loans with it, and finally redeeming it by their sales. Such money would, obviously, stay, mostly, locally. Even it were taken away, for a while, it would have nowhere elsewhere that it could be used as ready money, so it would soon return to the locality where it had been issued. - Which is the optimal size for such local currency areas? Let the issuers and acceptors decide that for themselves. Whatever money would be perceived to be better would drive out the bad or not so good ones. Naturally, the acceptance, evaluation, refusal, issue, market rating and the choice of value standards for such private exchange media and for the pricing of local goods, services, etc., should all be quite voluntary - with one significant exception: The issuers should not be allowed to refuse to accept their own notes or to accept them only at a discount. Every debtor has to recognize his own IOUs in full. - Alas, in monetary history, there were cases where even this simply common sense law was ignored. - J.Z., 8.3.93, 23.5.97. - LOCAL BUSINESS, LOCAL OWNERSHIP, KEEP THE MONEY IN YOUR TOWN, DON'T BUY FROM OUTSIDERS, KEEPING THE MONEY IN THE COUNTRY OR LOCALITY, BUY AUSTRALIAN, BUY AMERICAN, MADE IN GERMANY, PROTECTIONISM, DIS., ABILITY TO PAY, DIS.
LOCAL SPENDING BY LOCAL PEOPLE FOR LOCAL GOODS & SERVICES: Keep your money in your town!" Free consumer choice and bargain hunting, "imports from foreigners", other localities or even streets or businesses, are to be sacrificed, supposedly in the "public" interest, out of local patriotism, for the benefit of local businessmen and manufacturers. It amounts to protectionism vs. free trade on the smallest scale. "Keeping the money in the family" is a similar effort, on a still smaller scale. The resolution by an individual not to earn and spend any money at all, if he can help it, and, rather, laboriously to try to become entirely self-sufficient, and self-supporting, would be the smallest effort of this kind. (It would, logically, go to the ridiculous length of digging and processing one's ores oneself and forging the own tools with them, although Leonard E. Read effectively pointed out that no one can make a pencil or produce a can of beans quite on his own. - J.Z., 16.9.02.) - On the national and economic "theory" level it has been "graced" by the term "autarchy". Historically, it was a large feature in mercantilism, which tried to accumulate money (made of rare metal) in a country and to outlaw spending outside of it. (Many to most economists of the Austrian School of Economics still ignore that this effort indicated an at least subjectively perceived shortage of money. (Those, who deny the possibility of deflation, because they believe in a perfect and immediate adaptation of all prices to any reduced quantity of the means of exchange, still manage, to a large extent, to overlook this experience - among many others. - J.Z., 19.7.11.) The prices had not and never did fully, sufficiently or fast enough adapt to a reduced availability of rare metal coins - or other excusive currencies - coins to make sales of goods, services and labour quite easy, i.e., preserve the ability of everyone involved in free exchange to pay his way. - J.Z., 19.7.11. - If they had been, the efforts of the Mercantilists would never have become popular. - J.Z., 16.9.02.) - The nature of money and the mutually beneficial effects of all free exchanges are never sufficiently considered by all such superficial views. If local spenders really wanted "their" money to come back to them, then they should consider and use their own monetary freedom options: No money is "their" money, in a true sense, unless it is issued by them. Furthermore, the only basis upon which many to most people could issue money of their own, or some other useful forms of IOUs or clearing certificates or accounts, are their own ready-for-sale consumer goods and services, including labour. - J.Z., 19.7.11. Obviously, to the extent that they monetarily mobilised or liquidified these assets of theirs, e.g. in convenient goods warrants and service vouchers, i.e., in standardised and typified forms, in money denominations and using a good enough value standard, all their local and even "foreign" spending would be returned to them, rather soon, to be redeemed by them in their goods, services or labour. - If they only earn government legal tender money or exclusive silver or gold coins or redeemable rare metal certificates, then they will mostly try patriotic appeals, largely in vain, to induce currency holders of this kind from not taking up better bargains offered to them outside of their local communities. Such monies, when spent by them, will not always, completely or fast enough return to them. Only when the local community would, by outside spending, become so depleted of exchange media, that a local deflation would force its prices down, to emergency sales levels, would a strong incentive arise for outsiders to purchase there. Such fluctuations could be avoided by the competitive issue of sound local currencies. - J.Z., 8.3.93. (Law of fluctuating gold-quantities. That finally a kind of payment balance will be restored again, at least temporarily, is not a sufficient consolation for all those, who have payment difficulties in the meantime, which hit both, debtors and creditors rather hard. - The exclusive and forced currency system does not even work well enough when confined to a rare metal currency like gold coins and their certificates, not even under the "law of fluctuating gold quantities". For they not only fluctuate in different countries at different times, but the time required, for its "natural" adaptations, may be considerable and, in the meantime, corresponding currency famines can result. Dynamic and negative feed-back factors are involved. Among them and still largely overlooked is the effect of falling prices, as opposed to fallen prices. - The former discourages buyers or induces them to delay purchases. The latter encourages immediate spending. - J.Z., 16.9.02. - DIS., ABILITY TO PAY, PROTECTIONISM, AUTARCHY, MERCANTILISM, LOCALISM, PAROCHIALISM, DEFLATION
LOCATION LIST OF RARE MONETARY FREEDOM TEXTS: Towards private loan arrangements and future publishing options on cheap alternative media, today especially CDs, DVDs and external HDs. - J.Z., 19.7.11.
LONG, RODERICK, A Note on Credit Institutions in a Free Nation - Corrects and clarifies Roy Halliday's article Money, Banking and the Gambling-Stakes Paradign for Loan Collateral and Labor Contracts. The revised version of Roy Halliday's article is The Gambling-Stakes Paradigm for Loans and Labor Contracts. - Roy Halliday, in section on Free Market Banking.
LONG TERM LOAN CERTIFICATES ETC. AS CURRENCY? See: APHORISMS ON THE MONEY PROBLEM, ASSET CURRENCIES, GOVERNMENTAL DEBT CERTIFICATES AS COVER? DIS., ISSUE PRINCIPLE, COVER, REFLUX, ACCEPTANCE FOUNDATION, READINESS TO ACCEPT FOUNDATION, CURRENCY
LONGEVITY RESEARCH & FINANCIAL FREEDOM: Long-term and high risk investments, like anti-aging research, do at least require value-preserving clauses and exemptions from all taxation. Under stable competing currencies and full monetary freedom as large and speculative private investments would also become possible, with the extra incentives that early and large investors would have a priority claim to all effective treatments that are found. All such research and its finance should also be taken out of the hands of politicians and bureaucrats, because they would tend to use its finding mainly to further their addiction to power and monopolies. - At least in the developed countries close to the majority of working people should become able and willing to contribute e.g. at least $ 50 p.a. to such research, to possibly benefit themselves still or at least their children and grandchildren. - J.Z., 19.7.11.
LOST SOUL BLOG: Lost Soul: Banking Without Regulation - 3 Lessons from History - www.lostsoulblog.com/.../banking-without-regulation-3-lessons.htm... - Cached - 16 Jan 2010 – Fresh historical evidence, of the sort provided in this book, usefully complements the several other studies of free-market money and ... - This one sounds promising. - J.Z., 24.7.11. - HISTORICAL EXPERIENCES
LOVE OF MONEY: A good deal of misunderstandings arises from the persistent misreading of the proverb which speaks of the "love of money", for it is, of course, the love and not the money which is the root of all evil. - E. Benn, Happier Days, p.97. - I would rather say that it is the love of the money of monetary despotism which causes major evils, not the love of the money of monetary freedom. If people loved the latter then they would have, long ago, provided themselves with just enough of it for their purposes. - If we really came to understand the money of monetary despotism, then we would no longer love it but despise it and reject it at every opportunity and insist upon providing ourselves with something just, harmless and immensely beneficial to ourselves: the monies of monetary freedom and the capital that full financial freedom could and would provide. Then and therefore, being no longer dependent upon a monopoly money and short supplied with it, and no longer under-supplied with capital, we would no longer be greedy for it, either, in the same way as we are not greedy, as a rule, for tickets. Nor would we have to work so hard or long and with so many uncertainties and so heavily taxed and exploited by xyz monopolies, for the monies of monetary freedom and the capital assets of financial freedom. Through both liberties the rest of the economy could be liberated fast. - J.Z., 25.4.97, 19.7.11. - DIS.
LULU.COM: free market money - Lulu.com - www.lulu.com/browse/search.php?&fKeywords=free+market... - Cached - Find, shop and buy products on free market money at Lulu.com, where anyone can publish and sell products on free market money.
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MACHINES & UNEMPLOYMENT: Do machines in your house make you unemployed or do they merely allow you to do more, faster, better and easier? - If you think that they make you unemployed, why not try to cut your lawn with nail scissors? - J.Z., 21.4.01. - AUTOMATION, TOOLS, Q., UNEMPLOYMENT, JOBS, FULL EMPLOYMENT, DIS.
MACHINES: Do Machines Destroy Jobs? The answer is: Yes, machines destroy jobs. In fact, the purpose of the machines is to do the work formerly done by labor. And if a machine does not replace human labor, the making of that machine has been a waste of scarce resources, including the skilled labor that invented and constructed the machine in the first place. - Usually, however, this relationship between machines and jobs is expressed more softly. Machines decrease the costs or production, thus permitting lower prices to consumers. Machines are helpful to mankind because they can do the boring and repetitive tasks, thus freeing human laborers for the more interesting aspects of production. Both statements are true, of course. But in every case, the purpose of a machine is to replace human beings, and wipe out existing jobs. That is good, however, not bad. That process is the basis of all human progress. - In various of his essays and especially in "Human versus Mechanical Labor", Frederic Bastiat clearly saw this relationship between machines and jobs. And as usual, after pointing out "what is seen", he also looked behind popular opinion for "what is not seen". - Bastiat begins with a machine that replaces perhaps 100 workers, i.e., the machine can produce as much as 100 workers without machinery. Now, if it is true, continued Bastiat, "that invention (machines) and labor (jobs) cannot expand except at each other's expense, then we can expect the following result: where we find the most machines, we can expect to find the fewest workers." - Machines Increase Jobs. - But it seldom works out that way, said Bastiat, and he offered the textile districts of England as one of many similar examples. Thousands of new jobs were available there that were not available before the advent of the machines. Instead of destroying jobs, machines actually cause a net increase in jobs. - Dean Russell, Government and Legal Plunder. Bastiat Brought Up to Date, FEE, May 85, ISBN-0-9106614-70-9, 116pp, p.85/86. - Provided, that the additional production can be easily enough sold. This does, often, require full monetary and financial freedom, also other economic liberties. - J.Z., 26.4.11. - JOBS, EMPLOYMENT, PROGRESS, UNEMPLOYMENT, DIS.8
MACHINES: Finally there was enough capital (machines) available to enable a man to produce enough to put his children into schools, if he wished to do so. It was the machines under private ownership, not child labor laws, that finally took children out of the factories and put them into schools. - Dean Russell, Government and Legal Plunder. Bastiat Brought Up to Date, FEE, May 85, ISBN-0-9106614-70-9, 116pp, p.89. - CHILDREN, CHILD LABOR, LABOR LAWS, & EDUCATION, DIS.
MACHINES: There are far more jobs today in highly-mechanized Japan than ever before, and those jobs pay as much as ten times the pre-World War II wage rate. The result of massive capital formation in a free market economy is more jobs, shorter hours, higher pay, and better products at lower prices. - Dean Russell, Government and Legal Plunder. Bastiat Brought Up to Date, FEE, May 85, ISBN-0-9106614-70-9, 116pp, p.98/99. - Only to the extent that monetary despotism is not an obstacle to the easy sale of the additional products. - J.Z., 26.4.11. - JOBS, EMPLOYMENT, STANDARD OF LIVING, WAGES, MONETARY DESPOTISM VS. MONETARY FREEDOM, CAPITAL, CAPITALISM
MACHINES: there are two vital consequences that can be attributed directly to machines that were designed to put men out of work, and did. (1) With machines, we produce more, and have more, and live longer - even though we actually work less. (2) Since human slaves cannot compete with inhuman machines, millions of slaves lost their jobs. - When you stop to think about it, that is a remarkable achievement for something (mechanization) traditionally considered the deadly enemy of the working man. The mass education that is made possible by machines, however, seems to have actually intensified our hatred and fear of our benefactor - Dean Russell, Government and Legal Plunder. Bastiat Brought Up to Date, FEE, May 85, ISBN-0-9106614-70-9, 116pp, p.90. - DIS., SLAVERY
MAKING MONEY & UNEMPLOYMENT: All people should be free to "make money" by "coining" their own goods, services and labour, issuing their own notes or ticket money or token money upon them, which do oblige only themselves - namely, to accept them at par in all payments due to them. To the extent that they succeed in doing this, alone or in association with others, associated issuers and voluntary acceptors for their notes, all of them accepting them at par, from anyone, at any time, during business hours, they will not only provide additional sales for others but the same amount of sales for themselves. These IOU's issued by them will simply have anticipated these sales. They will be enabled to buy the goods, services they want before they have to supply their own - in exchange for their own notes. - To make their notes widely enough acceptable their "backing" by their goods and services must be sound, at market prices, their issue technique must be correct and they ought to use a sound enough value standard as well, in their notes and in their prices. - The rest is easy and the first successful examples of this kind would soon be copied by many others. The question is, whether such experiments will be allowed to proceed and to succeed or whether they will remain legally suppressed - already in the initial stages? - J.Z., 28.11.92, 23.5.97, 19.7.11. Selecting optimal times and conditions for such monetary freedom experiments would be advisable. They must be times and conditions in and under which any repression attempts would be made politically as impossible as one can manage to achieve. For instance, when massive deflation or inflation exists, with their consequences, shortly before an election and when the monetary freedom experiments are so well prepared, also in public opinion, that they can and will be very rapidly successful for all their participants. - J.Z., 16.9.02. - FREE BANKING, MONETARY FREEDOM, MONETARY DESPOTISM, FULL EMPLOYMENT, EXPERIMENTAL FREEDOM FOR MONETARY EXPERIMENTS AMONG VOLUNTEERS
MAKING MONEY: The term is usually applied only to successful efforts to acquire some of the money of monetary despotism, not to the issue and acceptance of the money of monetary freedom. - Those really interested in "making money" would have it easier to be often or regularly successful if they studied the pre-conditions for and then bothered to "make" their own kinds of money tokens and circulate them, to the extent that they could, for their own benefit and that of their potential customers. To the extent that they could issue their own money, redeemable only in their own goods, services and labour, they would supply themselves - by their spending of their self-issued money, with sales and jobs. Such money, by natural law and individual rights, they could get rightfully designed, printed and offer in payment to voluntary acceptors. This way of "making" or "producing" money would offer opportunities to them - and people in like positions, which are denied to them by the legalized note issue monopoly of the central bank and the other laws of monetary despotism, especially the legal tender laws. Making money should really become "making" or issuing the own kind of sound money and using a sound value standard for it - for all those able to do so. Naturally, not all people are in the optimal position for issuing their own money tokens - but all could issue their own clearing certificates or IOUs, in convenient denominations and use a common clearing house in their community - if the laws, the bureaucracy and the politicians do not manage to continue to suppress such self-help efforts. Potentially, all pay-outs and receipts could be settled by mere clearing. - No one should be confined only to "make" (or struggle for) the money of monetary despotism, which is almost always inflated, deflated or stag-flated and amounts, for its victims to still more taxation, sometimes in form of an inflated interest rate. - J.Z., 29.4.95, 16.4.97, 19.7.11.
MALONEY, MIKE, Mike Maloney | LucyUrtazaVasquez.com / Decide. Commit. Succeed ... - lucyurtazavasquez.com/resources/mike-maloney/ - Cached - 30 Jan 2011 – What do you mean, free markets don't work? You can't have a “Free Market” without free market money! Here And Now: Putting It All Together ... ALSO: Mike Maloney | MarcCVasquez.com / Decide. Commit. Prosper ... - marccvasquez.com/resources/mike-maloney/ - Cached - 23 Jan 2011 – What do you mean, free markets don't work? You can't have a “Free Market” without free market money! Here And Now: Putting It All Together ... ALSO: Mike Maloney | Perfectus Verum Solutions / Decide. Commit. Succeed ... - perfectusverumsolutions.com/resources/mike-maloney/ - Cached - 1 Feb 2011 – What do you mean, free markets don't work? You can't have a “Free Market” without free market money! Here And Now: Putting It All Together ... ALSO: Mike Maloney | DonumVitaSolutions / Decide. Commit. Prosper ... - donumvitasolutions.com/resources/mike-maloney/ - Cached - 1 Feb 2011 – What do you mean, free markets don't work? You can't have a “Free Market” without free market money! Here And Now: Putting It All Together ... ALSO: Mike Maloney | STOUTLIFE - stoutlife.com/resources/mike-maloney/ - Cached - What do you mean, free markets don't work? You can't have a “Free Market” without free market money! Here And Now: Putting It All Together. Why I Sleep Well ...
MANIFEST YOUR DREAMS.BIZ: How About Getting a Basic Understanding of MONEY? | The "7 Steps ... - manifestyourdreams.biz/.../how-about-getting-a-basic-understanding ... - Cached - 19 Oct 2010 – Next, a Free Market Money emerges. This is a Need due to the fact that different quantities of different items have a “different value”. ...
MANN, FREDERICK, See: TERRA LIBRA.
MARCUS, B. K., Cigarette Money, cigarette money « bkmarcus.com - bkmarcus.com/2005/02/25/cigarette-money/ - Cached - 25 Feb 2005 – PPPS For the reason I assume a free-market money would be metal-based, see my Gilligan article, mentioned above. Share this: ...
MARKET & MONETARY DESPOTISM: A market subject to monetary despotism isn't free. To prevent and end both, inflation and deflation (capital destruction and unemployment), monetary freedom has to be introduced. - J. Z., 77 & 97.
MARKET ORACLE, THE: The Dark Side of the Credit Boom :: The Market Oracle :: Financial ... - www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article1039.html - Cached - 19 May 2007 – Why Austrians call for a return to free-market money. Austrians maintain that international monetary affairs have entered a vicious cycle: a ... - Alas, how many of the Austrian School have so far defined "free markt money" properly, including all its rightful and sound options, rather than confining their views to the classical rare metal cover and redemption currencies? - J.Z., 9..8.11. - AUSTRIAN SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS, FREE MARKET MONEY
MARKET ORACLE, THE, Who Are the Gold Experts? :: The Market Oracle :: Financial ... - www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article22928.html - Cached - 23 Sep 2010 – This hostility to free-market money is opposed to the official position of the monetarists with respect to other aspects of the market ...
MARKETING GOODS, SERVICES & LABOUR: - Privately or cooperatively issued notes or clearing certificates have no other use, value and foundation than the goods, services and labour that their issuers are ready to supply for them and the goods, services and labour which the issuers can buy with them. They have no other use for their acceptors than the sales they achieve through them and the readiness of the issuers to accept them in par in all payments due to them. They are just and sound alternative media of exchange, mediating goods, service and labour exchanges, in an economy based upon the division of labour and free exchange. They will inevitably stream back to their issuers in payment or clearing. They do not possess or need any other foundation or value. This suffices to make them self-limiting and self-liquidating. To the extent that they can be issued and are accepted, they will assure sales of goods, services and labour, firstly upon their acceptance by sellers, lastly upon their final acceptance by their issuers and, in between, for whoever accepts and spends them in the meantime. No one could force any more of them into circulation than corresponds to his readiness to accept. He could not do so any more than he could enforce the purchase of his goods, services and labour by others. Others, with their goods, services and labour, will ask for the notes issued by an issuer only to the extent that they want to acquire his goods, services and labour, giving their own in exchange - or pass them easily on, in payments, to those who do. This means, at least potentially, that all local goods, services and labour can thus be freely exchanged to the extent that they are locally wanted. That much is obvious. To that extent one or even several local currencies could be established in every more or less self-supporting village, town or regional shopping area or centre. National and international currencies could not be provided upon such a limited local issue basis. They would require larger associations of suppliers with a combined and much larger "readiness to accept foundation" to make their exchange or clearing certificates widely enough acceptable, at least among national and international traders, to serve as an alternative national and international trade currency. However, for many centuries already, honest and known merchants were able to get their individual commercial bills internationally accepted among other merchants. Those who accepted them and used them as means of payment, in their turn, became guarantors or insurers for its final payment or acceptance in settlement or clearing, by the issuer or the debtor of the issuer, upon whom the bill was drawn. Thus each bill established its own payment community, even when there were great distances between its members. Seeing all exchange media as merely convenient clearing facilitators, one might consider such bills as mere portable and mailable clearing accounts. However, they were in uneven and usually large denominations. Nor did they guaranty and insure each other. Each was on its own individual track and depended upon its own track record. Thus, for international trade, as well as for national and local trading, sound commercial bills, representing goods already produced and sold, should be made freely discountable into privately and competitively issued small bills, in convenient money denominations (banknotes), or corresponding trade and clearing accounts, in books, cards or computer memories or clearing house certificates, that would be able to circulate or be transferred much more easily than the larger and uneven commercial bills (which they would thus temporarily replace), until they would become due. The total of the notes, clearing certificates or accounts thus issued, including the profit margins claimed by their traders, would, upon due dates, suffice to pay for or clear all the due bills and remove them thus from circulation or accounts, to be replaced by others and other such discount transactions. No monopoly or governmental restriction or taxation of such banks for international currencies and clearing certificates and clearing processes should be allowed. Then goods, services and labour could be freely exchanged - internationally as well. The ready for sale or soon ready for sale export goods of all exporters in a country could thus become mobilised by them into a corresponding international purchasing power, with which the imports into that country could be paid. Via a special money market for such issues, importers would buy these certificates or accounts and use them to pay for their imports. To that extent imports and exports would be automatically balanced and this rather obviously. As for State- and federation-wide national exchanges: Local currency issuers and clearing houses would establish State- and federation-wide discounting houses and clearing centres, in which they could exchange their local currency notes for State- or federation-wide banknotes or clearing certificates. Other exchange offices or the same would also exchange local currencies directly for each other, as part of the automatically arranged note exchanges and clearing settlements. Even today private travellers' cheques are already widely used as international alternative currencies, although only privately issued and managed and ultimately tied, alas, to exclusive and forced legal tender currencies. It is interesting, that they are able to make their private currencies internationally more readily and widely acceptable than the national legal tender currencies are themselves, which have, naturally, no legal tender powers internationally. - How dense and how varied the local, State-wide, federation-wide and international exchange media and clearing certificate or paper or electronic clearing network will be and how convenient or inconvenient, should be left to the free choices of the participants. Not being a jet-setter or having jet-setting friends, I would e.g. have no use for opera or theatre tickets in London or New York - but as a collector of freedom literature, I would be interested e.g. in standardised literature payment certificates that I could convert into new or second-hand printed books or books and papers on microfiche or floppy disks or CD-ROMs, etc., at any associated supplier on Earth. As a supplier of micro-fiched freedom writings, I would gladly participate in a common sales listing and distribution centre. Moreover, then I could, probably, discount at such an international distribution centre some of my own IOUs, redeemable in my LMP freedom microfiche or freedom book collection discs, not only in credits for other freedom literature, in any medium, sold through that centre, but also for any other exchange media that it would receive in its sales, to the extent that it would manage to sell my LMP freedom literature offered on my microfiche or on discs, not only for other literature credits but for other currencies. But this example indicates also the limits for free issues: As long as there is only a very tiny demand for freedom literature on microfiche, floppy disks, CD-ROMs, video tapes, audio tapes, hard disks, and on-line, or on photocopies, this tiny demand cannot be turned into widely enough circulating medium. No ready buyers - no issue capacity. Only goods and services in daily demand can form the basis for readily circulating currencies. Other goods and services, only rarely traded, can, as a rule, only be exchanged for readily issued and accepted currencies issued by others. Rare art treasures or insufficiently wanted information are not a sufficient basis for the issue of a currency, although they are valuable and can be traded between a few and sold to a few for other currencies. - J. Z., 23.8.85, 3.5.97, 19.7.11. - NOT ONLY LOCALLY BUT NATIONALLY & INTERNATIONALLY, THROUGH MONETARY FREEDOM
MARKETING OR DISTRIBUTION: An easier marketing or sale of goods and services, including labour services, is achievable via the issue of purchasing and clearing vouchers based upon these goods and services, provided this issue is undertaken by the owners of these goods and services themselves or by the associations they establish and use for this purpose. They should use for this convenient money denominations and sound value standards and full publicity for their issues, whose acceptance should be optional in general circulation and whose ratings should also be left to the free market, especially the local one. To be able to issue them, again and again, and get them accepted by many of their potential customers, the issuers would have to keep them at par with their nominal values or close enough to the par value, most of the time. Then, to the extent that they could issue these notes and seeing that their potential customers would have no other use for these notes, they would have assured for themselves corresponding sales. In essence, the notes would circulate only as long as needed to get into the hands of consumers who want to pay with them for their daily consumption requirements. That kind of demand for means of payment is vast and can, probably, keep a circulation at par that corresponds not only to the daily consumption but to the consumption of the next month to 3 months, if the experience with real bills and with tax foundation money is still a valid guide. The daily rating of private exchange media against their value standards would be a better indicator. They can be readily issued as long as they are accepted at par. Then, in the own interest, the issuers will stop further issues until the par is restored. They do not want to suffer a loss and do want to stay in the note issuing business. Moreover, they want to be able to settle their balances with other note issuers. On the other side, the acceptance of notes will become greatly reduced when notes fall below par, at least among all those, who do not have to pay due debts to the issuer or who want to immediately buy goods or services from him. When they want to receive a CURRENCY then people are not satisfied with receiving something that is NOT currently at par in general circulation but merely acceptable at par by the issuer, whose goods and services they might not want or need at present. Only some debtors of the issuer would then still be prepared to accept or obliged to accept the notes at par. No issuer would have to assure convertibility of his notes into rare metals, unless he had obliged himself to make this additional and objectively unnecessary expense. His competitors, not addicted to notions of metallic redemptionism, would not have this additional transaction cost and thus could undercut his prices. - Such alternative means of exchange and value standards to get and keep the economy, the daily turnovers, production, retail businesses and jobs going and integrate millions of unemployed into the economy, could be rightfully and efficiently supplied very fast, especially when and while governments are, quite obviously, unable to supply enough or sound enough exchange media and value standards - a situation which has often catastrophic consequences. - There is no moral obligation to respect the forced government currency and the monopoly of the central bank. Under certain conditions they will not or cannot be enforced. These situations should be utilised and one should sufficiently prepare oneself for them. - J.Z., 20.9.91, 27.4.97, 9.7.11.
MARKOVITZ, MORRIS J., Fractional versus 100% Reserve Banking - June 1988. - "As the fractional reservers point out, there’s nothing wrong with loan-brokering. What’s wrong is forcing people to deposit into a loan-brokering scheme by forbidding the alternative, while simultaneously falsely advertising the loan-broker outfit as a safe warehouse. That’s what today’s banking system does and both sides would agree that it’s wrong." - Roy Halliday
MATONIS, JON W., Digital Cash and Monetary Freedom - Roy Halliday, in section on Genuine Money.
MATONIS, JON W., current address not known to me. Tried to establish The Monetary Freedom Institute, MONETARY FREEDOM QUARTERLY and wrote much on monetary freedom and made many photocopies of such texts available to me. - Searching with Google for "Jon Matonis" + "monetary freedom" + "digital currency", I get today 282 results, including: The Monetary Future - themonetaryfuture.blogspot.com/ - "Jon Matonis" brings me 15,700 hints. There are two people called Jon Matonis in Utah, and 8070 hints are offered on them. - Jon Matonis - Schweiz | LinkedIn - ch.linkedin.com/in/jonmatonis - Cached - Zürich Area, Switzerland -Digital Currency Executive-Network Inference - Sehen Sie sich das Karriere-Profil von Jon Matonis (Schweiz) auf LinkedIn an. ... I am editor of The Monetary Future, a leading economics blog at the ... I have not been in touch with him for many years. - Jon Matonis - @jonmatonis - J.Z., 19.7.11. - DIGITAL CURRENCY, MONETARY FREEDOM, BIBLIOGRAPHY, CYBERCASH.
MEANS OF CIRCULATION VS. MEANS FOR CAPITALISATION: See: APHORISMS ON THE MONEY PROBLEM. CURRENCY, ASSET CURRENCY, LAND CURRENCY, FOUNDATION OF MONEY ISSUES, COVER, REDEMPTION, FINANCIAL FREEDOM
McILWAINE, SIMON, The Failure of State Money and the Case for Monetary Individualism - Hint by Roy Halliday.
McWILLIAMS, DAVID, David McWilliams discusses Ireland's deficit - The People's Economy - thepeopleseconomy.com/day-5-david-mcwilliams-discusses-irelands... - Cached - ... bank model of money creation is the best option for the majority of people or is there better way such as free market money or treasury issued money? ...
MEETING, CONFERENCE & SEMINAR CALENDAR, INTERNATIONAL, AS PART OF A MONETARY FREEDOM NEWSLETTER OR JOURNAL:
MELTZER, ALLAN H., What’s Wrong with the IMF? What Would Be Better? - "Created in 1944 to help stabilize debtor countries, the International Monetary Fund today is a source of instability, chiefly through its subsidies of risky bank loans and penalties on sound ones. The time has come to rely more on bank capital and market-based incentives to strengthen the international financial system." - Roy Halliday, in section on International Banking.
MERCANTILISM, MONETARY DESPOTISM & MONETARY FREEDOM: While the mercantilists thought that to become better off one would have to accumulate more money, having in mind merely a scarce and exclusive silver or and gold currency, the monetary freedom advocates hold that one would have to produce more sound money, sufficient for all wanted exchanges, largely based upon wanted goods and services, already produced and sold, at least to wholesalers, or already offered in retail shops. They assume that only thereby one would facilitate sales and trade and thus increase orders and more production and trade and increase general prosperity or the standard of living, as much as one could, with the existing technology and sciences, skills and training, resources and productively invested savings. Under monetary freedom savings would also accumulate fast and under financial freedom they could and would be more fully and readily available for productive investments. - I would like to see a model experiment undertaken, e.g., in a Red Indian reservation or in some poor village in Haiti or under similar underdeveloped conditions, e.g. among Negroes in Harlem. It could begin with a single general store, issuing its own token currency, based especially upon local products for local consumption and would make a few wage payment loans with its token currency to local producers, too. (A fringe benefit for the store would be, it would not be held up for this kind of private and competitive cash for its holders and spenders could be very easily traced. - One of the benefits of a limited and local circulation. - J.Z., 12.9.02.) - How fast could such a system expand, e.g. to include the local shopping centre, increasing local productivity and local sales and local employment as well as local savings, assuming only that there exist no mental, legal, customary, traditional, juridical and administrative blocks against such a self-help development and against making and accepting one's own money, or that of competing money issuers and using these exchange media (or clearing certificates or account credits) optimally for one's own productive and exchange purposes? How long would it take before there might be two shops and the number of those paid wages for productive local work in this local currency would be doubled? How long before there would be small local surpluses, which could be invested in mini-loans for local mini-enterprises? (The repayment of mini-loans made only in the exclusive currency of monetary despotism, in other times than rapid inflation, leads to the usual difficulties for these debtors, too. - J.Z., 20.7.11.) How long would it be before such a local economy and local currency issue would help the local economy to, so to speak, pull itself up by its bootstraps? Naturally, that would require local autonomy towards the central monetary despotism, probably also exemptions from all taxes imposed by outsiders. - But with the sympathies that ethnic minorities can now often count upon, they might have it easier than others to thus break the stranglehold of monetary despotism and become self-supporting, economically independent citizens of their self-chosen communities. - Judging from what I have read about the innovative genius, skills and readiness to learn new things, among e.g. Eskimos, according to some reporters or observers, their remaining communities, to the extent that they got away from subsistence economics, might be most suitable for starting such experiments, if only their environment and climate and distance from existing trading centres would not prevent them from engaging e.g. in any agricultural (e.g. fish farming) or industrial production. - Mere food gathering, hunting, fishing and handicraft economies are possibly not sufficient to develop sound local currencies and to develop the local economy beyond that foundation, including the local economy in the general division of labour scheme, beyond local subsistence efforts. - Assume that tribal rights would now be more widely recognized, even those of Eskimos, desert tribes or Firelanders (if any of these survived to today), who were formerly driven into icy or hot deserts, by more warlike tribes. Presume further that they would not be bound to merely continue with their old ways of life but that the dissenters among them would be free to adopt new and free ways of making a living and that their autonomy would be recognized, even to the extent that they would be granted exterritorial autonomy and freedom to settle and work anywhere. (No longer subject to the usual territorial political despotism, however camouflaged via e.g. representative majoritarian "democracy". Then, perhaps, e.g. the Eskimos might come to shine and provide "economic wonders" far beyond those provided by West Germany or Japan after WW II, and by the Asian "tiger economies" from a soon achieved much wider base of knowledge, skills and resources. - Indeed, by now generations of welfare statism may have largely changed the character, mentality and natural drives of the remaining reservation Eskimos as they seem to have those of many Red Indians and Aborigines confined to more or less wasteland reservations. However, if just a few are free to do their things, using their monetary and financial freedom rights, well enough informed about them and thus and therefore succeeded, once they began to act upon them - or failed, if they still make too many mistakes - free to act upon sound ideas or free market money and currencies, with their labours, knowledge, ideas, enterprise and initiative, unhindered by bureaucrats, politicians, lawyers and popular prejudices or customs (not confined to their old traditions, or to tourist entertainment, gambling facilities etc.), how long would it take then before at least some of them would quite intelligently take up e.g. their monetary and financial freedom options, demonstrate their efficiency to the doubtful Thomases and then see many others follow their example? - To speed the process up, one could assume that the reservation communities would also have the right to take up loans on a stable value basis and to grant tax exemptions to enterprises set up in their areas and to introduce unilateral free trade for them. Then they might be swamped with development offers. Assume further, that supermarkets and department stores in their reservations would also be free to issue their own currencies. How much time would then pass before enough of them would be established to be able to provide short term credits for wage payments for many local productive jobs? I am not thinking merely in terms of casinos and craft and tourist activities but of full autonomy for minority groups, initially only within their reservations and later outside, too, on the basis of personal laws, and, especially, in terms of full monetary and financial freedom. - People who remain bound by traditions, customs or habits or have developed the hand-out mentality, or who excuse all their inactivity and failures merely with reference to national and racial or religious prosecutions in the past, would not make optimal use of such opportunities. But there might be enough among the others, who would gladly grab and realize such self-help opportunities and use them not only to impress the traditionalists in their own communities but also those in the rest of the world. Indeed, some reservation communities might have to split, based upon individual choices, into the traditionalists and progressives - and, perhaps, into the local socialists and the local capitalists, too. - Is there any place or reservation in the world where this approach could be tried? Even those, who look down upon minorities or even hate them, should have less objections against such self-help steps than against riots, demonstrations, protests, gun battles, occupations, endless court cases and continued hand-out anti-economics. - Current inhabitants of reservations seem to think, like mercantilists thought formerly, that they could get rich only via the money produced by and imported from others and then kept in the own country, as far as possible. They did not consider producing sound money themselves, sufficient for all their exchange requirements and encouraging them to produce more to the extent that more or their goods and services are wanted by them - or by outsiders. - J.Z., 11.1.80, 28.6.89, 15.5.97. - They ought to ponder their modern "wampum" options. - J.Z., 20.17.11. - ESKIMOS, RED INDIANS, RESERVATIONS, RACIAL MINORITY GROUPS
MERCANTILISM, MONEY MONOPOLY & CURRENCY FAMINE: At least the mercantilists saw one thing clear: a persistent currency famine. They knew that with a greater supply of sound exchange media they could produce and exchange much more. However, they tried to overcome this shortage in a wrong and inefficient way, namely by accumulating scarce and exclusive exchange media, like rare metal coins, and prohibiting their export, instead of abolishing this kind of money monopoly and producing themselves, competitively, as much sound money as the market would accept at par, i. e., without discounting it. - Note to Theodor Hertzka, Die Probleme der menschlichen Wirtschaft, S.8. - J.Z., 11.1.81, 15.5.97, 20.7.11.
MEULEN, HENRY, ON MONETARY DESPOTISM & CREDIT RESTRICTIONS: What I do know with certainty is the amazing contradiction of a world that most certainly desires increased production, and is yet busily engaged everywhere in stripping down production by squeezing credit. This contradiction springs solely from the fact that governments have everywhere prohibited industry from furnishing its own means of exchange. The two instruments of this prohibition are (1) insistence on maintaining gold as a fixed price; (2) prohibition of commercial bank note issues." - Henry Meulen, THE INDIVIDUALIST, 1/76. - Not only industry but commerce, agriculture and transport companies are under credit restrictions. Legal or insistence upon ANY value standard does restrict credit, as opposed to free choice of value standards, which Meulen to my knowledge never advocated. Nor should commercial banks be the only permitted issuers of banknotes, clearing certificates and other means of exchange, like, e.g., railway monies and sound private coinage. Like almost all money reformers, this free banking advocate had his own favourite system which blinded him to all other monetary freedom options. This remained true even after many years, if not decades, of correspondence with Ulrich von Beckerath, of which, alas, all too little is still in existence. Fixed ideas still predominate in this sphere, too, even among individualists, even among readers and advocates of Max Stirner. - J.Z., 29.4.97.
MEULEN, HENRY: His views are still to be extracted from THE INDIVIDUALIST and his book, pamphlets and letters, to the extent that the latter are on hand or can still be obtained, with refutations, where necessary. See the books essays and letters by Ulrich von Beckerath on Henry Meulen's basic monetary and value standard errors. - J.Z., 20.7.11.
MEULEN, HENRY: PAPER MONEY UNDER HENRY MEULEN'S GOLD "STANDARD": If ... our paper money can be exchanged for gold at the current free market price of the metal, we should be satisfied." - HENRY MEULEN, THE INDIVIDUALIST, 12/75, p62. - On the contrary. Even the most inflated paper money can still be so exchanged. - J.Z., 13.6.85. - Like many others, Meulen never fully comprehended the effects of legal tender and liberated his thinking from gold-redemptionism. He wanted to have competing paper monies redeemed by various quantities of gold, representing gold value fluctuations in a free gold market, so that his "real" value standard would have been a supposedly stable one, because, according to him, it would then be properly manipulated, still a paper value standard, redeemed in varying quantities of gold weights with which, as he supposed, always about the same quantity and quality of goods and services could always be bought. He favoured only a limited issue competition for such exchange media and did not favour free choice of value standards, either. He also thought legal tender to be rather harmless, because ultimately it would be refused after a severe inflation. In this he managed to overlook the damage it would have done in the meantime. He also asserted, in my opinion wrongly, that in England goods- and service warrants, in money denominations, could be freely issued, if only they would not promise redemption in gold or in pounds sterling. He surveyed the older monetary legislation pretty well but ignored, I think, all the modern laws against private note issues and clearing arrangements. If Englishmen were not legally and juridically restrained from monetary self-help steps, then they would have to be pretty ignorant or stupid to put up with the monetary despotism of the Bank of England, its inflations, deflations and stagflations, which currently have driven the U.K. once again into the "tender embraces" of the State socialists, after a few years in which private property rights were somewhat respected or even spread. - J. Z., 13.6.85, 4.5.97, 20.7.11.
MICHAELTMAK.COM: Younique Wealth And The History Of Money | Part 1 - www.michaeltmak.com/.../younique-wealth-and-the-history-of-mon... - Cached - 18 Mar 2011 – The Life Cycle Of Money Part 2 – Free Market Money Emerges. With the emergence of a free market, free money must emerge, to enable smooth ...
MICRO-CREDITS: The prolonged and wide-spread micro-credit scheme, that had started a whole new credit industry, came to an inglorious state of affairs. In at least one Indian State it was even outlawed. It was started by Dr. Muhammad Yunus and was operating only within the limited opportunities of monetary despotism, based upon the false assumption that all the poor needed was some capital, even if only a mini-capital, to become productive and finally prosperous. That is also one of the basic errors of many of the Miseans and Rothbardians. - "Grameen, the bank for the poor he started three decades ago with $US 27 [million? - J.Z.] from his own pocket, now boasts $US1 billion in loans, more in savings, and more than 8 million customers. - Less a bank than an empire, Grameen also operates a mobile phone company, a knitwear factory and a power prover. Its billboards are ubiquitous, and hawkers peddle its founder's books at traffic lights with a single word 'Yunus?'. … Studies show that only about percent f borrowers 'graduate' to financial independence." - Millions in aid were granted to the scheme e.g. by the U.N. and by the US. (*) - THE SYDNEY MORNING HERALD, April 9-10, 11, smh.com.au, p. 20, Ben Doherty in Dhaka, Poor can no longer bank on micro-credit. - (*) AusAid was also committed to subsidies to the scheme to the tune of $ 22.5 millions p.a., which indicates that it was not a self-supporting scheme, although the members, 20 million households had savings of $US 1.3 billion. - This article by Ben Doherty is the best of three that I have recently seen on the subject. But even it does no examine and criticize the unsound premise that merely some capital is required for the enterprising poor, capital in form of the government's monopoly money, which led to the fact that it became also, at least in some instances, a loan-sharking scheme with very high interest rate. One company charged up to 125%. In some cases people were forced into accepting loans without a hope of repaying them. Debtors were, sometimes, bullied, harassed and beaten into making repayments, so that in the Indian state of Andhra Padesh more than 50 farmers committed suicide. Dr. Yunus, 70, was put out of office, into an unwilling retirement, not only because he had exceeded the legal age limit of 65 years for bank executives in Bangladesh. He was said to be autocratic and unwilling to brook criticism. He also intended to set up an anti-corruption party which made him rather unpopular with the existing parties. Did he attempt to fight corruption in the own scheme? The movement was extended into many countries, e.g. Mexico, Nigeria. According to this Ben Doherty, the movement is at a crossroad. But is it on the road to monetary and financial freedom, which could have avoided its difficulties and wrongs? I have not found any sign of that. No matter how large a capital is available for loans for productive purposes, it cannot easily pay interest or even merely repay the capital lent, until sufficient sales are assured for its products or services. Under monetary despotism, with its monopoly money, these sales are NOT assured. If they had been granted in competitively supplied local currencies or even mere "street money", as was issued for some time in China, the situation could have been radically changed. Not only could the debtors have repaid such loans much easier from local sales but they could themselves have associated and offered their own goods and service vouchers in monetary denominations, accepting them for the goods and services they offer between them. Under full monetary freedom all of them could also have gained productive jobs as employees, at market rates, corresponding to their productivity, when employers provided them with tools or machines. The would no longer have been forced to sell their labor, if they could get jobs at all, at emergency sales prices or wages, payable only in the government's monopoly money, which was, moreover, usually inflated. They could then also have formed productive coops with a much higher success rate than under monetary despotism. But in all the writings that I have seen on the subject, this possibility was never raised. - By the way, regarding poverty in Bangladesh, I got recently an interesting statement from a local doctor, who immigrated to Australia from Bangladesh. When I mentioned that he was probably glad to be out of Bangladesh, he asserted, that most people had a wrong impression of its poverty. Of its 150 million people there would be 50 million with a higher standard of living than the average Australian has and only the remaining 100 million would be poorer or very poor. I have seen no confirmation of this statement so far from others. - J.Z., 2.5.11.
MICROFICHE & UNEMPLOYMENT: Ever since LMP has produced many monetary freedom writings on microfiche, anybody can seek and find and very cheaply acquire these writings or add to them, although only in this format and in photocopies or scans made from them, at his expense. They do already offer much of the recorded wisdom on how to overcome mass unemployment completely and very fast through monetary self-help measures, i. e., without further robberies and oppressions. All government programmes, instead, destroy more and better jobs than they provide. - J.Z.,10.1.94, 24.5.97. - Since then many monetary freedom writings have become available digitized. Today's Google search for "free market money" brought me 1,580,000 results. I got only around to quickly skim the first 20 pages and saw there already many texts indicated that were new to me. - J.Z., 20.7.11. - DIGITIZED TEXTS, FREE MARKET MONEY
MILITIAS, VOLUNTARY, LOCALLY ORGANIZED & FEDERATED, FOR THE PROTECTION OF ALL INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS: Lastly, the advocates of monetary freedom, together with the advocates of all other individual liberties and rights, may have to arm, organise, train and motivate themselves to help realize and maintain their liberties and rights against all those inclined towards despotism in this and other spheres. - J.Z., n.d., 21.7.11.
MINORITY GROUPS' BANKS OF ISSUE: Much of the sympathies existing for minority groups, that do not fanatically insist upon their complete integration, handouts and indemnities for wrongs committed against their ancestors, could be gathered to support e.g. their right to establish competing free banks of issue. - But I would also like to see a multicultural bank of issue and would consider its free banking practice to be even more important than its clearly expressed lack of racist or cultural bias. - J. Z., 27.5.97.
MISES INSTITUTE, Gold is Free Market Money | Liberty Australia - www.la.org.au/video/271109/gold-free-market-money- Cached - Recorded at the Mises Institute Supporters Summit, 1 November 2008; Auburn, Alabama. [27:24]Embedded Video.
MISES, LUDWIG von, Free Banking and Contract Law - "Free banking is the only method available for the prevention of the dangers inherent in credit expansion. It would, it is true, not hinder a slow credit expansion, kept within very narrow limits, on the part of cautious banks which provide the public with all information required about their financial status. But under free banking it would have been impossible for credit expansion with all its inevitable consequences to have developed into a regular - one is tempted to say normal - feature of the economic system. Only free banking would have rendered the market economy secure against crises and depressions." - Roy Halliday, in section on Free Market Banking.
MISES, LUDWIG von, Free Banking versus Large-scale Credit Expansion - "Government interference with the present state of banking affairs could be justified if its aim were to liquidate the unsatisfactory conditions by preventing or at least seriously restricting any further credit expansion. In fact, the chief objective of present-day government interference is to intensify further credit expansion. This policy is doomed to failure. Sooner or later it must result in a catastrophe." - Roy Halliday, in section on Free Market Banking.
MISES, LUDWIG von, Gold vs Paper - July 13, 1953 - by Ludwig von Mises. - "The excellence of the gold standard is to be seen in the fact that it makes the monetary unit's purchasing power independent of the arbitrary and vacillating policies of governments, political parties, and pressure groups. Historical experience, especially in the last decades, has clearly shown the evils inherent in a national currency system that lacks this independence." - Roy Halliday, in section on gold. - A case of false opposites. Neither should be imposed. Both should be subject to free choice. Open your eyes and your mind to the rightful alternatives. - J.Z., 9.8.11.
MISES, LUDWIG von, The Gold Standard - "The gold standard is certainly not a perfect or ideal standard. There is no such thing as perfection in human things. But nobody is in a position to tell us how something more satisfactory could be put in place of the gold standard." - - Roy Halliday, in section on gold.
MISES, LUDWIG von, The Problem of the Freedom of the Banks - "Everything that has been said in favor of control of the banking system pales into insignificance beside the objections that can nowadays be advanced against state regulation of the issue of notes." - Roy Halliday, in section on Government-Regulated Banking
MISES, LUDWIG von, Theory of Money and Credit - "In 1912, when Mises, at age thirty-one, wrote this landmark book, no monetary theory could be described as both securely founded on economic reality and properly incorporated into an analysis of the entire economic system. The Theory of Money and Credit opened new vistas. It integrated monetary theory into the main body of economic analysis for the first time, providing fresh new insights into the nature of money and its role in the economy." - Roy Halliday http://royhalliday.home.mindspring.com/
MISES, LUDWIG von, Who is Ludwig von Mises? - discoverludwigvonmises.com/articles/WhoIsLudwigVonMises.htm - Cached - He realised that money is not some strange concept that has to be treated separately from commodities; it is a commodity (in fact, in a free-market, money ...
MISES, LUDWIG VON: Correct and incorrect views of L. v. Mises on monetary freedom, might be listed separately, with the required refutations of the remaining flaws in his monetary thinking. - Even the members of the Austrian School of economics and the fans of Mises himself, should start to think on some points beyond Mises, as e.g. Hayek did. - Mises was a scientist and as such he would never have insisted that his monetary views and assumptions should be totally accepted as irrefutable dogmas or natural laws on money and currency. - J.Z., 20.7.11. - E.g., Lara & Murphy, in their recent book on supposedly free banking (*), quote Mises, at the beginning of Chapter 4, p. 203, as saying: "There was no reason whaever to abandon the principle of free enterprise in the field of banking." - However, what Mises et al of the Austrian School consider to be "free enterprise" in this sphere does greatly differ from what others consider free enterprise in banking to be. Lysander Spooner and Land Bank advocates imagined that even capital assets could be directly turned into sound currency. Most Mises followers imagine that only rare metal stocks could and should be turned into currency, metallic coins or paper certificates for them. The Swiss, German and Jewish free banking school of the 1930's, continued so far only by a very few like myself, asserts, instead, that all wanted consumer goods and services, ready for sale, could be turned into sound currency tokens, to the extent that such issues would remain at par with their chosen sound value standard. - J.Z., 23.7.11. - (*) How Privatized Banking Really Works, Integrating Austrian Economics with the Infinite Banking Concept, by L. Carlos Lara & Robert P. Murphy, 2010, ISBN 978-0-615-32682-5), offered free online, alas only in PDF, http://consultingbyrpm.com/uploads/HPBRW.pdf - which I could not convert, to criticize easily copied extracts from it. - Judging by what I have read of it so far, it has very little to do with free banking in my sense. - J.Z., 23.7.11.
MISES, LUDWIG VON: He was a great guy, thinker, researcher and writer in many ways but still only human. He, too, had his limits in his insights, visions and proposals and, like many innovators, wanted to confine us to his ideas and proposals. We should let free people, in a free market be creative and pioneering in spheres where Mises was not sufficiently creative and think and act beyond his favorite proposals and schemes. He was neither for full monetary freedom nor for exterritorial and panarchistic voluntary competition between all political, economic and social systems. He did not explore the various self-management options for enterprises, either, just like Ayn Rand didn’t. We should not expect too much from any of our heroes. They, too, were no supermen or superwomen. – J.Z., 27.4.05, 5.10.10.
MISES, LUDWIG von: MISTAKES IN HIS MONETARY TEACHINGS: See: MISTAKES OF THE AUSTRIAN SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS ON MONEY; AUSTRIAN SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS; MONEY MANIPULATION ACCORDING TO MISES.
MISES, LUDWIG von: The market always finds a way » Human Action - www.humanaction.co.za/2011/03/the-market-always-finds-a-way/ - Cached - 29 Mar 2011 – In the same way, free market money will eventually win out against the dollar, euro, yuan and all the other protected pretenders. ...
MISTAKES OF THE AUSTRIAN SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS ON MONEY: There are a number of different errors and mistakes among the various adherents of this school. They do not share all their errors among themselves but some they tend to have in common - apart from their numerous valuable truths and insights. - (1.) The 100 % gold cover and convertibility spleen or, alternatively, the belief that a fractional gold reserve would always be sufficient. - (2.) The notion that under an exclusive gold coin circulation - and that of redeemable gold certificates - all prices and wages would automatically, sufficiently and fast enough adapt to totally avoid phenomena like currency shortages or currency famines. - (3.) Its advocacy of the CURRENCY PRINCIPLE and condemnation of the BANKING PRINCIPLE & REAL BILLS DOCTRINE. See there. - (4.) While seeing some of the wrongs and disadvantages of legal tender, it remained largely unaware that the evils it fears of alternative currencies, not fractionally or 100% covered by gold, would not occur for currencies that are competitive supplied, optional, i.e. refusable and free market rated, i.e., discountable. Not all alternative issues are automatically worthless or depreciating "fiat money". Almost anyone nowadays condemns totalitarianism. Similarly, one can condemn monetary despotism - and do this with little awareness of the full range of all human liberties e.g. of all of monetary freedom. Just consider how long it took an as famous and scholarly Austrian like Hayek to come to advocate a large degree of monetary freedom in "Free Choice in Currency" (1975), and in "Denationalisation of Money" (1976). Those few academics who followed in his footsteps have, mostly, still not become fully aware of this monetary freedom predecessors, their writings and teachings, and thus not of the full monetary freedom options. - (5.) Money manipulations: Mises remained insufficiently aware that any legal tender law (except that enforcing legal tender ONLY towards the issuer, for his own notes) and any exclusive currency and exchange medium status (money monopoly), does already amount to a coercive manipulation of money. - I will, certainly not try here and now to list all these mistakes (I am no Mises scholar. That should be done by free-thinking Miseans, in their own interest), especially those relating to the "classical gold standard", perceived as one consisting only of gold coins and 100% covered and convertible gold certificates. Rothbard considered all other issues as fraudulent. So did Mises, in Money Manipulation, p.44, where he speaks of an "absolute prohibition" of other options. - While it is right to outlaw monetary despotism steps, laws, measures, policies and institutions, it is wrong to outlaw monetary freedom steps. (As an exclusive exchange medium and an exclusive value standard the money and currency preferred by Mises and other Austrian School economists should also be outlawed, just as much as the monopolized and forced paper currency in all territorial States. It would be legitimate only among voluntary followers, i.e., members of an exterritorially autonomous community. - J.Z., 12.9.02.) - (6.) Due to Mises' rejection of morality and ethics in economics and adoption of "praxeology" instead, he would never have been interested in or able to state the rights and liberties of monetary freedom. Thus he could recommend only what he considered to be practicable and economical, from a point of view that was inevitably limited, as even those of the wisest men among us are. - J. Z., 4.12.92, 30.4.97. - I must admit that I consider the economic and even the monetary views of the Austrians to be important, so important that they should all be collected, stated together and sufficiently refuted, to the extent that this is needed, to the satisfaction of even the best Austrian School economists. - J.Z., 30.4.97. - With his all too late and somewhat detailed writings on monetary freedom Hayek has opened a breach in their former dogmatic positions - but it has not yet been fully followed through into the wide field of full monetary and financial freedom. The old fallacies, dogmas, errors and myths have, like all popular prejudices, revealed strength and longevity - while the monetary freedom truths remain insufficiently stated or publicised. - J. Z., 12.9.02, 20.7.11. - PURCHASING POWER; REDEMPTIONISM & ITS AUTOMATION, GOLD STANDARD
MISTAKES: The right to make mistakes - at the own expense and risk and that of only voluntary followers or partners - is as important in the sphere of exchange media and value standards as it is in others. - But under full freedom in this sphere mistakes will soon become rarer and rarer and harmfully affect smaller and smaller groups of the remaining true believers in them. - J.Z., 24.4.97.
MM, THE MILLIONAIRES' MANUAL: A digest sized magazine that is or was published quarterly. It deals with "common sense" economics ... and politics, as economics and politics go hand in hand. Subs.: $30 p.a.: MM (Cheques to the MILLIONAIRES' MANUAL), P.O. Box 1928, Cocoa, Fl. 32 923. - I have seen only one issue of it so far, undated, in 1986: 132 pages. It is edited by Robert White and contains an article by GREEN, JAMES L., Prof. of Ec., Univ. of Georgia: Investments & Sound Money. Also articles by Antony C. Sutton and Marshall Payn. He may be the same ROBERT WHITE who issued Duck Books I & II, both full of material from financial newsletters. - GREEN, JAMES L.
MODERATING THE ECONOMY: Successfully moderate the economy. - I believe that was also one of the "pearls of wisdom" by our former "great leader", PM Keating, possibly also uttered on 14.12.94. - Other such expressions are "cooling the economy down" and "demand manipulation", or "shaving the top off demand". - All your income, paid only in the money they have excessively issued, is considered to be "excess demand" that "overheats" the economy. Their spending and waste, often even on luxuries for their own enjoyment, at least whilst they remain in power, is not to be subject to any restrictions, least of all restrictions that voters are to be free to vote upon and decide. - They are not ready to moderate their monetary and financial and general economic despotism. On the contrary, they are always ready to increase it at your expense and then to call it "moderating the economy". I know of no moderate terms for this kind of policy, nor even of a term which would be severe enough in condemning these frauds, robbers and despots or political con-men. At present, the Australian socialists and modern liberals compete with each other in selling off public assets, with the proceeds always ending up in their own pockets or budgets for further wasteful and misdirected spending, to let them appear as benefactors to the public, rather than robbers and embezzlers. But, formerly nationalised or municipalised enterprises belong to the taxpayers as involuntary shareholders or citizen owners of all public assets in Australia. Thus these shareholders or citizens should, upon each privatisation, have got their personal shares in these assets. Instead, once again, they are robbed by their "representatives" and "leaders" and foolish enough to put up with this. Only in some cases, in the formerly sovietised countries, have vouchers been distributed to the citizens, with which they could buy an interest in formerly nationalised enterprises. - For a comprehensive and rightful denationalisation plan, one that could also finance a liberation effort by a libertarian party, see my PEACE PLANS 19c: Let Freedom Pay Its Way. Its 3rd. edition is now also digitized and available as an e-mail, until it becomes available on a website and on CD-ROM. - DIS.
MOGAMBO GURU, THE, From the US to Zimbabwe - June 27, 2009. - by The Mogambo Guru. - "I notice that I am still using exclamation points to express my profound stupefaction that the damned Federal Reserve is creating so much money, which means that the value of the dollar will go down, and we are on the same path as the morons running Zimbabwe who, I guess you heard, finally created so much money - which created so much inflation in prices as the oversupply of new money completely diluted the existing stock of money - that the Zimbabwe dollar is now officially worthless. Worthless!" - Roy Halliday
MOGG, WILLIAM REES, Is Gold Money? - "We need also to have permanent money, which can be relied upon to survive, even though its value may decline over time. The historic value of gold has been astonishingly stable over centuries." - Roy Halliday, in section on gold.
MONETARIST SCHOOL: Money matters" & "money matters most" are the mottoes of the monetarist school, according to Henry Hazlitt, in THE FREEMAN, Aug. 76. - MONEY MATTERS, MONEY MATTERS MOST
MONETARY & FINANCIAL FREEDOM: Among other things, it will mean the independence of the American and thereby largely also the world economy, from central bankers like Alan Greenspan and his errors, prejudices, dogmas, policies and decrees - and those of the central bankers in other countries. - J.Z., 26.8.02. - VS. CENTRAL BANKING & CENTRAL BANK "INDEPENDENCE".
MONETARY & FINANCIAL FREEDOM: Once it is realized boom times will be permanent. We would not merely temporarily experience some limited boom periods and in between recessions to depressions. Temporary gold, silver, share or land booms, out of fear of further inflation, would also become be a thing of the past, as well as excessive speculation in extremely fluctuating because managed or mismanaged foreign currencies. We would also have to do without the numerous bargains now obtainable from forced sales and the boom times for bureaucrats, their measures, committees, boards, authorities and quangos, and for politicians with their popular prejudices and misleading and false promises and the high burdens they can manage to impose upon the economy. Another "drawback", once monetary and financial freedom are universally introduced, will be the absence of refugee capital from other countries, i.e., of capital forced to flee to a few places where it is still treated somewhat respectfully and gratefully. Naturally, the country that first introduced monetary and financial freedom would get the full benefit of all such capital. The fluctuations at the stock exchanges will be much less. Garage sales and shops dealing in second hand goods will almost disappear - as they had almost disappeared in West Germany by 1991. So will beggars. Drug use, drunkenness, gambling and crime will be reduced. Even terrorism, dictatorships, civil wars, revolutions and international wars will become much less frequent or lasting. We would loose the "industrial reserve army", too. - Shall we mourn their passing? - J. Z., 19.3.97, 28.8.02, 20.7.11. - DIS.
MONETARY & VALUE STANDARD DEVELOPMENTS PREDICTED IN THE ABSENCE OF ANY MONEY LEGISLATION OR WHENEVER IT IS NO LONGER OR CAN NO LONGER BE ENFORCED: See especially the long paper by Ulrich von Beckerath on this. - THE FUTURE OF MONEY.
MONETARY CONTROLS: The exclusive and forced money of monetary despotism is, essentially, out of control - not only out of control by its victims but also out of control by its issuers and manipulators. They can start, continue and prolong crises with them but they cannot stop them with it. They tumble helplessly, ignorant and prejudiced between inflations, deflations and stagflations, trying to counter inflation with unemployment, and deflation with inflation, but never succeed for any length with either and are unable to make all possible, desirable and wanted exchanges of goods, services and labour possible with their exclusive and forced currencies. They suppressed all too many natural price indicators and market forces for currencies and have no substitutes for them. All monetary self-controls are abolished by the system and political pressures are very strong for the continued abuse of this despotic system to defraud voters and taxpayers and all creditors, including all employees and old age pensioners, more and more. To further entrust any more control powers to those already possessing and abusing enormous monopolistic and coercive powers in the monetary sphere is simply absurd. As absurd, as e.g. the communist project of trying to fight the "monopolism" of ca. 10 million employers in the U.S. by establishing a single monopoly employer for the U.S. Indeed, central banking, with its monetary control, was an early communist demand (in the Communist Manifesto of 1848) and, nevertheless, it is still practised in all "capitalistic" countries. - Alas, opposition to monetary controls are usually only on the basis of "practicality" not morality and the popular demand is that monetary controls should be ever more comprehensive, lastly turning all of us into inmates of nation-wide prisons. In ordinary prisons the purchasing power of inmates is very strictly controlled, indeed. - "'And monetary controls are not much good unless you can control ALL lending'. Says leading merchant banker Harold Abbott, managing director of the Martin Corporation: 'It is no use slapping controls on the banks unless you also can take steps to control hire-purchase finance companies and others. And to do this the Federal Government would have to seek new powers which it doesn't have at the moment. The situation is particularly pointless when you have many of the banks with large interests in finance houses.' - In fact, last year, when the banks and building societies were hit so hard that it was almost impossible for a couple to get a home loan, the hire purchase finance companies were lending money at an unprecedented rate - charging inflated interest rates and making record profits. Melbourne share broker A. C. Goode makes the point: 'Monetary controls, if they are to be effective, must be applied to such an extent as to cause stress and involve an unequal burden - which usually falls heaviest where it is least desired from a community point of view.'" - THE BULLETIN, Feb. 13, 1971. - Note that the controls of monetary despotism and its central banks and monetary legislation are not criticised and not seen as the main causes for all monetary and credit problems. The remaining and still somewhat free and unregulated banks and financial institutions are seen as culprits, just as the Social Credit faithful and remaining communists would see them as the main evils. In "response" to the enormous monopolies and powers of monetary despotism and all the evils they bring with them, not liberation but more controls are asked for - and the discussion is only what degree of controls would be practicable or how much they can be increased or extended. The natural controls of a free market in currencies and of voluntary acceptance or refusals or discounts of currencies and full publicity for all issues and of legal tender towards the issuer only, are discussed still only by a tiny fraction of all economists and of all writings on economics and on money and banking. - Luckily, even the advocates of further monetary controls have at least some doubts regarding them: "One problem with monetary control is that it can have quite uneven effects on different sectors of the economy. In particular, as our experience this last year has shown, it can act with special severity on the level of new housing starts. It can have unpredictable effects on confidence, especially in the money and capital markets ... Unfortunately, if you do not apply monetary policy rigorously enough it is likely to prove ineffective and if you apply it vigorously, you run the risk of overkill ... Nor are the effects of monetary policy any more predictable than those of fiscal policy. Important as they are, fiscal and monetary policies, even when employed in exactly the 'right mix', cannot be relied upon to achieve to the maximum our major economic objectives of full employment, external balance, reasonable price stability, economic growth, rising living standards, and an equitable distribution of income." - The Hon. B. M. Snedden, THE AUSTRALIAN QUARTERLY, 4.12.70. - Alas, none of our Australian rulers, treasurers, reserve bank directors or government advisors has so far, to my knowledge, spoken up in favour of monetary freedom to get us out of the destructive labyrinth of monetary despotism. - We suffer already from a surfeit of monetary controls which, in their combination, particularly legal tender laws, laws establishing and maintaining the issue monopoly and outlawing sound alternative value standards, like gold weight units on a free gold market, are the cause of inflation. The avalanche of monetary legislation is so large that I was so far unable to get a full set of it. Continuously more legal provisions are added. Some of the acts were out of print when I asked for them last time at the federal printing office and other additional relevant amendments and clauses are dispersed over numerous thick collections of amendments. No one has bothered to combine all the relevant legislation in one or several volumes and to keep them updated or to update them on microfiche, on floppy disks or on CD-ROMs or online, as far as I know. - Thus all of the monetary laws are not even readily in print and cheaply available. Why should one have to spend e.g. $ 20 for one of several large collections of amendments, when such a thick volume contains just one amended paragraph of one act on money, currency, credit or banking? - Thus the law has largely become not only impracticable and unobtainable but unknowable unless one visits e.g. the Reserve Bank library - where non-staff are not welcomed but rather thrown out, or the Australian National Library. - Some law texts were also withdrawn, although the laws still applied, simply because changes were expected soon, although they are not yet enacted into law. I see this as an all too lawful or even lawless legal situation. - But with all the avalanches of legislative changes in this sphere, the basic pillars of monetary despotism remained untouched. Deregulation extended only to the peripheries of banking and even there it did not go far enough. - J.Z., 2.4.97, 20.7.11.
MONETARY DESPOTISM & BOOMS & SLUMPS: It is State interference with the money supply that causes the alternation of boom and slump - the succession of boom and slump that provides the chief target of criticism in the socialist attack on capitalism. - Henry Meulen, THE INDIVIDUALIST, 6/75. - SOCIALISM & CAPITALISM
MONETARY DESPOTISM & CENTRAL BANKING: Absolute monetary power is also being absolutely abused. - J.Z., 20.8.74.
MONETARY DESPOTISM & DEMOCRACY: Democratise money. Repeal the central bank's issue monopoly. Repeal the legal tender power for its paper money. Abolish monetary despotism. Establish monetary freedom. Until this is done no other liberties and rights will be complete and secure. Pluralism and free choice and competition and voluntary rather than enforced collaboration, voluntary rather than enforced exchange media and standards are the solution. Monetary despotism has held sway over us for thousands of years, like slavery did - and enforced tribute payments or tax slavery still do. We ought to replace them by monetary emancipation or monetary freedom and voluntary taxation. We could either aim at these important but limited objectives directly or could realise them indirectly through achieving free choice of governments, or competing governments - and free societies, all based upon individual secessionism and voluntary membership, made possible through the possibility of exterritorial autonomy and personal laws, with their long history and experience, however neglected they still are at present. Then the realisation of monetary freedom in at least one of the resulting "panarchies", formed e.g., by some limited government libertarians or some of the no-government anarchists, would indirectly realise monetary freedom, for them, too. - J.Z., 11.4.93, 27.5.97. - MONETARY LIBERATION OR EMANCIPATION, PANARCHISM, INDIVIDUAL & MINORITY GROUP SECESSIONISM, EXTERRITORIAL AUTONOMY FOR VOLUNTEERS, EXPERIMENTAL FREEDOM
MONETARY DESPOTISM & EMPLOYMENT: Employment opportunities should not be legally confined to the number of jobs for which the government makes its exclusive and forced currency available for wage and salary payments. - J.Z., 7.8.75, 20.3.97, 20.7.11.
MONETARY DESPOTISM & MEDIUM OF EXCHANGE: Governments cannot be trusted with power to determine what traders should use as a medium of exchange. - Leonard E. Read, THE FREEMAN, 1/75. - Or as a value standard! - J.Z., n.d.
MONETARY DESPOTISM & MONETARY FREEDOM REVOLUTION: But if we beat this thing, public opinion will crucify anyone who tries to punish us. - F. M. Busby, The Breeds of Man, p.65. - In carefully chosen situations and with sufficient monetary enlightenment, one can break the laws of monetary despotism and get away with it. - J.Z., 24.8.02. At least it is still legal to prepare ourselves, by some of the more efficient enlightenment methods for such a situation. See my digitized book manuscript, still only called "New Draft", which I would gladly send, upon request, as a zipped email attachment. - J.Z., 21.7.11.
MONETARY DESPOTISM & MONETARY FREEDOM: When monetary freedom is illegal monetary despotism and all its abuses is the only remaining legal alternative. - J.Z., 74.
MONETARY DESPOTISM & MONETARY REFORMS: The inflations and deflations of the government's money monopoly and its money manipulations, e.g. by discount rate-, interest- and open-market-policies, and compulsory "reserve" requirements, do wrongfully and harmfully affect all monetary and financial transactions, inflate or deflate or stagflate cash, deposits, savings, all credits and debts. Instead of trying to "reform" that monopoly and power, we ought to strive towards its abolition. That does not necessarily mean its outlawry or prohibition but its shrinking, finally to nothing - by depriving it of all involuntary support and thus letting it fail upon its demerits. - J.Z., 3/97, 21.7.11. - PANARCHISM, DIS., MONETARY & CURRENCY POLICY, CENTRAL BANKING, FISCAL RULES, FINANCIAL REGULATIONS
MONETARY DESPOTISM & OUR ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT POTENTIAL: Years ago, on a trip with my 3 boys, when they were young, and not far from here, along the Old Hume Highway (I think it was near Bargo), I saw a pitiful sight: An eagle chained to a fence post! To do that to an eagle seems to me to be even worse than to do it to one of the less soaring birds. To some extent, this chained eagle can supply an analogy to monetary despotism and indicate our more or less miserable situation in it. In this case the chain is the forced and exclusive paper currency of the government's central bank and the post itself to which it is anchored, is the central bank. Under monetary freedom, like an eagle unchained, we would soon be able to soar - to the limits of our physical and mental capacities and willingness to use them productively to satisfy other producers and traders, at market prices, and thereby get our consumer satisfactions in exchange. - I do know, like all others, this analogy limps, too. Eagles are not exchangers but, rather, like governments, beasts of prey. They are not sound potential issuers and free traders. They are not productive but parasitic, apart from their developmental role in improving other species, which they hunt, by eliminating their weaklings. Typically, many governments have chosen them for their symbols. At the same time, their high and wide-ranging and, seemingly. effortless flights, have also turned them into symbols of freedom. Eagles and free currencies have some other characteristics in common, though. They do not multiply endlessly until we suffocate in eagle feathers. There is a natural limit to their reproduction. And if there is no coercive intervention by hunters, there is no deflation of eagles, either. They just fill their natural niche. In Australia, they probably helped, together with foxes, to reduce the rabbit plague. Rabbits really "inflated" themselves. But even with them multiplication had its limits. During drought times, when food for them was sparse, pregnant rabbits were able to assimilate their embryos again, as food for themselves. And the flood of their numbers, at least from the point of view of graziers and gardeners, was not restrained by the right of graziers to refuse to accept them on their properties. They did try, not very successfully, via rabbit proof fences. But then so much of Australia is still unfenced or fenced-in only to keep cattle and sheep in. Rabbits multiplied not because of legal tender but as a natural force, turning into a natural catastrophe, in a country where they did not have sufficient natural enemies, only e.g. eagles, and dingo (dogs), not wolves. Foxes were introduced and helped to reduce their numbers (but were themselves hunted for their pelts) and later rabbit-specific virus infections. Weasel-like animals, which in India reduced the snake plague were introduced here on a trial basis, but went for rabbits, instead. I do not know why they were not retained as enemies for rabbits. Probably the lobby of chicken farmers objected. The second rabbit plague - the calcivirus - after the first, myxomatosis, did no longer work well enough, was accidentally released from its trial area, an island. (The biologists involved did not anticipate birds or insects could bridge an ocean gap of only 4 km easily, so something was missing in their biological education.) Then it spread so fast that rabbit hunters could no longer make a living from them. Felt hat producers were looking around for farm bred rabbits instead. (By now this situation has changed again and rabbits have become plentiful again, at least where I live. - J. Z., 7.9.02.) I think that under free migration rabbit hunting could have reduced them sufficiently. I do remember a park near my home in Berlin, which was, just before the war, crowded by rabbits. It took only a few weeks of war and its meat rations to reduce that rabbit population to zero. Under certain conditions certain animal populations can become inflated. Such an inflation for humans has not yet happened and is unlikely to occur. We have inbuilt and artificial preventative restraints. Even the "primitive" Aboriginals knew, according to Dr. H. G. Pearce, ca. 70 different prophylactics. They did not have to resort to cannibalism although, at one stage, they were, probably, cannibals, too, like all other ethnic groups were, at some early stage during their development. Seeing the harm done by deflations and inflations, one should imagine that the search for their natural preventatives would have been much more intense and long ago successful. Alas, most people are not rational, selfish and moral enough to sufficiently act in their own interest and that of justice, security, prosperity, peace and harmony. - J.Z., 23.4.97, 21.7.11, 4.8.11. - CENTRAL BANKING, MONETARY & FINANCIAL DESPOTISM, MALTHUSIANISM, OVER-POPULATION?
MONETARY DESPOTISM & PEASANTS, FARMERS, AGRICULTURE: The only reason why the peasants have no access to cheap capital is not the callousness of the rich, not "production for profit instead of for use," but, simply, stupid state interference with money and banking. - Henry Meulen, THE INDIVIDUALIST, 8/75. - Actually, here it is less the interference with competing currency options that matters but interference with financial freedom, like the issue and circulation of mortgage bonds, to help to overcome some of the natural fluctuations in agricultural production. Naturally, once farmers do have produce to sell, after the harvests, then it would also be much easier to sell, internally and externally, if they were free to issue their own purchasing and clearing certificates. But farmers' purchasing certificates should not be issued upon their future produce - which might still be destroyed, e.g. by a flood, frost, hailstorm or a pest. - J.Z., 21.3.97. - That kind of risk should rather be covered by weather- or credit insurance as well as by investments in climate-changing engineering, like e.g. Hogan's Mountain ( L. J. Hogan, Man Made Mountain) for Australia, also, e.g. by changing the course of much of the river water in Australia, now flowing wastefully into the ocean. (Ion L. Idriess: The Great Boomerang.) - There are many such large planet engineering projects all over the world - but all of them are much harder to finance under monetary and financial despotism. When they are completed then they do also need monetary freedom to achieve the sale of their produce. - J.Z., 21.7.11.
MONETARY DESPOTISM & RIOTS: prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, battled (*) inflation rates above 20% while some three million people had no job. … black youth unemployment of more than 50 % fanned flames of political discontent. Brixton then had the highest robbery rate in London, along with a waiting list for public housing of 18,000 people; … estimated 5,000 rioters against 1000 police. Police fared worse, with 299 injured, along with at least 65 civilians. … Youths then took to the streets throwing petrol bombs, bottles and bricks at police armed with riot shields and batons. … The fire brigade was also attacked and was unable to reach fires set by rioters to a school and two pubs. - Marea Donnelly, donnellym@dailytelegraph.com.au - THE TELEGRAPH, thetelegraph.com.au , Monday, April 11, 2011. - (*) Probably, it never occurred to that or any other Prime Minister, to any of the policemen and the rioters, and their sympathizers, and the owners of the burned-out premises, to demand the repeal the legal tender laws and those establishing and maintaining the note issue monopoly of the Bank of England, which made possible inflation, deflation and stagflation, with their high unemployment rates. - Historically there exists no record for a genuine inflation, deflation or stagflation without these preconditions, as a systematic survey would soon reveal. The mass media and even most of the scholars and writers have so far failed to sufficiently point out this connection. A close survey of riots, terrorism, rebellions, insurrections, revolutions, racism and immigration restrictions would show a close link to monetary despotism and its consequences. Naturally, in this case and at that time the police had also become very unpopular through its enforcement attempts of anti-drug legislation. Racism was still all too wide-spread under these conditions. - Moreover, the still all too popular notions of collective responsibility induced the discontent people to attack the wrong targets (or their property) as their supposed real and main enemies. - The usual personal rather than causal thinking was also involved. - One cannot describe all the factors in one short article. E.g., that shortage of housing is also related to inflation, because in the absence of sound value standard reckoning not enough capital can be profitably invested in building housing for other people. - J.Z., 13.5.11. - BRIXTON RIOTS, APRIL 1981, INFLATION, UNEMPLOYMENT, RIOTS, REVOLUTIONS, TERRORISM
MONETARY DESPOTISM & SLAVE MENTALITY: Most people seem to hate the market and its phenomena, as producers, labourers, tradesmen and professionals. It is almost as if they were still standing for sale, as slaves on a slave auction block in a slave market, like many or most of their ancestors were. Maybe a racial memory is involved here and that particular gene might soon be discovered. In a way they still are slaves but with the slave masters of old replaced by those who managed to get hold of enough of the forced and exclusive currency of monetary despotism, to be able to bid for their labour. They are not allowed to issue their own money tokens, redeemable in their goods, services and labours, nor are their buyers. They are not free to issue IOUs in free and effective clearing, based upon what they have to offer to the market, and clear them against the IOUs of others, or, monetarily or via clearing, to exchange their goods, services and labour for those of others in what amounts still, essentially, only to a far advanced form of barter, hidden from sight by the "curtain" of money, as already Goethe observed. All are kept within the tight network of monetary despotism and thus restricted in their exchange actions. Usually, we are thus forced to offer our goods, services and labour not at free prices but only at prices that are more or less emergency sales prices, because by the wrongful laws of monetary despotism they may be expressed only in a forced and exclusive currency that is monopolised by the central banking system of a country. Due to their remaining slave mentality, they tend to put up with this condition rather than effectively questioning, criticizing and, finally, effectively rebelling against it and abolishing it, starting with doubts, discussions and theoretical explorations of this freedom option. They are not in the market with the money of monetary despotism for the literature expounding the options of monetary freedom, even though such literature is not outlawed or censored. They have put this major freedom option out of their mind or beyond their horizon or doubt, ridicule and slander it when they come across it! - "For every tyrant a thousand ready slaves!" - Here: For every monetary tyrant there are millions of ready slaves and numerous professional apologists for his monetary despotism. - J. Z., 17.9.91, 28.4,97.
MONETARY DESPOTISM & STATE SOCIALISM: Socialist orders, planning states, are thus entirely favourable to a purely fiat currency, to an unbacked paper money. Without such a monetary system, their totalitarian power is broken, since gold and silver make possible an independent wealth, since their intrinsic worth escapes the control of the state and the effort of the state to make itself the sole source of value. - Rev. Rushdoony, The Myth of Overpopulation, p.28. - This book includes wrong assumptions on fiat money, legal tender and intrinsic value but is otherwise correct. - J.Z., 21.3.97.
MONETARY DESPOTISM & THE "FREE" ENTERPRISE ECONOMY: The money supply is today not any more efficient that are the governmental postal, railway, road, police, court and defence services. They are all mismanaged by monopolistic bureaucracies. Consequently, there are always difficulties in selling goods and labour for this monopolistic exchange medium and it is also continuously depreciated because we are not free to compete it out of existence or to refuse it altogether or to discount it and to use free market money instead. - J.Z., 8.4.79, 20.3.97. - At least in our times free market money has around considerable interest. In "googling" for it, yesterday, I got 1,580,000 results! - But uncounted disagreements on this subject remain still to be clarified and settled. - J.Z., 21.7.11.
MONETARY DESPOTISM & THE FREE DEVELOPMENT OF MONETARY SYSTEMS: The monetary system of Australia, as well as that of all other countries (populations) is not one of natural growth and development but the result of territorial legislative interventions with such growths and developments. The legislated monetary despotism grants exclusive and legal tender powers to the paper money of national central banks, which are legally given a pretended independence from governments but continue to have all too many ties with them and their vested interest e.g. in taxation via inflation, with getting the tax slaves into nominally higher tax brackets and in "fighting" inflation e.g. via price controls or through enforced deflationary steps. What governments thus achieve are mainly only periods of obvious stagflation. These powers are supplemented by regulatory powers over other banks and their activities, e.g. by compulsory licensing, cover and reserve requirements, interest regulations etc. Thus the bad paper monies of the central banks cannot be, legally and freely, competed out of existence but are coercively maintained in spite and often because of their flaws, which allows the manipulators to abuse them as they please. They will always find apologists for their mismanagement among the "experts", mostly trained by and paid for by government institutions, too. If central banks had no despotic powers and privileges, then they could at most only issue a soundly administered tax foundation paper money, one that would be optional and market rated in general circulation and that only the government would have to accept at par, one also using a sound value standard, in payment of all taxes due or extorted and determined in the sound value standard. Beyond that they could not, then, force their notes into circulation, i.e., the popular version of Gresham's Law would be reversed and good monies would be freed to drive out bad money. - J.Z., n.d. & 15.4.97. - Without the territorial monopoly of the present States, i.e. among communities of volunteers, all under their own personal law, the flaws of monetary and financial despotism and the rightfulness and efficiency of monetary and financial freedom would soon become clearly revealed. - J.Z., 21.7.11.
MONETARY DESPOTISM & THE GOLD STANDARD: For some 200 years governments have tried to manipulate and regulate the people's choice of money. Since the gold standard was least amenable to government control it was systematically assaulted. It was suspended at government convenience, gradually deprived of its substance, and finally replaced by the fiat standard. The stage thus was set for an age of inflation. - Hans Sennholz, Inflation or Gold Standard? p.50.
MONETARY DESPOTISM & THE SUPPOSED EXPERTS: We have the spectacle of the world's economists gathering in discussion only of what form state regulation of the monetary system should take. - Henry Meulen, THE INDIVIDUALIST, 12/74. That is like political scientists discussing exclusively territorial regimes with involuntary subjects, i.e. regimes that are, because of their territorialism, inherently despotic. - See my ON PANARCHY & www.panarchy.org & www.panarchism.info - Also my coming-up enlarged and digitized Panarchy A to Z. - J.Z., 21.3.97, 21.7.11.
MONETARY DESPOTISM & UNDER-PRODUCTION: The World is not overpopulated but all too many people are under-producing - because the exchange media are artificially and legally restricted. - J.Z., 7.5.78.
MONETARY DESPOTISM, GOLD & MONETARY FREEDOM: The distinctive function of gold money does not consist in its intrinsic value or in the constancy of that value, which fluctuates even in the absence of government intervention. The excellence of metallic money in free circulation consists in the fact that it renders impossible the abuse of the power of the government to dispose of the possessions of its citizens by means of monetary policy and thus serves as the solid foundation of economic liberty within each country and of free trade between one country and another. - Faustino Ballve, quoted in L.E. Read's The Free Man's Almanach, for August 20. Metallic money is just ONE of the alternative SOUND currencies that one should always be free to choose instead of being confined to an exclusive and forced government currency, one that is fraudulent, monopolistic, exploitative and tribute raising. The supposedly "intrinsic" value of gold is still based on its subjective value in a free market. But that tends to be rather steady, via its subjective value, used in jewelry and the subjective value of its extensive use in industry. - J.Z., 21.3.97, 21.7.11.
MONETARY DESPOTISM, GOLD BUGS & RELIGIOUS INTOLERANCE: Exclusive and hierarchical arrangements are as dangerous for the provision of enough sound exchange media and sound value standards as is the religious monopoly and intolerance of a single hierarchical church. Most "Gold Bugs" do not only favour gold, one can respect that, but they want it either as exclusive exchange medium or at least as an exclusive value standard or as an exclusive medium for both purposes. To that extent they are totalitarians, too. If they confined their system to their own and exterritorially autonomous communities of volunteers then and only then would their "principled" stand not bug me at all. - J.Z., n.d., 9.5.97, 21.7.11.
MONETARY DESPOTISM, MONETARY POLICY, DEVALUATION: We are undone, my dear sir, if legislation is still permitted which makes our money, much or little, real or imaginary, as the moneyed interests shall choose to make it. - Thomas Jefferson. - With the term "moneyed interests" Jefferson came here close to the present anti-capitalism mentality. Capitalists and financiers have not interest in inflations, deflations and stagflation. On the contrary: Their business is also all too much interfered by them. But power-mongers like totalitarian communists, Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Castro and their right-wing equivalents, Mussolini, Franco, Hitler and also their democratic or republican equivalents in the Western World, pretending to be real representatives or to have a genuine mandate, do have a vested interest in the wrongful powers, which the legalized and centralized note issue systems provide them with, especially while genuine individual monetary rights and liberties remain still largely unknown and appreciated, because they are still insufficiently publicized and discussed. - J.Z., 21.7.11. - MONETARY LEGISLATION & VALUE STANDARDS
MONETARY DESPOTISM, REGULATION OF THE CURRENCY: All regulation of the currency, Spooner argued, was unconstitutional because it impaired the individual's right of free contract. Outside the consent of contracting parties, any encumbrance on a contract violated the fundamental reason for forming societies - to protect property. The right to make and the obligation to fulfil contracts provided the bedrock of civilisation. Abandon it and there could be no law, no justice, no civilisation. Without it, no property could be safe. - Charles Chiveley, Introduction to Spooner's Works, p.28, vol. I.
MONETARY DESPOTISM, TAMPERING WITH MONEY THROUGH CURRENCY LAWS: Let me first draw your attention to those despotic ordinances, known as the Bank Charter Acts of 1844-45 and the Coinage Act. Those Acts are commands of the British Government to all its subject in this manner: "Thou shalt use no other money than mine, or such as is issued by those bankers whom I have granted special privileges to." Other governments have enacted currency laws to much the same effect as ours. You understand, owing to the indirect nature of all exchange, due to the division of labor, a medium is required in order that exchanges be completed. This medium, money, is necessitated in the transactions between shopkeepers and their customers, between capitalists and laborers, and in fact, whenever producers want to exchange their products with one another. Given division of labor and consequent indirect exchange, and money is a necessity. It is, in fact, the first necessity in any community that has advanced beyond direct barter. It goes without saying, therefore, that any tampering with the money supply will have far-reaching effects, and that whenever currency laws exist trade cannot be free. - John Badcock, Slaves to Duty, pp 21/22.
MONETARY DESPOTISM: Absolutism suppressed merchants' attempts to create stable money. - Hayek, Denationalisation of Money, p.28.
MONETARY DESPOTISM: After half a century of monetary depreciation and economic instability, still to accept the dogma that it is the proper function of government to issue money and regulate its value, reflects a high degree of insensibility to our monetary plight. - Hans F. Sennholz, THE FREEMAN, 9/73.
MONETARY DESPOTISM: An exclusive and imposed exchange medium for the population of a whole territory, with which numerous imposed taxes can be daily paid, directly or indirectly, upon millions of otherwise free exchanges of goods, services and property titles, can already thereby be maintained at par with its nominal and fictitious (legal tender) value, without any rare metal cover and redemption obligation for the issuer, namely the State or its central banking system. However, by its very nature it can also become deflated, inflated and stagflated, abused for currency manipulations like devaluations, revaluations and credit restrictions, often has been and still is. Through its monopoly, its legal tender power, legislatively imposed, enforcing compulsory acceptance and a forced value for its “value standard”, it can wrongly and negatively influence all private monetary exchanges, upon which people depend, in advanced economies, for their very survival. Under it a debtor may pay off his debts with much inflated money, thus exploiting his creditor. Or he may be forced to pay his debts with artificially deflated money, regardless of how badly he and his customers may then be supplied with this money, which greatly reduces his sales and thus his earnings, but not his nominal debts, thus increasing his debt burdens or even driving him into bankruptcy. The value of such government money in private and enforced circulation (apart from its tax foundation, based upon legally imposed tributes) is entirely fictitious, derived only from whatever tax foundation it still has in the sphere of taxation. - Under full monetary freedom its value would drop to zero for private and free transactions (apart from its remaining tribute foundation) and would be replaced, for private transactions, by alternative and sound currencies in a process in which good monies would drive out or prevent the issues of bad moneys. The government’s or the central bank’s currency would be widely refused - for all but the imposed and still enforced tax payments - or discounted to zero for all private and voluntary transactions. It has then no goods or service backing or readiness to accept foundation for any private and voluntary transactions but only a value as a means to avoid being punished as a tax slave, for not paying this kind or tribute. Naturally, to some extent one could still use it, once one has paid one’s own tax tribute, to pay others, who have still not paid their current tax tribute to the government. It would have not compulsory acceptance and a forced value in private transactions but only in payments to the government. – The monopoly and coercion involved in monetary despotism have many negative consequences just like the justice, freedom, voluntarism; and the free and sound exchanges under monetary freedom do have many positive consequences. Monetary despotism almost invites and make possible many abuses, under all kinds of false pretences, always have and always will. Under monetary freedom inflation, deflation and stagflation as well as credit restrictions can be easily avoided. By a sound, just and enlightened monetary revolution, properly timed and conducted, monetary despotism could be ended very fast, to the advantage of all honest producers and exchangers. - The wrongs and disadvantages of monetary despotism are so great and have also so many catastrophic consequences, like political despotism, wrongful wars, civil wars and revolutions, not only the usual wrongs of wide-spread involuntary impoverishment, that it is surprising that it could be maintained for so long. However, if one considers the number of popular errors, myths and prejudices in this sphere, the wide-spread ignorance of and disinterest in this subject, among the victims of this system, and even among the victimizers (Do not forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing to us! See their extensive public “justification” for their misdeeds!), then its longevity and world-wide application is no longer surprising. - How can one assure and accelerate the process of monetary enlightenment, which could and would, finally, end this despotism very fast, to the great advantage of almost everybody? Seriously raising this question and trying to answer it would soon lead to already proposed solutions or to news one. Panarchistic experiments among volunteers, i.e. exterritorially quite free monetary and currency reform experiments, would soon be able to demonstrate the correct solutions in this sphere and spread them by voluntary acceptance. But sufficient enlightenment must come first, to make such experiments possible and to lead them to success. “Nothing is worse to behold than ignorance in action.” – W. v. Goethe. – One could also say: “Mea culpa!” – For who among the consistent freedom lovers has so far collaborated with enough others to produce, between them, an attractive handbook on monetary freedom? Please, do also consider all the other kinds of reference works that would be necessary or desirable to achieve, finally, sufficient monetary enlightenment and this a.s.a.p. (I listed some of them in my book manuscript "New Draft", which I offer digitized as an email attachment to anyone interested. - J.Z., 4.8.11.) – It is even hard to impossible merely to get the email addresses of others, who might be interested, in many to most cases! - J.Z., 15.8.10, 25.9.10, 4.8.11. - VALUE STANDARD, LEGAL TENDER, MONETARY FREEDOM, TAX FOUNDATION, HONEST MONEY, HONEST VALUE STANDARDS, MONETARY POLICY, CURRENCY POLICY, FREE BANKING, FORCED CURENCY, CRIMINAL CURRENCIES, CENTRAL BANKING, MONOPOLY MONEY, MARKET MONEY & VALUE STANDARDS, MONETARY EXPERIMENTS, VOLUNTARISM, PANARCHISM, ENTLIGHTENMENT, MONETARY REVOLUTION.
MONETARY DESPOTISM: And central banks, national debts, depreciating currencies and legal tender laws spell one thing - the end of free enterprise, freedom and justice. - Leslie Snyder, Justice or Revolution, p. 133.
MONETARY DESPOTISM: But as soon as it was widely understood some 50 years ago that the convertibility into gold was merely a method of controlling the AMOUNT of a currency, which was the real factor determining its value, governments became only too anxious to escape that discipline, and money became more than ever before the plaything of politics. - Hayek, Denationalisation of Money, p.29. - Here Hayek does not recognize that other means can effectively control the amount of money issued - when it is not monopoly money and has no legal tender power. Even for him it was not easy to entirely free himself from a host of old and popular errors and prejudices. - J. Z., 21.3.97, 21.7.11.
MONETARY DESPOTISM: Economists are again looking to means of taking money out of the control of government altogether. In Hobart Paper 69 (Gold or Paper?) Professor E. Victor Morgan and Mrs. Morgan re-examine the breakdown of monetary management since the war and re-assess the case for re-establishing a link between currency and gold. - Arthur Seldon in Hayek, Denationalisation of Money, p.4. - Alas, the imagination of too many economists does not suffice to let them think beyond the paper money of monetary despotism and the classical alternative of "the" gold standard that was based on instant convertibility of all paper notes by the issuer. - The range of all monetary freedom options is very much larger. - J.Z., 24.3.97.
MONETARY DESPOTISM: For a government to limit the currency of a people, and to designate the individuals (or corporations) who shall have the control of that currency, is, manifestly, equivalent to saying there shall be but so much industry and wealth in the nation, and that these shall be under the special control, and for the special enjoyment of the individuals designated; and, of course, that all other persons shall be simply their dependants and servants; receiving only such prices for their property, and such compensation for their labor, as these few holders of the currency shall see fit to give for them. - Lysander Spooner, A New Banking System, pp. 52/53.
MONETARY DESPOTISM: How much have we all heard (we who are old enough), within the last fifty years, of the power of congress, or of the States, "to regulate the currency". And "to regulate the currency" has always meant to fix the kind, and limit the amount, of currency, that men may be permitted to buy and sell, lend and borrow, give and receive, in their dealings with each other. It has also meant to say who shall have the control of the licensed money; instead of making it mean the suppression only of false and dishonest money, and then leaving all men free to exercise their natural right of buying and selling, borrowing and lending, giving and receiving, all such, and so much, honest and true money, or currency, as the parties to any or all contracts may mutually agree upon. - Lysander Spooner, A Letter to Grover Cleveland, p.92, in Works, I.
MONETARY DESPOTISM: If any monetary issue, clearing system, non-cash payment method, deposit saving and investment system or any other money and capital market system is good enough then it does not require any privilege, licensing, subsidies, controls or regulations. The bad ones are, obviously, never sufficiently prevented or kept under controls by the government controllers (themselves the worst offenders, through their inflationary, deflationary and stag-flationary, coercive, centralised, authoritarian, fraudulent, exploitative, oppressive and war-promoting system), as almost daily reports in the mass media prove sufficiently, although these media do neither recognize the correct causes nor the natural cures and preventative steps. - J.Z., 3/97.
MONETARY DESPOTISM: If the legislature may forbid men to enter into one kind of obligatory contracts, they may, by the same rule, forbid them to enter into any - and the natural rights of men to buy, sell, contract, and exchange property, with each other, instead of being secured by the constitution, would become merely privileges to be withheld or permitted at the caprice or discretion of the Legislature. And if a banker's contracts, for the purchase, sale, or delivery of money, are forbidden today, a farmer's, merchant's, and mechanic's, for the purchase, sale, and delivery of their respective commodities, or appropriate articles of traffic, may be forbidden tomorrow. - Lysander Spooner, Constitutional Law Relating to Credit ..., pp. 10/11.
MONETARY DESPOTISM: In reality, those theoreticians dislike monetary stability, because they dislike the fact that by means of money the individual may escape the arbitrariness of the government. Stable money is one of the last arms at the disposal of the individual to direct his own affairs, whether it be an enterprise or a household. It is certain that nothing so facilitates the seizure of all activities by the government as its liberty of action in monetary matters. - Charles Rist. - It is hardly a genuine "liberty" but, rather, a legalized licence, arbitrariness, despotism or monopoly. - J.Z., 21.7.11.
MONETARY DESPOTISM: It is unjust, inefficient and absurd to allow people to trade only when using a single, exclusive and forced exchange medium and a single, exclusive and forced value standard - via legal tender and the issue monopoly and the restriction of clearing and credit institutions. That does wrongly and unnecessarily combine the exchange medium with the value standard and makes thus a sufficient supply of exchange media and a stable enough currency difficult to impossible to achieve. Without consumer sovereignty towards and free enterprise for competitively supplied exchange media and value standards, we will always get only governmental and more or less mismanaged exchange media and value standards. Competitive and cooperative alternatives to those offered by governments should never be suppressed. When they are then the bad money drives out the good. When they are not suppressed then the good money drives out the bad. - J.Z., 11.10.85 & 9.5.97, 21.7.11. - GRESHAM'S LAW
MONETARY DESPOTISM: Just and full payments cannot always be obtained, if at all, for some people, via an exclusive and government-managed or, rather, mismanaged, because forced and exclusive currency. Such a monopolized currency will always leave some segments of the economy over-supplied with means of exchange (e.g. the public sector) and others under-supplied (e.g. the private sector, especially the rural one). It may over-supply cities and under-supply the countryside. It may over-supply big business and under-supply small businesses. In the absence of sound market rating, free enterprise, competition and consumer sovereignty, freedom of contract and freedom of association in this sphere, it will mostly lead to inflations, deflations and stagflations, each with their forms of involuntary mass-unemployment and business, investment and payment injustices and difficulties. - J.Z., 5.10.91, 26.4.97, 21.7.11.
MONETARY DESPOTISM: Just as the nationalization of the note issue has forced the state to nationalize various industries in order to combat the resulting unemployment, so the same initial interference with industry's right to create its own medium of exchange produced the inflation that forced the state to control prices. - Henry Meulen, THE INDIVIDUALIST, 8/78, p.47. - The "force" involved was in both cases only a false pretence, no a valid excuse. - J.Z., 20.3.97. - CENTRAL BANKING
MONETARY DESPOTISM: Managed money goes with a statist and collectivist philosophy, with government "planning", with a coercive economy in which the citizen is always at the mercy of bureaucratic caprice. - Henry Hazlitt, Inflation, p. 26. - CENTRAL BANKING
MONETARY DESPOTISM: Men do make mistakes. But the tendency is to correct such mistakes most rapidly when the costs are instantly and clearly revealed. The dreadful cost of letting the government prescribe and manage our money is now becoming clear. If that mistake is corrected, it would go far to curb numerous other wasteful practices - Paul Poirot, THE FREEMAN, 4/75. - CENTRAL BANKING
MONETARY DESPOTISM: Monetary despotism means, among other things, that the normal provision of EMPLOYMENT is in some of its most important aspects outlawed and penalised. - Only those, who can gain sufficient legal tender for this purpose, can, under it, pay wages and salaries. Just as under any other monopoly, this legal tender is also often in short supply. Then, rather than breaking or ignoring this monopoly and realising their monetary freedom options - the employers throw many workers upon the street or even close down their enterprises. - Then their potential customers are also insufficiently supplied with sound exchange media or only with inflated ones. These employers and their employees can be blamed for their lack of interest in the monetary and financial freedom options. - If they studied them, like many of them study the forms of their favourite horses or dogs or football clubs or sports or film stars, most of our social problems would soon be a thing of the past. - J.Z., 8.4.97. - As it is, they show as little interest in these freedom options as did slaves and serfs, for many centuries, in the other genuine rights and liberties of free men. - J.Z., 21.7.11.
MONETARY DESPOTISM: Money being the life-blood of the economic system, the control of money means that the economic life of the people is controlled. - Rev. Rushdoony, The Myth of Overpopulation, p.28.
MONETARY DESPOTISM: Money-control is the supreme and most comprehensive of all governmental controls short of expropriation. - Gustav Stolper, This Age of Fable, p.64.
MONETARY DESPOTISM: Our monetary difficulties spring from unwise state tampering with the money supply. - Henry Meulen, THE INDIVIDUALIST, June 77, p.27.
MONETARY DESPOTISM: Seeing that a great percentage of the circulation is coercively handled by bureaucrats (as issuers, tax collectors and spenders), it is not surprising that those, who are neither budget item allocators or bureaucrats nor central bankers or favoured government hand-out recipients, do often have difficulties getting or retaining enough of the scarce monopoly money they manage to earn with their goods, services and labour. That coercive monopoly money is coercively channelled away from the productive to the unproductive or even the counterproductive. - Nevertheless, most of the victims of this monetary and financial despotism do not demand its abolition and its replacement by monetary and financial freedom. They do grant the sanction of the victims. - J.Z., 27.5.87, 9.5.97, 21.7.11.
MONETARY DESPOTISM: Sproul can seriously speak of leaving everything to what he calls "competent and responsible men." ... Sproul's currency theory may be summed up thus: Put your faith in the monetary managers, who have always fooled you in the past. - Henry Hazlitt, What You Should Know About Inflation, p.30.
MONETARY DESPOTISM: State control of money was generally started as a source of revenue. - Henry Meulen, THE INDIVIDUALIST, 12/74.
MONETARY DESPOTISM: That universal riddle of today: how to increase the money supply and employment without raising prices. We have swum in the tank, closely confined by state monetary control for nearly a century and a half, bumping our noses violently at both the boom and slump ends of the tank, and we have not yet guessed what the obstacle is. - Henry Meulen, THE INDIVIDUALIST, 2/78, p.2.
MONETARY DESPOTISM: The existing (world money) system ...creates poverty ... and is the root cause of war. - Vincent C. Vickers, Economic Tribulation. - WAR, POVERTY
MONETARY DESPOTISM: The government forces its bad money as an exclusive one into circulation, via legal tender (compulsory acceptance as well as compulsory and fictitious paper values), while it outlaws the issue of sound, alternative private and cooperative exchange media and the use of sound alternative value standards. For all too many decades most people have all too willingly put up with this monetary despotism, even when it has cost them their jobs and homes or their private business. The community is more robbed by monetary despotism every year than by all private criminals combined. - J.Z., 15.4.97, 212.7.11. - DIS.
MONETARY DESPOTISM: The government's monetary policies are even more mismanaged and crooked than all its other affairs. - J.Z., 6.7.91. - GOVERNMENTS, TERRITORIALISM
MONETARY DESPOTISM: The more completely public finance can be separated from the regulation of the monetary circulation, the better it will be. It is a power which always has been harmful. Its use for financial purposes is always an abuse. And government has neither the INTEREST nor the CAPACITY to exercise it in the manner required to secure the smooth flow of economic effort. - Hayek, Denationalisation of Money, p.102.
MONETARY DESPOTISM: The only difficulty, but a most serious one, is that the State now fixes the total supply and type of money used in exchange. This is as frustrating as though the States should limit the number of postage stamps or railway tickets that can be issued, except that the harm done by money control is very much greater. We write letters, or travel, relatively seldom. We buy and sell every day. - Henry Meulen, THE INDIVIDUALIST, 10/77.
MONETARY DESPOTISM: The territorial governments are even worse than bank robbers for they have not allowed free and sound banks to come into existence. Such banks would compete their central banks fast out of existence, as institutions for a whole country and its population. These monstrously wrong and harmful institutions would be reduced to those clients, who would be their remaining voluntary victims. Then the central banks could no longer cause all too many crises (inflations, deflations, stagflations, credit restrictions), with their mass unemployment, poverty, misery and even, indirectly, death, by the political despotism and military adventures they do "finance". Probably, all the wrongs and harm they do exceeds by far all those committed by private and illegalized criminals with victims, and this all over the world. – J.Z., 5.7.10, 4.8.11. – CRIMINALS, WRONGS & HARM of CENTRAL BANKING, BANK ROBBERS, CRIMES, CENTRAL BANKING
MONETARY DESPOTISM: The world is now allowed to use only fiat paper money ... - Henry Meulen, THE INDIVIDUALIST, 10/76, p.54. - Or tokens and non-cash payments based on it and limited by it. - J.Z., 3/97.
MONETARY DESPOTISM: There is no more ground for the State to prescribe the use of a particular money than to specify the transport or the type of invoice to be used. - Henry Meulen, THE INDIVIDUALIST, 12/77, p.70. - While Sweden had at least degrees of monetary freedom, its notes were aptly called "transport tickets", because they helped to transport produce, other consumer goods, labour and services from where they were available to where they were needed, free exchange for those of other producers and service providers. Only under free competition in their supply, acceptance, discounting and refusals and under free choice of value standards can any monies become a genuine "means of exchange", deserving this term. - J.Z., 21.7.11. - Only under free choice of value standards can the best ones most widely prevail. - J.Z., 4.8.11.
MONETARY DESPOTISM: There is thus an immense educational task ahead before we can hope to free ourselves from the gravest threat to social peace and continued prosperity inherent in existing monetary institutions. - Hayek, Denationalisation of Money, p.101. - At least we do have now at our disposal much better and cheaper tools for this purpose than ever before. Perhaps even a single large external HD could now be filled with all monetary freedom writings that so far exist - somewhere. Perhaps it could even be filled with a complete freedom library. - J.Z., 21.7.11.
MONETARY DESPOTISM: They have all held that it was not necessary that money should be a bona fide equivalent of the labor or property to be bought with it; but that, by the prohibition of all other money, the holders of a comparatively worthless amount of licensed money would be enabled to buy, at their own prices, the labor and property of all other men. - Lysander Spooner, A Letter to Grover Cleveland, Works I, p.37.
MONETARY DESPOTISM: They know, therefore, that prohibitions upon money are prohibitions upon industry itself; that there can be no such thing as freedom of industry, where there is not freedom to lend and hire capital for such industry. - Lysander Spooner, A New Banking System, p.50. - Alas, he does mix up monetary rights with savings and investment rights and does propose that the monetization of ALL capital would be possible and desirable, thereby overlooking the function of money as a means to promote, primarily, only the turnover of daily wanted consumer goods, not the turnover of productive capital. For the latter, under financial freedom, special issue and trading rights and special kinds of paper securities do exist, which are not and cannot be currency. - J.Z., 20.3.97.
MONETARY DESPOTISM: To entrust our money to government is like leaving our canary in trust with a hungry cat. - Dr. Hans Sennholz, Inflation or Gold Standard? p.6. - Inflation or free choice in value standards and exchange media is a better alternative. It frees us from the quantity of gold available and affordable for us as means of exchange. It could, e.g., still permit us to account or clear our exchanges, any volume of them, in gold weight units, without possessing any gold coins - and would leave all other options open, too. - J.Z., 21.3.97. - Even gold is not good enough when used as an exclusive and forced currency. However, voluntary victims of that kind of despotic gold standard should be quite free to apply it among themselves. - J.Z., 21.7.11. - DIS., GOLD STANDARD
MONETARY DESPOTISM: Total control of a people is possible through control of money. - Rev. Rushdoony, The Myth of Overpopulation, p.28.
MONETARY DESPOTISM: Traditionally, stabilisation theory has viewed private, capitalist economy as a mechanism which produces fluctuations ... There is no question that government is a major source of instability. - O. Eckstein, quoted in Hayek, Denationalisation of Money, p.78.
MONETARY DESPOTISM: When the supply of any commodity is stopped, we can generally turn to a substitute of our own choice, but when the supply of money is stopped, all buying is restricted. - Henry Meulen, THE INDIVIDUALIST, 10/77.
MONETARY DESPOTISM: Whoever controls the volume of money in any country is absolute master of all industry and commerce. - James A. Garfield, in George Seldes, The Great Quotations.
MONETARY DESPOTISM: Why should the government have the power to force its deteriorated paper money on us and to outlaw all sound alternative currencies? - J. Z., n.d., 21.7.11.
MONETARY DESPOTISM: Within the sphere of monetary despotism there is not cure for monetary despotism in the same way as there is no cure for political despotism within the sphere of political despotism. Monetary freedom, on the other hand, is basically right, beneficial and healthy and thus able to provide whatever cures its practice may still require to remedy mistakes, errors or remaining crimes or temptations or attempts to commit crimes. It does not lend itself to abuse as much as monetary despotism does. It maximises self-responsibility and self-help in this sphere. It is curious that most egalitarians, decentralists and human rights advocates have so far, in most cases, accepted this kind of wrongful power - quite without examination and discussion and without protests, even though it has only false pretences, numerous and obvious failures but no successes at all to offer instead. -J.Z., 2.4.97, 21.7.11.
MONETARY DESPOTISM: Would you want to continue legal tender for printing press paper money and the restrictions on silver and gold coin and bullion trading and pricing of one's products, services and labour and outlaw trading by means of privately issued banknotes? - J.Z., 8.9.75, 21.3.97.
MONETARY ENLIGHTENMENT: It requires freedom to experiment in this sphere - among voluntary payment communities. Once the money monopoly and coercion and conception of legal are ended, officially, or ignored and by-passed by a monetary revolution, one introducing monetary and financial freedom, the monetary and financial disfranchisment of the whole territorial population will soon end, issuers and acceptors will rapidly learn from their mistakes and thus monetary enlightenment will begin or spread rapidly. - J.Z., 3/97.
MONETARY ENLIGHTENMENT: People, who expect to be sufficiently enlightened on money questions through the perusal of short articles, leaflets and pamphlets only, will still have to learn much more in this sphere. These sources are at best incomplete, often misleading, if not quite wrong on many points. One should not entrust e.g. one's car maintenance to a car mechanic, one's life to a medical doctor or a plane pilot as superficially trained. The consequence of lack of knowledge and of numerous errors, myths, dogmas, spleens, prejudices, false assumptions and conclusions in the sphere of money, credit, finance, clearing, interest, note-issuing banking etc. are much more catastrophic to large numbers of people than are the risks of single lives in the hands of incompetents. - J.Z., 16.3.96, 21.7.11.
MONETARY EXPERIMENTS: Margrit Kennedy, according to Piet Bouter, 10/90, knows of a book, titled something like: "After the Crash", author unknown to Piet Bouter, which lists something like 200 recent monetary experiments. He also spoke about "stone money" issued by an artist colony in Italy (?). - I imagine that at least the latter would largely "circulate" only among some special collectors. - In Margrit Kennedy's book, Interest- and Inflation-Free Money, 1988/89, I find on p.26 only a reference to 300 communities in Austria, who began to be interested in the Woergl experiments and to more than 100 in the U.S., that had planned stamp scrip, but no indication on how many had actually started it or how many other monetary experiments took place or were planned. - Token money, on the other hand, in England alone, in one period, came to 20,000 issues. Altogether hundred-thousands of token issues are likely to have taken place, if not millions. A full record of all of them does not seem to exist but coin and money collectors and writers for these collectors have much information to offer. I have about 2 dozen books of this kind and, probably, hundreds to thousands do exist. Some specialise on private token issues and private gold coins. - Likewise, truck payment attempts occurred again and again over several centuries, in spite of prejudices against them, mistakes made in them and many legal prohibitions. If enough people took such experiments and self-help steps serious, then the remaining records of them would all be integrated into one archive and information service or data bank. - The statist issues of monetary despotism, circulating largely only due to their monopoly and legal tender powers and severe penalties for issues of competing currencies, deserve much less study and attention because one can learn much less from them about the inherent laws of money. - That was recognized even by Karl Marx, when he wrote: "... observers who studied the phenomena of money circulation exclusively on the examples of the circulation of legal tender paper money, had to overlook the inherent laws of monetary circulation." - Zur Kritik der politischen Oekonomie (A Critique of Political Economy), S.129 of the Dietz, Berlin, 1951 edition. - I do not know of any Marxist or anti-communist (apart from Ulrich von Beckerath), who sensibly responded to that suggestion. - J.Z., 10/90 & 17.4.97, 21.7.11.
MONETARY FREEDOM & BOOM & BUST: I have now no doubt whatever that private enterprise, if it had not been prevented by government, could and would long ago have provided the public with a choice of currencies, and those that prevailed in the competition would have been essentially stable in value and would have prevented both excessive stimulation of investment and the consequent periods of contraction. - Hayek, Denationalisation of Money, p.14. - Compare my pamphlet: "The Soft Option". - J. Z.
MONETARY FREEDOM & CHEQUES: Have the supporters of state currency considered the system of payment by cheque? It is today open to anybody to offer a cheque in payment of goods, and the state rightly leaves the decision whether to accept the cheque in the hands of the seller. Just as we say "Let the buyer beware " because the variety of goods offered makes any state control impossible, so we say "Let the seller beware" when he is offered a cheque for his goods; the circumstances of each sale, and the parties between whom the sale is effected, are so various that state control of cheque payment would be intolerable. - It is an aim of THE INDIVIDUALIST to urge that the principle applied to the use of cheques should be applied to all money. - Henry Meulen, THE INDIVIDUALIST, 12/77, p.71.
MONETARY FREEDOM & DEFLATION: The reader may not yet feel reassured that, in the kind of competitive money system we are here contemplating, a general deflation will be as impossible as a general inflation. Experience seems indeed to have shown that, in conditions of severe uncertainty or alarm about the future, even very low rates of interest cannot prevent a shrinking of a bank's outstanding loans. - Hayek, Denationalisation of Money, p.76. - Not only the constitutional, legal and juridical situation determines monetary actions or non-actions or false actions but also the ignorance, prejudices, errors, false assumptions and lack of interest which most people reveal towards monetary questions and solutions, even when, as a result, they experience the catastrophic consequences of monetary despotism. The nominal existence of, e.g. freedom of press, does not mean, either, that all will make use of it or that those who do so will do so most sensibly. - For decades I have tried in vain to initiate an extensive monetary freedom discussion and publishing effort by anarchists and libertarians. Even these "radicals" do mostly evade the issue. - I am guilty of it myself, having postponed the microfiche preparation of another batch of U. v. Beckerath papers for many years already and by having given other freedom texts precedence in my LMP efforts. - I have notes accumulated on monetary freedom for decades - but have as yet failed to keyboard all of them in. Regarding Hayek's question on deflation: Even among advocates of degrees of monetary freedom there exist all too often either no or not enough sound notions on correct monetary issue techniques, and rules, methods and precautions. And these somewhat interested people form only a small minority among a generally apathetic to antagonistic crowd. Thus we should not expect the instant demise of all inflations, deflations and stag-flations, even should all constitutional, legal and juridical obstacles to monetary freedom become suddenly abolished. - J.Z., 21.3.97. - DIS., STATISM, LACK OF INTEREST IN THE NATURE & LAWS OF MONEY, BANKING, FINANCE, CREDIT, CLEARING, INTEREST, CAPITALISM, FREE COMPETITION ETC.
MONETARY FREEDOM & FINANCIAL FREEDOM & THEIR INTERDEPENDENCE: I would rather leave it to professionals like Michael S. Rozeff to make a concise or prolonged statement on this important subject. Here I will only state shortly that I am convinced that several close relationships do exist between these spheres. - J.Z., 21.7.11.
MONETARY FREEDOM & FREE BANKING AS SELF-HELP STEPS: You should and you could be your own banker, solving your own monetary problems, alone or in association with like-minded others, free to sell your own labour, services and goods for your own assignments, standardised and in money denominations, upon your own labour, services and goods. For this you do not need any other redemption fund, any issue privileges, any legal tender powers, any other supervisory authority than full publicity and free market pricing for your exchange and clearing media and your contributions in labour, services and goods. Once you are thus monetarily emancipated, your monetary troubles will be over, to the extent that you are willing and able to supply labour, services and goods at market prices and are ready at any time to accept back the own notes, assignments, clearing certificates or tickets - in convenient money denominations - that you have issued, at any time and at par with a sound value standard that you, too, have freely chosen, and that was acceptable to those who accepted your own notes. This kind of monetary freedom is required for your full emancipation, for your full employment in a society based on the division of labour, free enterprise, free exchange, free trade, freedom of contracts, free pricing and the obligation to help oneself as far as is humanly possible. Thereby you would make yourself independent of the inflationary, deflationary, stagflationary and thus crisis- and unemployment- promoting effects of any existing system of monetary despotism, with its central bank, monopoly money, exclusive and forced value standard and other wrongfully legalized powers. Afterwards you will ask yourself : How could I have ever believed that I could become fully employed in my speciality when the demand for my labour, expressed in money tokens, depended upon a monopolist? Also: How could I have allowed anyone to interfere with my exchanges by imposing his flawed and mismanaged paper "value standard" upon all my transactions? - J.Z., 15.11.92, 30.4.97. - Among a stack of books set aside for future reading there is e.g. the following title: Franklin A. C. Mignon, Every Man His Own Financier. A Practical Handbook, T. Werer Laurie, London, indexed, 343 pages, no date. It seems good on clearing, pages 71 & 73 ff, but completely misunderstood the best form of the banking principle on p.56, according to some skim-reading in it. - J.Z., 21.7.11.
MONETARY FREEDOM & FREE BANKING: Freedom to coin one's labour and services and goods supply capacity and willingness into one's own ready cash notes and clearing certificates - at least between some of one's own local direct or indirect suppliers of goods and services. - The issuers of sound token money do not need a gold stock or government supervision and control for their issues. They are self-managed and controlled by sovereign consumers. - J.Z., 22.9.93, 24.4.97. - TOKEN MONIES, TICKET MONIES, GOODS WARRANTS, SERVICE VOUCHERS, CLEARING CERTIFICATES, BANKING PRINCIPLE
MONETARY FREEDOM & FREE EXCHANGE RATES: Remove protection of official currency from competition. Secondly, I had regarded fixed rates of exchange as necessary for the same reason for which I now plead for completely free markets for all kinds of currency, namely that it was required to impose a very necessary discipline or restraint on the agencies issuing money. Neither I, nor apparently anybody else, then thought of the much more effective discipline that would operate if the providers of money were deprived of the power of shielding the money they issued against the rivalry of competing currencies. - Hayek, Denationalisation of Money, p.82. - Actually, Hayek was a latecomer with his monetary freedom ideas. He had numerous predecessors that he did not know or did not appreciate. All the relevant writings were and are not readily accessible, not even to him. - J.Z., 21.3.97. - By now they COULD be cheaply offered on a single disc! But do not expect me to do that for you, quite on my own! - J.Z., 21.7.11.
MONETARY FREEDOM & FREE LABOR: But it is to be kept constantly in mind, that there can be no such thing as free labor, unless there be freedom in money; that is, unless everybody, who can furnish money, shall be at liberty to do so. - Lysander Spooner, A Letter to GroverCleveland, Works I, 51/52.
MONETARY FREEDOM & FREEDOM OF CONTRACTS: Spooner begins CONSTITUTIONAL LAW RELATIVE TO CREDIT, CURRENCY AND BANKING (1843), with the statement that "The Constitution of the U.S., (Art. 1, Sec. 10), declares that 'No state shall pass any law impairing the obligation of contracts.'" On this basis alone, the courts should overthrow all governmental interference with currency, and allow a free banking system. - Charles Chiveley, introduction to Lysander Spooner's Works, I/28.
MONETARY FREEDOM & FULL EMPLOYMENT: To end unemployment you must have monetary freedom. When monetary freedom is legal, known, appreciated and practised, involuntary mass unemployment cannot occur or continue. - J.Z., n.d., 21.3.97. - Assuming, naturally, that there are not other wrongful and irrational interventions with an economy, like e.g. wage- and priced controls. - J.Z., 21.7.11.
MONETARY FREEDOM & ITS INVOLVEMENT WITH OTHER LIBERTIES & RIGHTS: Freedom to own and dispose of one's property, labour and services capacity as one sees fit. Freedom to exchange, freedom to trade, freedom to contract. Freedom of association and disassociation. Freedom of choice. Freedom to supply oneself with work. Freedom to support oneself. Free choice of jobs and profession - even that of note-issuing bankers. Freedom to engage in honest rather than dishonest deals - with the latter represented by exclusive and forced currencies, the central bank's money issue monopoly and legal tender. Freedom to resist and to break legally established monopolies. These, and some others, applied in the sphere of exchange media and value standards and clearing, are the rights and liberties of monetary freedom. - J.Z., n.d. & 27.5.97, 21.7.11. - The most comprehensive listing of these rights and liberties, that I know of, was written by Ulrich von Beckerath, 1882-1969 and was translated into English by me and then microfiched and digitized by me. By all means, try to send me still better declarations of this kind. I reproduced it e.g. in my compilation of PRIVATE human rights drafts in PEACE PLANS 589/590. - This was later digitized and supplemented. - J.Z., 21.7.11.
MONETARY FREEDOM & MONETARY RELIGION: The best defence against any despotic monetary religion is full monetary freedom, in theory and in practice. It would confine the effects of the religion of monetary despotism to its voluntary followers - as long as it can retain any under this condition. - J.Z., 15.3.97. - The same applies to full financial freedom. - J.Z., 21.7.11.
MONETARY FREEDOM & MUTUAL TOLERANCE FOR TOLERANT ACTIONS: Let us agree to disagree and I beg you only to at least consider the options and preconditions for monetary freedom and tolerance for various tolerantly practised monetary systems, including various short-term account keeping, clearing and short-term credit systems, all desired by and pleasing their supporters, at least for a while, while they can stand them, if they still do have flaws. In the latter case one might be willing to give them a theoretical warning and free advice but one should in no way continue to support their suppression. - J.Z., 3/97. - PANARCHISM, EXPERIMENTAL FREEDOM, EXTERRITORIAL AUTONOMY FOR VOLUNTEERS.
MONETARY FREEDOM & RELIGIOUS LIBERTY: To each his own monetary and financial religion, church, dogma, ritual and priesthood, at his own expense and risk. Tolerance towards all tolerant experiments of this kind among their believers! Sooner or later the successful experiments would win more and more converts at the expense of the unsuccessful ones. This is as it should be. The good monies would drive the bad, even among those without knowledge of the theories, techniques and practices involved in producing good money and maintaining its quality. - J.Z., 12.8.91, 26.4.97, 8.9.02. - PANARCHISM, EXPERIMENTAL FREEDOM, TOLERANCE
MONETARY FREEDOM & SOCIALIST MONEY SYSTEM: The foundation of all freedom is freedom of exchange. The single most restraining influence on freedom of exchange is our socialist money system. - E. C. Riegel in "Flight from Inflation". - At last most of his monetary freedom writings are by now online.
MONETARY FREEDOM & THE CRIME RATE: When any productive capacity and readiness can be much easier turned into ready cash, by oneself or for a local and competitively supplied private currency, then there will be many less desperate characters committing crimes as a means to support themselves. When, in consequence, the Welfare State "rights" are more and more diminished, too, or delegated to voluntary associations and communities and when monetary rights and other economic rights are more and more recognised and utilised, then and with them the general individual rights of others will also become more and more recognised and respected and people will thus abstain, more and more, from criminally infringing them. Today property-, personal- and trading-rights are largely restricted by an avalanche of laws and by public opinion, based largely upon "free" public mis-education that creates sympathy for essentially criminal actions of all kinds of "underdogs" and which, quite wrongfully, assumes that whole classes of achievers, producers and traders are criminals, monopolists and exploiters, all to be penalised at least with high taxes. ("Tax the rich!") We would come to see a shrinkage of that anti-capitalist mentality and with it of crime. People act upon their ideas, no matter how wrong they are. Co-owners and partners of productive enterprises are also far least likely to steal or embezzle as they were, formerly, from a boss, considered to be a monopolist and exploiter, and also much less likely to get away with this, if they still felt so inclined. With right ideas more right actions will follow. Even presently many to most of the convicted prisoners have also their kinds of standards, i.e., there are criminal actions which most of them would not commit even if they were highly profitable for them. That kind of self-control is likely to be greatly increased once monetary and financial freedom have been realized for a while. - Frustrations in jobs would become much rarer. People would more often end up and remain in jobs that they really like and are good in. Nor would economic dependency and housing shortage force people to remain together longer than they would like to be under other and better conditions. Productive work, savings and investments, inventiveness, creativeness, innovation, would be seen as a much more attractive and safe roads to personal riches, rather than gambling, betting, lotteries, theft and embezzlement or even robberies and murder. I would even assume that drug consumption and alcoholism would be greatly reduced. Adventurous spirits could then try themselves in hundreds of thousands of different productive jobs, with more of these appearing almost every day. Moreover, they would be much more able to pay for any adventures and experiences that can be purchased. The world would tend to become, more and more, their oyster. Immigration and business entry barriers would fall. Finally, even the universe would be opened up for them. On the other hand, if they still persisted with crimes, then they would have to deal with more armed self-defence, competitive protection and police services, competitive jurisdiction channels, competitive penal services and competitive indemnification extraction companies. Crime would become much less a paying proposition or opportunity. Among more enlightened people even the number of crimes of passion would be reduced, which are all too often based on the primitive and insufficiently refuted notion of "owning" of other people. Nor would power be glorified in a free society. It would become, rather, very widely despised. For these and other reasons I would expect much less crime in a society largely liberated via monetary and financial freedom. - Compare also PEACE PLAN No.241 in PEACE PLANS 15, pp.12-20: Some Thoughts on how a libertarian society would tend to reduce crime, by J.Z., Dec. 1971, 4.8.11.
MONETARY FREEDOM & THE GOLD STANDARD: The case for the gold standard is actually the case for market-originated commodity money, and the case against government-regulated fiat money. It is simply an extension of the case for free markets which respect the rights of man, and the case against controlled markets which violate the rights of man. - Paul Stevens, THE FREEMAN, 1/75. - The rare metals are not the only suitable commodities or commodity mixes to redeem money in, even though most advocates of "the" gold standard can't perceive of anything else. Most people do not want to buy weight units of gold every day but every day they need or want some consumer goods and services. Any exchange medium or clearing system that makes it easy for them to pay for these goods and services, will suffice for them and would often even be preferred by them to payments in gold and silver, as historical experience has often shown. Their preferred tokens do not even have to be redeemable by the issuer in rare metals (as long as, in case one does want gold, one can buy with them gold on a free gold market, paying in one's other kinds of commodity tokens, service vouchers, IOUs or clearing certificates, i.e., if these and the goods or services are reckoned of priced in gold weight units, usually at par with their nominal gold weight unit value or with any other value standard that has been freely chosen). - J.Z., 21.3.97, 21.7.11, 4.8.11.
MONETARY FREEDOM & THE RISK OF ROBBERIES, THEFT, EMBEZZLEMENT & FORGERY: Private issues would, as a rule, have a smaller circulation area, a smaller circle of acceptors and also a shorter circulation or oscillation period than legal tender and monopoly currencies have, since the fiat money of central banks is are forced upon the population of a whole country. Consequently, the dishonest acquisition of a certain quantity of them and their reappearance would be much more easily and faster detected than was possible, at last so far, for legal tender monopoly money. The same applies to forgeries. They are not as easily marketable, either. Especially when issues are in series, and numbered, valid only for short periods, e.g. 3 to 12 months at most and are, upon return to their issuing centre cancelled and replaced by other numbered series. When all series and numbers are recorded upon issue and reflux, then the criminal disappearance and reappearance of many of such notes would tend to be fast detected. And so would double numbering in case of forgeries. Years ago I enquired into the Australian shop currency system, used in consumer credits. At least by then forgeries had never occurred. That may have been a special case, though, for the consumers, receiving these private cash notes in a consumer credit, usable only in the store granting the consumer credit or in its associated branches, would mostly spend them themselves and this immediately or soon upon whatever goods and services they want, leaving thus no great opportunity for forgers. Moreover, there exist now very small machines that can very rapidly check a whole stack of notes for forgeries, even before a cashier accepts them in payment. Private notes, freshly printed and only circulating very shortly, would pass much easier and faster through these electronic forgery checking machines than much used legal tender paper money. - J.Z., n.d. & 21.7.11. - CRIMES, FORGERIES, THEFT, ROBBERIES
MONETARY FREEDOM & THEREBY AN END TO INFLATION, DEFLATION, DEPRESSIONS, STAGFLATIONS & MASS UNEMPLOYMENT: Full monetary freedom for all, fully recognized and utilized by all potential and suitable issuers and acceptors for alternative currencies, could very rapidly end mass unemployment, deflations, sales difficulties, inflations and stagflations. It would include freedom to clear, freedom to choose a value standard for one's contracts, the freedom to clear and to make voluntary credit arrangements more suitable for the creditors as well as the debtors. It would require the freedom to refuse or discount any exchange medium or value standard that one distrusts or suspects for any reason - if one has not issued it oneself. It would establish, for the first time, full freedom of exchange, full freedom of contract in the monetary sphere and to that extent it would be a pre-condition for a fully free market. In the widest sense it, or free banking, must also be associated with full financial freedom for the issue and acceptance of financial or capital securities under conditions that are mutually acceptable. Monetary as well as financial freedom require full publicity for all details which are relevant for their issue, reflux, amortization, interest rates and other conditions. In the absence of an issue monopoly and legal tender, the good monies would drive out the bad ones, i.e. potential acceptors would be free to accept or to discount the bad money and would always prefer the best or sufficiently good monies to inferior ones. Competitive supply would mean here that sufficient but no more than sufficient exchange media would be supplied, enough to achieve the turnover of all ready for sale and wanted goods and services and with them assure full employment for the goods and service providers. Only the issuers would have to accept their own currencies at any time at par from anyone, at least all those of their certificates which are tendered in payment during their stated circulation period. All able and willing to work could then be easily paid at least in one or the other money of monetary freedom, the kind that is acceptable to them. This kind of money would also be of a kind that would lead, automatically, to a corresponding sale of consumer goods and services. For all those unable to work there would be, primarily, insurance and credit arrangements and only as a last resort the voluntary charity options. - J.Z., 2.5.01, 26.8.02, 21.7.11. - GRESHAM'S LAW
MONETARY FREEDOM & UNEMPLOYMENT, SELF-HELP DECLARATION BY ULRICH VON BECKERATH: See: UNEMPLOYMENT & THE RIGHT TO SUPPLY ONESELF WITH WORK. A DECLARATION, by Ulrich von Beckerath, 10.8.1951. (Part of the digitized collection of over 130 PRIVATE Human Rights drafts in PEACE PLANS 589/590, now also offered digitized.)
MONETARY FREEDOM ADVOCATES, DIFFERENT MOTIVES: Some want monetary freedom for its own sake, the rights, liberties and opportunities involved and their beneficial consequences. Others advocate it mainly only because they expect a reduction, if not abolition of interest rates from it. Still others do advocate it only because they are, rightly or wrongly, convinced that in free competition their favourite money system would win. Would the latter remain tolerant when they find out that it would not? - Some of them are true believers, too and might turn into monetary despots themselves for the realisation of their supposedly ideal money system. - J.Z., 29.11.84, 4.5.97.
MONETARY FREEDOM EXPERIMENTS I would like to see a model monetary freedom experiments undertaken, e.g., in any Red Indian reservation or in some poor village in Haiti or anywhere else, under similar conditions of under-development. It could begin with a single general store, issuing its own token currency, based especially upon local products for local consumption and would make a few wage payment loans with its token currency to local producers, too. How fast could such a system expand, increasing local productivity and local sales and local employment as well as local savings, assuming only that there exist no mental, legal, juridical, customary or administrative blocks against such a self-help development and against making and accepting one's own money and using it optimally for one's own productive and exchange purposes? How long would it take before there might be two shops and the number of those paid wages for productive local work in this local currency would be doubled? How long before there would be small local surpluses, which could be invested in mini-loans for local mini-enterprises? How long would it be before such a local economy and local currency issue would help the local economy to, so to speak, pull itself up by its bootstraps? - Naturally, that would required local autonomy towards the central monetary despotism, probably also exemptions from all taxes imposed by outsiders. - However, with the sympathies that ethnic minorities can now often count upon, they might have it easier than others to thus break the stranglehold of monetary despotism and to become self-supporting, economically independent citizens of their self-chosen communities. - Judging from what I have read about the innovative genius, skills and readiness to learn new things, among e.g. Eskimos, according to some reporters or observers, their remaining communities, might be most suitable for starting such experiments, if only their environment and climate and distance from existing trading centres would not prevent them from engaging e.g. in any agricultural or much industrial production. - Mere food gathering, hunting, fishing and handicraft economies are possibly not sufficient to develop sound local currencies and to develop the local economy beyond that foundation, embodying the local economy sufficiently in the general division of labour scheme, beyond local subsistence efforts. - Fish farming and fish conserve industries might be an exception. Assume that the autonomy of tribal people would be more widely recognized, even those of Eskimos, desert tribes or Firelanders (if any survived to today), who were formerly driven into icy or hot deserts, by more warlike tribes, that they were given full autonomy as their right, under personal laws, combined with freedom to settle and work anywhere. Then, perhaps, the Eskimos might come to shine and provide an "economic wonder" far beyond those provided by West Germany or Japan after WW II, and e.g. the "tiger economies" of Asia, from their much wider bases of knowledge, skills and resources. - However, by now generations of welfare statism may have largely changed the character, mentality and natural drives of Eskimos still living in the reservations, as they seem to have to those of many other tribal people or racial minority groups, more or less confined to wasteland reservations or poverty districts in large cities, even Washington, D.C. But if just a few were free to do their things (not just the traditional ones) and to succeed or fail, upon their own merits, unhindered by bureaucrats, politicians, lawyers and popular prejudices or customs, how long would it take before many others would follow their successful examples? - To speed the process up, one could assume that the reservation communities would also have the right to take up loans on a stable value basis and to grant tax exemptions to enterprises set up in their areas and to introduce unilateral free trade for them. Then they might even become swamped with development offers. (Len Casley, with his farm and secession attempt as "Hutt River Province", in Western Australia, was offered over $ 200 million in development capital, decades ago, as soon as his secession would be legally recognized. - J.Z., 21.7.11.) Assume that supermarkets and department stores, set up in their reservations, would also be free to issue their own currencies and would no longer be subjected to Federal, State- and Local Government taxation. How long would it be then before enough of them would be established to be able to provide short term credits for wage payments for many local productive jobs? I am not thinking merely in terms of casinos and craft and tourist activities but of full autonomy for minority groups, initially only within their reservations and later outside, too, on the basis of personal laws and their own communities of volunteer only, all governing or managing themselves exterritorially, under personal law and, especially, under full monetary and financial freedom. - People who remain bound to traditions, customs or habits or have developed the hand-out mentality or bludger or dole-recipient attitudes or who excuse all their inactivity and failures merely with reference to national and racial or religious prosecutions, would, indeed, not make optimal use of such opportunities. But there might be enough others, who would gladly grab and realize such self-help opportunities and use them not only to impress the traditionalists in their own communities but also those in the rest of the world. Indeed, some reservation communities might have to split, based upon individual choices, into the traditionalists and progressives - and, perhaps, the local socialists and the local capitalists, too. - Is there any place or reservation in the world where this approach could be tried? Even those who look down upon minorities - or even hate them - should have less objection against such self-help steps than against riots, demonstrations, protests, gun battles, occupations, endless and expensive and prolonged court cases and continued hand-out anti-economics. - Imagine, e.g., a voluntary association of Negroes in Harlem undertaking such an experiment or a community among the ca. 2 million Jews in N.Y.C. attempting this. (In a short period it might shame, with its successes the statist territorial development of Israel. - Or imagine such self-help steps by the people presently herded into refugee camps. Or an insurrectionist army, that was defeated in its liberation attempt but succeeded into retreating into another country and integrating itself thus and there in its processes of production and exchange. - Perhaps least likely, imagine thousands to millions of unemployed organising themselves and local businessmen and employers for this purpose, declaring their readiness to be paid with such alternative currencies, at market rates for all their productive labours. One can play a lot of challenging mind games in this way. By all means, build such air castles - make them as close to perfect as you can, in your mind and that of others - and then set them up on a sound foundation. - J.Z., 11.1.80, 28.6.89, 15.5.97, 21.7.11. - LOCAL CURRENCY ISSUES, LOCAL AUTONOMY, AMONG RESERVATION INDIANS, ESKIMOS, ABORIGINES, ANY OTHER PRESENTLY NEGLECTED OR OPPRESSED & EXPLOITED MINORITY OR E.G. SLUM VICTIMS OF WELFARE STATES, REFUGEES, DEFECTING ARMIES.
MONETARY FREEDOM EXPERIMENTS, SMALL SCALE STARTS COULD CONVINCE THE WORLD: We can convince the world, if we can convince one town full of people. - J. Hunter Holly, The Grey Aliens, p.119. - First one has to fully convince oneself, e.g., of the rightfulness and practicability of full monetary freedom. Most people seem to find that too hard, even those who subscribed already to some monetary freedom aspects. Secondly, to convince all people in a village or town or such a radical freedom option, contrary to many popular and scholarly and statist prejudices, seems also much too hard or even impossible a job. One might break through their apathy for a short moment, might even get them to temporarily agree with a monetary freedom statement, if one surprises them with it. But it will not take them long to "recover" their usual errors, objections and prejudices, recalling at least some of the hundreds to thousands commonly advanced against this freedom and other freedom and rights options. Moreover, they will not be patient and interested listeners and readers while you attempt to refute their opinions, shared by the majority of their fellow citizens. Nay, at most one can get the consent of some significant members of a local community to engage in a monetary freedom experiment when there is an acute crisis brought on by monetary despotism. When these few engage rapidly and successfully in monetary freedom options and their experiment is not rapidly suppressed by the authorities, then others will follow, not convinced by theories and arguments but by the facts of success. That would also require a situation where the authorities would be hesitant to come down hard upon the participants of the monetary freedom experiment, e.g. shortly before an election, when the experiment has locally abolished or greatly reduced sales difficulties and involuntary unemployment. - J.Z., 8.9.85, 4.5.97, 21.7.11.
MONETARY FREEDOM EXPERIMENTS: Descriptions of all of them, from all sources, should be invited. Perhaps a model scheme for describing them should be drafted. - J.Z., n.d. - See CLASSIFICATION SCHEMES.
MONETARY FREEDOM FICHE OFFERED BY LIBERTARIAN MICROFICHE PUBLISHING: Should we really try to manage without all the information that at present can readily be expressed and accessed only on microfiche? (By now, without a doubt, it could and should also be offered digitized, on discs, flash memories, in email attachments and online. - J.Z., 21.7.11.) Should we intellectually cripple ourselves to that extent? Should we rather continue to all too patiently suffer under inflations, world-wide, and massive unemployment, than pick up effective and fast cures for both when they are expressed presently and largely only on microfiche or in other affordable and efficient media? Why, if we are print on paper addicts, don't we get the relevant sections of microfiched or digitized monetary freedom texts, chosen by us, printed out on paper, at our expense, at libraries or micrographic agencies or in our own an cheap home printer? Why, if we are computer fans, don't we get this all information scanned into disks and onto the Internet, from these microfiche (or originals available to us), through one or the other agency that offers such scanning service? Or share all such dispersed and already digitized files, e.g. on a single external HD, by now already very affordable, too? I assert that a complete and affordable text collection of this kind may also offers a rightful and practicable way to prevent nuclear war, further conventional wars and that it could end any remaining territorial dictatorships. But, who cares, if it is offered only on microfiche or on discs? - J.Z., 11.4.97, 21.7.11. - Alas, most still seem to "think: Even if the world should perish in consequence: We will not change our reading and publishing habits! - J.Z., 5.9.02, 4.8.11.
MONETARY FREEDOM HANDBOOK: I have had an alphabetical handbook on monetary freedom in mind for ca. 40 years. Ulrich von Beckerath and Prof. Heinrich Rittershausen had intended it for much longer. A start has to be made somewhere, by someone, no matter how flawed it still is. So far, there are probably tens of thousands, if not hundred-thousands of texts on monetary despotism and only a few thousand on monetary freedom aspects. The good points have nowhere been combined by anyone as yet. But it is in the interests of everybody that the task is somehow begun by someone. Never mind the initial mistakes, clumsiness of expressions and remaining errors. Help to combine all wisdom on this subject. No one knows everything on this subject. - I had wanted to postpone this handbook until I had finally fiched all Beckerath writings in my possession and indexed them. But this job may still take years to complete. The same applies to the publishing and indexing of the monetary freedom writings of Prof. Heinrich Rittershausen. I do not longer want to postpone this job till then. I may not live so long. More extracts from their writings can be included at any time later on, by anyone who gets access to them. Nor will I be able, for the first edition, to include all my notes and files. More and more will be added later. At least I have the good intention to do so. - Old draft of and introductory apology: Sorry, but I have still not completed my filming of writings of Ulrich von Beckerath and of his associates and indexed them. They would have been a great help in this compilation. I do intend to integrate, finally, the wisdom of this circle separately and in this compilation, to the extent that it is accessible to me. Much of the correspondence and many of the papers have been lost. Mostly through war, some through theft, some through non-appreciation. I will in most instances bow with my limited knowledge and understanding to what I perceive to be the higher insights of that circle. But, rather than indefinitely postponing this job still further, I offer here my all too limited knowledge, opinions and compilations from all kinds of sources, to the extent that I got around to keyboard them in, with the intention to gradually enter more and more and to edit the compilation more and more. The variety of monetary experience, theories, hypotheses, opinions and writings, ideas and proposals, is probably too large for any individual to fully comprehend and express. But, gradually, more and more wisdom on this subject can become compiled, with the aid of many, and used to counteract the still much larger volume of errors, myths and prejudices on this subject. Some, like those on crises, deflations, inflations, prices, creation of money and credit, gold standard, index currencies, are so numerous that they do probably require separate treatments in one to several volumes each. I can only rely on mutual aid and mutual criticism in this sphere. - Much of this compilation consists just of reminders to myself on how to fill remaining gaps in this compilation in the future. They are also open invitations to anyone to help fill them. I am not prepared to argue monetary questions at length in correspondence. I rather reply in further entries in this compilation - and so could you.- Let us start on the assumption that there must be something better than the present monetary system which alternates between inflations, deflations and stagflations and causes enormous impoverishment and unemployment at all of these three stages. Moreover, there ought not only to be freedom of expression and information to discuss the sound alternatives to monetary despotism but also freedom to experiment, for voluntary payment communities, at their expense and risk, regardless of majority or expert opinions and of monetary legislation. Both, free discussion and experimentation must go on and will go on once whatever degree of monetary freedom we can now realize and benefit from, will be realized. Decades of searching have failed to uncover for me even a single valid argument against full free banking or monetary freedom, as a rightful, harmonious and beneficial economic activity. I continue to challenge anyone to try to find or supply such an argument and I would gladly reproduce it in this collection, together with my own replies to it or that of others. - J.Z., n.d. & 21.7.11. - The beginnings of a website version of such an effort, by Klaus Falke, can be found on www.monetary-freedom.net/ - FIRST EDITION - ON THE ROAD TO X EDITIONS, WITH YOUR HELP!
MONETARY FREEDOM IN A FRAMEWORK OF ECONOMIC & POLITICAL LIBERTY: Full employment, an end to deflations, depression, recessions, credit restrictions and inflations and stagflations - through monetary, financial and organisational freedom, followed by or accompanied by free market pricing for goods, services and labour, free trade, free migration, voluntary taxation and full exterritorial autonomy for all volunteer communities, however liberating, progressive or reactionary they may be - all at their own expense and risk and for their own benefit. - J.Z., 27.5.97, 10.9.02, 21.7.11. - PANARCHISM, EXPERIMENTAL FREEDOM
MONETARY FREEDOM INFORMATION: Like money itself, it should be "issued" in small, medium and large quantity "denominations" for the total information or circulation or masses of texts, images and films, is hard to impossible to handle for any potential acceptor and user, even a scholarly one. It should also include different value or value standard systems on ideas, proposals, opinions and arguments offered, resisted or refused. Consequently, and at last, not very fast, a free market rating will lead ultimately to the refusal, acceptance at par or discount or a qualified and limited acceptance of any monetary idea, view, opinion, economic "law", rule, system or institution or process that are somehow or fully sound and of any suggested value standard, at least in the limited circles of their voluntary users or victims of all such offers, theories, theses, studies, faiths, beliefs, dogmas, myths and monetary and financial religious. And the opinions etc. offered in exchange will have to consistently stand up to their own value standards - and to those of many others. All the opinions offered for exchange and all their value systems should be provided as far as possible on a special free market for them, one that is also well publicised and has as many more or less informed voluntary participants as can be gained for it. In this free exchange or information exchange and clearing house system, in this free market for current, popular or unpopular opinions on money, ultimately, the good ones will drive out the bad ones, since no such opinion will have an exclusive currency status and legal tender (compulsory acceptance and compulsory value). Each can be freely refused or discounted. And when a sufficient record is kept of all the refuted ones and how they were best refuted, then it will become harder and harder and ultimately almost impossible, to issue any of them again, except to fools. Can one drive such an analogy further? Please do so and send me your results! - J.Z., 11.4.97. See: Handbook on Monetary Freedom Notions.
MONETARY FREEDOM IS PRIMARY: Whatever use people will make of such liberty is or ought to be up to them. By all means, try to inform them and advise them on your favourite alternatives. Also demonstrate them in practical experiments - but let them do their own things for and to themselves, in peace. The silver-, copper, steel standard, their "labour hour standard", KWH standard etc., are all good enough or just right for those who choose them and as long as they do. At least their chosen standards will teach them some lessons on this subject. Whether they believe e.g. in the postage stamp, KWH, any particular index or a "canary" standard, become tolerant and let them practise their beliefs at their expense and risk. If they hold that capital commodity values and medium or even long-term securities could form a good enough cover and short term reflux for their currencies, just let them try and be yourself wise enough to refuse to accept their currency. If they think that land or roads or buildings, promises or blessings can impart value to circulating media, sufficiently and reliably, immediately and permanently, up to their face values, any time and towards all, let them try, as they might try with e.g. the "money" of the game "Monopoly" or with their own uncovered cheques. You are free to refuse their offers and so are others. - "A burnt child will shy the fire." - J.Z., 7.4.97,4.8.11. - FREE CHOICE OF VALUE STANDARDS
MONETARY FREEDOM KNOWLEDGE: When will there ever be sufficient of it, widely enough spread, to enable us to realize it with almost a certainty of success for this effort and also with a minimum of effort and delays? - Until we manage to collect and exchange sufficient information about monetary freedom options to achieve a minimum of consensus or at least mutual tolerance among monetary reformers, the advocates of the various schemes spend more time and energy on fighting each other than they spend upon fighting monetary despotism, their main common enemy. Alas, this is the same false, thoughtless and unjust reaction that is also to be observed in politics and in revolutions, by people not yet comprehending their panarchistic option of competing governments and competing non-governmental societies or communities, all only for volunteers, and under personal law, i.e. full exterritorial autonomy. - Not even the "virtual communities" now existing on the Internet have, to my knowledge, advanced panarchistic thinking very much. Sufficient monetary enlightenment and tolerance are among the first objectives. Steps towards it are, among others: 1. Microfiche publishing and reading. 2.) Disc-publishing and reading. 3.) Online publishing. 4.) Publishing via email attachments. - Screen reading on desktop computers is still relatively unpopular and uncomfortable but better laptops and a variety of platform and book-type readers make it more and more easy. So far, this kind of treasure chest (still very incompletely offered by LMP), has remained largely unused, even by those who have shown some interest in some monetary freedom options. If they let their information and opinion exchanges be blocked by their own mind-sets and reading and publishing habits, prejudicing them against a medium like microfiche, or floppy disks and CDs, while they do not make much use of other alternative and affordable media, either, then they will have only themselves to blame. - If, let us say, 5,000 people interested in monetary freedom in the world, were to make use of the existing monetary microfiche and produce many more themselves, then microfiche might become among them something like an alternative exchange medium, at least for literature exchanges. They could be credited with fiche credits in a clearing centre which would be supplied by the monetary freedom fiche producers, who would get credit there for the fiche supplied by others. To that extent their own fiche could be discounted there and paid for in the notes or clearing certificates, redeemable only in fiche, of that clearing centre. In this way the credit holders could not only get an assortment of any fiche held there, at the choice of the holder, but his own choice of fiche for the credits he has established there. - That, too, could be a very small sample of the practice of monetary freedom. - Interest in this proposal has so far been zero. (Since 2002 I have given up that hope and no longer added to my 1779 microfiched PEACE PLANS issues. - J.Z., 21.7.11.) - There now many other quite legal self-liberation, self-publishing and self-enlightenment options in existence, also an ever growing variety of information storage, retrieval and communication. By now there are ca. 2 billion PC users. Nevertheless, only a few people use one or several of them for libertarian publishing and this mostly only fractionally. They seem to love their chains more. - J.Z., 31.1.89, 16.5.97. - That currently Google offers 1,580,000 search results upon searching for "free market money" is at least one positive sign. Today I downloaded the last of 49 pages of them, which Google's system considers to be the most important ones. I still have to review and select from them and rearrange the text under alphabetized headings, to include in this A to Z compilation. Many should also be included in my Free Banking Bibliography, on www.panarchy.org/zube/money.index.html - and these bibliographical entries should, probably, be included in this FB A to Z as well. Special abstracts and review compilations are still to be compiled but, certainly, not only by me. - J.Z., 21.7.11.
MONETARY FREEDOM MICROFICHE: COULD THEY BECOME A LIMITED "CURRENCY" AMONG THOSE INVOLVED IN MONETARY FREEDOM RESEARCHES? Esperanto enthusiasts, at least for a while, had an international currency with which their literature could be bought. - J.Z., 7.4.97. - Will digitized freedom texts become also a kind of medium of exchange among advocates of monetary freedom. Will e.g. MBs, GBs or TBs of this or other libertarian information become one of our optional value standards? - J.Z., 21.7.11.
MONETARY FREEDOM NETWORK: Address list, indicating also special interests, microfiche reader access, electronic access, correspondence already fiched, scanned or still to be rendered accessible in these or other ways, rare texts owned. - "How fertile is the smallest circle when it is well cared for!" - Friedrich Schiller. - "To know here and there of someone with whom one can agree, this alone turns this Earth into an inhabited garden." - Wolfgang von Goethe. - DIRECTORY, ADDRESS LIST
MONETARY FREEDOM NEWSLETTER: Once enough people collaborate on this handbook, then it might be wise to issue, once again, a monetary freedom newsletter, at least on microfiche, floppy disc CD-ROM, online or as an email attachment. - J.Z., n.d. & 21.7.11.
MONETARY FREEDOM NEWSLETTERS: My own and that of Siegfried Schwenke have been discontinued. Robert Carnaghan, some years ago, showed an interest to produce one in Europe, provided he would find enough contributors and addresses of interested Europeans. His address : 22 Wentworth Close, Watford, Herts, U.K. - I rather go on depositing and duplicating as much information as I can on my LMP microfiche, leaving it to others to use them as they please. - J.Z., 8.4.97. - By now, if and when I do get around to it, I would rather compile all such information on a CD or DVD and offer it cheaply for sale by snail mail. - J.Z., 21.7.11.
MONETARY FREEDOM OR FREE BANKING & FINANCIAL FREEDOM VS. MONETARY & FINANCIAL DESPOTISM: Competing sound value standards and exchange media rather than monopolistic, centralized, coercive and mismanaged paper value standards and forced and exclusive legal tender: (compulsory acceptance and compulsory value) paper exchange media. Likewise full freedom and publicity for the issue and acceptance of financial securities, provided they do not carry an inbuilt timing risk, like short term deposits do, which are used by banks for long-term investments, thus making their immediate or rapid repayment impossible. - J.Z., 4.4.01, 27.8.02, 21.7.11.
MONETARY FREEDOM OR FREE BANKING: Let the providers of goods and services provide also their own exchange media - and they will always be sold: there would be neither sales difficulties for goods nor for services (unemployment). Compare: SAY'S LAW. - J.Z., 1985.
MONETARY FREEDOM PRINCIPLES, SIMPLIFIED: (1) Everyone has the right to issue, accept or refuse any kind of note, scrip, I.O.U. etc., typified and standardised like money, in convenient denominations and subject to a free market rate, i.e. with compulsory acceptance at face value or legal tender only towards the issuer and those contractually obliged to him. - (2) Anyone has the right to prefer, create, accept or refuse any kind of value standard to facilitate his pricing - and is obliged to accept only his own contractual clauses on this subject - whether he prefers a metallic, index or abstract standard, a KW hour, "labour hour" or canary "standard" or whatever suits his fancy or ideas, theories, hypotheses, dogmas, notions or preferences in this sphere. - (3) Anyone has the right to clear his debts, when due, against his freely transferable assets, in any certified and standardised forms, shapes and values and by diverse methods that are suitable and acceptable to him and his contracting partners. - No third party has in any of these three cases any right to interfere, prohibit or regulate their actions. The parties involved are at liberty to appoint their own arbitrators. - All these principles apply to free, adult and sufficiently rational and responsible beings. - We are no longer hunters and food gatherers. We depend on division of labour and exchange and anything that endangers or infringes these three basic rights endangers our liberty, well-being and survival. - Such liberty is practicable. There are many precedents for it. It may be claimed and practised any time again, without doing wrong or harm to anybody but oneself and one's voluntary followers or contract partners. - Prohibitions have sometimes included huge fines, imprisonment and even death penalties - upon such peaceful and mutually beneficial exchanges! Such laws do not deserve to be obeyed or respected. - Monetary despotism is connected with almost all the major problems of our times while monetary freedom is required for almost all complete solutions. - Whether it is involuntary unemployment of any degree, slow or galloping inflation, excessive or any government expenditures, despotism or totalitarianism, under-development, involuntary poverty, housing shortage, inaccessibility of capital, under-utilised resources, sales difficulties, depressions, prolonged wars and revolutions, immigration barriers, misery for refugees, an unsatisfied hunger for land, agricultural crises - you name the problem and at least some monetary freedom advocates will be able to tell you of the tie-in of the problem with the ignorance of, prejudice against and suppression of monetary freedom. - Free after MFNL&MF, I/1, Nov. 1986, p.6. - J.Z., 21.7.11.
MONETARY FREEDOM REFERENCE COLLECTION: Does there a exist anywhere a larger one than that offered by LIBERTARIAN MICROFICHE PUBLISHING in its PEACE PLANS series, sometimes running under the heading of a RESEARCH CENTRE FOR MONETARY & FINANCIAL FREEDOM? - By now large libertarian organizations may be able to offer more such texts, in digitized form. But I still do not know of any other individual who offers as many such texts as I did in my libertarian microfiche series called PEACE PLANS. Do you? If so, please supply me with the email address of that person. Also with the email or website address of any libertarian organization that offers many such texts. - J.Z., n.d. & 21.7.11.
MONETARY FREEDOM REQUIRES MONETARY TOLERANCE AMONG MONEY REFORMERS: Agree to disagree. Just let the others know where you stand and what you are doing and why and have frequent exchanges of opinions, ideas and references with them. Moreover, advocate quite clearly monetary freedom and tolerance for all voluntaristic monetary experiments of all kinds for all monetary reformers, even when and while you disagree publicly and privately and quite strongly with their theories, premises and proposals in this sphere. Monetary reformers should be more tolerant than the adherents of various religions are. Moreover, they should be aware how much religious tolerance contributed to peace among the followers of different religions - to the extent that this tolerance was achieved. - J.Z., n.d., & 4.5.97. - MUTUAL TOLERANCE, TOLERANCE FOR ALL TOLERANT PEOPLE. PANARCHISM, EXPERIMENTAL FREEDOM, NOT ONLY FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION & INFORMATION.
MONETARY FREEDOM RIGHTS: See: ECONOMIC & HUMAN RIGHTS ASPECTS IGNORED BY MOST MODERN AUTHORS. - See especially some such drafts in the digitized PEACE PLANS 589/590.
MONETARY FREEDOM THINK TANK: E.g.: www.monetary-freedom.net/ - It is providing a working platform for the provision of a databank-kind of monetary freedom handbook or encyclopedia. - J.Z.
MONETARY FREEDOM VS. MONETARY DESPOTISM: What would be the grossest fraud if an individual tried it has become the common practice of governments - all quite legal because it is a governmental monopoly. And the result is a runaway inflation that disrupts business activities and hinders rather than facilitates trade. This is why government cannot be trusted with power to determine what traders should use as a medium of exchange. Let the traders choose. - L. E. Read, THE FREEMAN, 1/75. - Not to speak of deflations, mass unemployment and bankruptcies, stagflations and the wars, revolutions, civil wars and terrorism caused by the governments' mismanagement of currencies. - J.Z., 21.3.97.
MONETARY FREEDOM WRITINGS: A SURVEY OF THEM, CHRONOLOGICALLY & INDICATING THEIR INTERRELATIONSHIP OR THE LACK OF IT. - It would help in comparative studies if a survey were made not only dating all monetary freedom writings but also indicating how many other monetary freedom writings and authors any author on this subject was aware of when he wrote his text. I.e., the shoulders of those, upon whom he stood or failed to stand, should be indicated. Even today most monetary freedom writers seem to have little awareness of many others in this field and whole schools of thought are often outside of their awareness. That should be graphically illustrated by such surveys or bibliographies. If a complete monetary freedom bibliography were already available then the entries in it could be numbered to simplify such referencing or the lack of it. E.g.: Author refers to ...., ...., ...., but fails to refer to ..., ..., ..., although these texts had been previously published. Instead, one might merely note that he referred to only xyz of a-z previous writings on this subject. The usually limited viewpoints of most writings on this subject could thus be shortly indicated to deflate arguments from authority. - J.Z., 8.4.97. (Free after MFNL 3/4.) - My own long but still all too incomplete and faulty bibliography is at www.panarchy.org/zube/money.index.html - J.Z., 22.7,11,
MONETARY FREEDOM, AN ARCHIMEDEAN LEVERAGE? Monetary Freedom is in my eyes providing something like an Archimedean Leverage option, or could provide it, if fully known and used. That requires, from my point of view, the full recording and cheap duplication upon demand, of all its texts and documentations, in any desired selection. I have postponed many of the related jobs for all too long, too. - J.Z., to Robert Carnaghan, 5/94, revised: 22.7.11.
MONETARY FREEDOM, CLEARING & BARTER: Monetary freedom and free clearing can make exchanges as unlimited as barter exchanges can be - but they could do this without the inconveniences and difficulties of barter. Monetary exchanges and clearing do merely facilitate, as helpful and intermediate stages, what remains, essentially barter exchanges, behind the "curtain" of exchange media and clearing transactions, by turning it into a form of anonymous and multilateral barter of goods and services, whose prices and values are cleared against each other, with the aid of suitable tokens, value standards and information exchanges for this purpose. The production of optional and sound money can be as unlimited as the production of goods for barter and the offer of labor for barter. It, including clearing certificates and accounts, is ultimately redeemable mainly only in daily wanted consumer goods and labor. It represents goods and labor, pays for goods and labors and thus facilitates the exchange of goods and labor. - The essence of any money function, except that of a value storage unit, is its clearing function, so much so, that theoretically all money tokens could be replaced by a comprehensive clearing system, made up of local, regional, national and international clearing facilities. The mutual setting off or canceling of all due or soon due credits and debts does not absolutely require money tokens but merely value standards or their symbols and figures on paper or corresponding electronic signals. All debts are equal to all credits. (Those not mutually cancelled, can be covered by insurance charges, in which premiums and pay-outs do again balance each other.) Over their periods even medium and long term debts and credits are cancelled out. But future goods cannot be easily or directly exchanged for present goods, with the means of currency, liquid and competitively issued cash, but only via credits, i.e. capital securities, bought with cash and, ultimately, sold for cash and returning, if sound, some cash interest in the meantime. - If one realizes the barter and clearing nature of money then one will see that the "Quantity theory of money" has only a rather limited validity, e.g. for exclusive legal tender currency. Free money issues are self-limiting and their optional and sound standards prevent price and wage rises from the monetary side. Market-rated sound monies are not driven out by market-rated unsound monies. Only bad legal tender monies have the power to drive out sound alternative currencies. Under monetary freedom Gresham's Law is reversed: The good money drives out the bad. - J.Z., 27.8.02, 22.7.11. - QUANTITY THEORY, CLEARING, EXCHANGE MEDIA, VALUE STANDARDS, GRESHAM'S LAW, LEGAL TENDER
MONETARY FREEDOM, CONFIDENCE & GOVERNMENT CONTROLS: People would learn to trust the new money only if they were confident it was completely exempt from any government controls. - F. A. Hayek, Denationalisation of Money, 94. - Alas, this is only a future ideal. Today even some of the advocates of monetary freedom have not yet quite liberated themselves of all governmentalist and interventionist notions. - J.Z., n.d. - Since they managed to trust even the much worse governmental money, it should not be too difficult for most people to trust any much sounder and competitively issued currency, especially when its market value is thoroughly published and they can test its purchasing power easily within the next store or currency exchange office. - J.Z., 22.7.11. - TRUST, SUSPICION, PUBLICITY, SHOP CURRENCY
MONETARY FREEDOM, ENLIGHTENMENT & REVOLUTION: From a moderate interest in or more or less tacit approval of monetary freedom, in all too general terms, to a well prepared and organised readiness to realize it, whenever there is a suitable opportunity for this, many educational and self-educational steps are required and explorations of the best techniques for monetary experiments and monetary revolutions as well as of the best financing methods for already existing and somewhat liberating revolutions, which would have a better chance to succeed via monetary freedom. Under monetary freedom there would be less bloodshed, less destruction and less chances or even likelihood for the establishment of still another despotism. The gap is as large as that between quiet disapproval or dissent and a full scale revolution, including an armed and well prepared and organised uprising. - J.Z., 5.9.86, 29. 4. 97, 22.7.11, 4.8.11. - However, under democratic governments a monetary revolution can be quite peaceful, quite non-violent. Only some laws would have to be broken - when the time is optimal for this, in self-help efforts to end severe deflations or inflations. There are times and conditions when governments would not dare to enforce the laws of monetary despotism. These ought to be fully utilised to abolish this kind of despotism. - J.Z., 9.9.02, 22.7.11.
MONETARY FREEDOM, EXPERTS: Let each choose or be his own monetary quack or crank or expert - but only at his own expense and risk - and that of his voluntary followers. So far we were the victims of coercive money cranks of the government, who forced their central bank monopoly and powers and their forced and exclusive legal tender paper money upon us and who manipulated it not only into inflations but deflations and stagflations, all without allowing us to opt out from under them and to become monetarily emancipated. This is one of the many important "votes" that they, our supposed representatives, have deprived us of in their territorial "republics" or "democracies", supposedly based upon THE right to vote or our individual consent, while individual and group secession, on the basis of individual sovereignty and exterritorial autonomy for volunteers remain severely suppressed. - J.Z., 2.2.90, 29.4.97. , SELF-HELP, MONEY QUACKS & TOLERANCE, MONETARY EXPERIMENTS, PANARCHISM, SECESSIONISM, INDIVIDUAL SOVEREIGNTY, CONSUMER SOVEREIGNTY TOWARDS SOCIETIES & GOVERNMENT SYSTEMS.
MONETARY FREEDOM, FREE BANKING, REPEAL OF LEGAL TENDER LAWS: 4. Monetary freedom, which includes that any money issued by the State not be designated "legal tender", which one is obliged to accept. One should be able to choose the currency, metal, etc. that one prefers for transactions." - Alberto Mansueli, in FREEDOM NETWORK NEWS, March 01, page 16. He is co-founder of the classical-liberal think tank in Venezuela called "La Salida" (The Way Out or: The Solution).
MONETARY FREEDOM, FREE MEN & FREE MONEY: Free men are free to issue their own money and freely issued money helps to keep men free or to make men free. - J.Z., 18.4.92.
MONETARY FREEDOM, HOW COULD IT BE ACHIEVED? There are dozens of options. All ought to be listed and discussed in detail. Here just some hints: Either by a limited monetary resistance or revolution or a monetary experiment that is rapidly successful and either ignored by those in power, until it is too late for them and they can no longer suppress it, or at a time when it would be politically very inopportune for them to attempt to suppress it. It could also be realized among themselves and for their purposes, by revolutionaries or military insurrectionists already fighting an oppressive government. It could also be realized by geographical or exterritorial secessionists among themselves or by successfully organized local militias that are nationally and internationally federated. The conditions in some reservations for Red Indians or other Aborigines may also permit limited issues of shop currencies - experiments that would find wide-spread sympathies among outsiders, as self-help attempts. - J.Z., n.d. - See under START-UP OPTIONS. - Alas, these entries, in all their varieties, do still have to be added to this compilation. - J.Z., 4.8.11.
MONETARY FREEDOM, INFLATION & POLITICIANS: There is only one way to prevent inflation and that is to have a currency out of the reach of politicians. - Anthony Fisher, The Case for Freedom, p.61.
MONETARY FREEDOM, MONETARY DESPOTISM & PERSONAL & ECONOMIC FREEDOM: Even with the money of monetary despotism one can purchase degrees of personal and economic liberty, officially or unofficially. But one can buy or realize all degrees of personal, economic and political freedom and independence, quite honestly and relatively easily only with the money of monetary freedom and the assets of full financial freedom. - Monetary and financial despotism largely binds one in the slings, fetters and chains that follow it inevitably as their consequences. Under them only a few clever fellows can prosper, by rapidly utilising the remaining market chances - not all productive and creative people can. These clever ones could, usually, prosper even more under monetary freedom, too. For instance, most of the pre-1913 millionaires in Germany were no longer millionaires after 1923. Since then rich people have learned some lessons in avoiding personally some of the evils of government caused and maintained inflations, deflations and stagflations and, to degree, even benefit from them. However, as a rule but they cannot prosper as much, as, as they could in a permanent boom economy, one due to full monetary and financial freedom, as well as all other economic rights and liberties, at least not when they are honest and productive people. - J. Z. 19.5.93, 15.4.97, 22.7.11. - VOLUNTARY TAXATION VS. COMPULSORY TAXATION, HUMAN RIGHTS & LIBERTIES, LIBERATION
MONETARY FREEDOM, MONETARY REVOLUTION: Monetary freedom, a freedom for note issues and clearing, based upon the stable fulcrum of any freely chosen sound value standard, may provide the Archimedean Leverage required to unseat any authoritarian, dictatorial or totalitarian regime, and this fast and with little if any bloodshed. If aided by voluntary taxation and an effective tax strike towards the existing regime, and a refusal to accept its paper money any longer, combined all payments to the remaining supporters of a regime being (temporarily) taken over by the revolutionaries and by a fair and rapid redistribution of all of such a regime's nationalised assets, done in advance and among all its victims, via the free issue and distribution or crediting of generalised shares in these assets, to each of the involuntary victims of a regime, (with these general shares later to be freely transformable into the particularised shares that these shareholders in the national assets might individually want), then all the monetary and financial potential of a revolutionary movement and all the capital assets of an oppressive regime could soon be turned to the advantage of its rightful revolutionaries. (See: PEACE PLANS 19A-C.) - J.Z., 27.5.97, 22.7.11. - It would be rightful and necessary, though, that the defeated regime and all its followers would be allowed to form their own and exterritorially fully autonomous volunteer community, continuing to practise their faith at their own risk and expense. For even a cornered rat will fight. Moreover, there exists not only one communist, collectivist and socialist faith but many of them. - All could and should be liberated to be practised among their supporters. Not only capitalism for consenting adults but any ism! - J. Z., 10.9.02. & THE REVOLUTIONARY OVERTHROW OF DESPOTIC REGIMES, PANARCHISM, DENATIONALIZATION, PRIVATIZATION, FINANCING RIGHTFUL REVOLUTIONS, ALL FORMS OF STATISM FOR ALL KINDS OF STATISTS, TOO! VOLUNTARISM, EXPERIMENTAL FREEDOM UNDER EXTERRITORIAL AUTONOMY FOR ALL.
MONETARY FREEDOM, MONEY AS WAREHOUSE RECEIPTS OR WARRANTS WITH SHOP FOUNDATION: But of course, there's no reason on earth why the issuance of warehouse receipts should be a governmental function. Let anyone do it who has a warehouse, and printing press, and a sufficient stock of gold or silver or whatever the receipt calls for. And let government intervene only to see that the receipts are not fraudulent - counterfeit. - LEONARD E. Read, THE FREEMAN, 1/75. - These "receipts", purchasing-vouchers, goods-warrants, clearing certificates, tickets or token money need not name any specific commodity as a redemption good. But they may name a specific commodity as a value standard, although they may not promise a redemption in this value standard but only a redemption in other goods or services, up to the value expressed in the chosen value standard. They will, mostly, offer, instead, the wide variety of goods offered by a general store, or even a department store or a shopping centre. Services, including labour, might also be offered instead of goods. It is rather absurd to propose that all of the millions of different goods and services and all of the billions of daily transactions with them, ought all to be "covered", to their full free exchange value, with their equivalent value in just a single commodity or two, namely gold or silver. That fact does, naturally, not prevent the possibility of pricing out all goods and services and debts in gold or silver weight units - but this can and should be done without any obligation of the buyer or debtor to deliver rare metal or the issuer or purchasing certificates to redeem them not in his goods and services but, instead, in gold or silver coins, although he is not a rare metal dealer. It would help if we could get the total figures, even under today's depressed and underdeveloped conditions, of all monetary and clearing transactions in the world, of a single day, and then could compare them with the current market value of all the gold and silver accumulated and ready for action in the entire world. (Some such estimates are mentioned under GOLD!) The discrepancy would then become obvious and more and more people would come to see that convertibility of any currency on the free metal market is enough. It does not require for its stability that 100 % redeemability, upon demand, at any time, in rare metal, is promised by the issuer and that this promise is kept. Such a promise would limit exchanges to those which could be so covered or it would amount to empty sales or risky dealings in futures, while all payment contracts could not possibly be settled in this way. The aim of all rational and sufficiently informed gold advocates should be only to deal in stable gold-weight values, or value standards possibly "as-good- as- gold or even better. For this it is not necessary to deal only in metallic gold. One can much easier and better and for many more free exchanges deal in is VALUE. Millions of debtors and issuers can offer every day billions in gold weight values of goods and services and they should be free to do so, not bound to the limited transactions which gold coins and 100% covered gold certificates would permit them to undertake, if they are prescribed as exclusive exchange media, instead of merely allowed as optional value standards. Nor should we set ANY limits, expressed in stored and convertible rare metal weights, at all issuing centres, to the inherently unlimited clearing and non-cash exchange transactions that are possible and desired between human beings, seeing that clearing and non-cash transactions neither require the possession nor the transfer of any piece of rare metal in and from the hands of the trading partners. - J.Z., 21.3.97, 22.7.11, 4.8.11. - THE GOLD STANDARD? GOLD VALUE CLEARING STANDARD, METALLIC REDEMPTIONISM? METALLIC COVER?
MONETARY FREEDOM, POVERTY, TYRANNY & SLAVERY: By establishing freedom in currency and credit - and thereby freedom in industry and commerce - end at once, and forever the tyranny that impoverishes and enslaves them. - Lysander Spooner, New Banking System, p.58. - MONETARY LIBERATION
MONETARY FREEDOM, PRIMITIVE MONEY, ADVANCED MONEY SYSTEMS & MONETARY DESPOTISM: Primitive money that one can provide for oneself is, in some important ways, better than the "advanced" monies for whose supply one depends on privileged institutions. - J.Z., 10.7.91. - ABILITY TO PAY, CENTRAL BANKING, EXCLUSIVE CURRENCIES, MONOPOLY MONEY.
MONETARY FREEDOM, PROFIT & PUBLIC INTEREST: The issuing banks, guided solely by their striving for gain, would thereby serve the public interest better than any institution has ever done or could do that supposedly aimed at it. - F. A. Hayek, Denationalisation of Money, p.78/79.
MONETARY FREEDOM, SELF-INTEREST & BENEVOLENCE: He argues, in the classic tradition of Adam Smith but with reference to the 20th century, that money is no exception to the rule that self-interest would be a better motive than benevolence in producing good results. - Arthur Seldon, in: F. A. Hayek: Denationalisation of Money, p.3.
MONETARY FREEDOM, SUBJECTIVE VALUE THEORY: The subjective value theory, all economic and political freedom ideas, consumer sovereignty, free enterprise, freedom of contract, freedom of association and disassociation, productive cooperation, free trade, free pricing, free markets, freedom to experiment, freedom to make mistakes, freedom of information, freedom of expression, free competition, the law of supply and demand, laissez faire, all these notions must be consistently applied to what is perhaps the most important aspect of any economy based upon the division of labour and free exchange: exchange media, value standards, banking, note issues, security issues, clearing as the underlying principle and most important practice. Consistently applied, in economics and politics, freedom principles will become irresistible through their successful practice. Those who do not fully comprehend the principles and their natural applications and consequences, will simply copy their successful practices. The spread of these principles will be all the faster and more secure if they are practised only within volunteer communities. Even the best "faith" or scientifically backed convictions should not be imposed upon any dissenters. Leave all others to apply their spleens to themselves - and suffer the consequences. That is the road to wide-spread enlightenment. Guardianship should only be applied when obviously required to uphold the basic right of babies, infants and some adults. - J. Z., 11.5.97. , AUSTRIAN ECONOMICS, ECONOMIC FREEDOM, ETC., SUBJECTIVE VALUE THEORY, FREE MARKET MONEY, INDIVIDUAL HUMAN RIGHTS & LIBERTIES, CLEARING, PANARCHISM, FREEDOM, PRINCIPLES, EXPERIMENTAL FREEDOM, VOLUNTARISM, ENLIGHTENMENT, GUARDIANSHIP, CONTROLS, LEGISLATION, LICENSING, REGULATIONS, LAWS.
MONETARY FREEDOM, TO KEEP GOODS & SERVICES IN BALANCE WITH THE MONETARY DEMAND FOR THEM: Monetary demand for consumer goods and services should correspond to, originate from and be based upon these goods and services and should be finally redeemed in them. That would happen automatically if they could be freely monetised by their owners (together with their voluntary acceptors), thus enabling them to pay their way, paying many to most of their bills almost directly with their capacity and willingness to supply ready for sale and wanted goods and services in exchange. To the extent that they could issue these goods- and service vouchers for their purchases and loans, they would at the same time assure the sales of their goods and services. Their notes would have no other use or value except through their reflux to them in payment, to be redeemed by their goods and services, i.e., their cover, redemption or convertibility fund. Naturally, these alternative exchange media and the goods and prices should be expressed in sound value standards and the exchange media and the value standard should not be legally imposed and exclusive but optional and market rated ones. That would prevent inflation through over-issues and the right to issue them would prevent under-issues. No one but the issuer would be obliged to accept them at par. They would be refusable and discountable in general circulation. Prices marked-out in stable value standards, e.g. gold ounces or grams, would not be increased even if one or the other of such competing exchange media could and would be severely over-issued. - J.Z., 19.12.93, 30.4.97, 22.7.11. - REDEMPTION IN WANTED GOODS, SERVICES & LABOUR, GOODS WARRANTS, SERVICE VOUCHERS, SHOP CURRENCIES, REFLUX, VALUE PRESERVATION & ASSURANCE, SHOP FOUNDATION, GOODS & MONEY SIDE IN BALANCE.
MONETARY FREEDOM, TUCKER & USURY: In addition to land monopoly and patent-copyright monopoly, Tucker denounced the banking monopoly privileges granted by the government. Being opposed to governmental compulsion, he objected to the prohibition of any voluntary currency or arrangements that the people might make for and among themselves. Free banking and free money meant free trade carried into finance, unlimited competition (*) in the business of making money, and as a result the utter rout of inferior and usurious currencies by the virtues of the cheapest and the best. While Tucker rejected the claim that one has a moral right to engage in usury, he did not advocate any method of abolishing it save the removal of all restrictions preventing the free action of natural principles. "To attempt to suppress usury by state is outrageous because tyrannical, and foolish because ineffectual." - Carl Watner on Tucker in REASON 4/79. - *) and thereby self-limiting competition just like in the provision of other goods and services. - J.Z., 22.3.97, 4.8.11. - INTEREST
MONETARY FREEDOM, U.S. CONSTITUTION: But the powers of Congress "to declare war" and "to coin money", are in reality exclusive ONLY AS AGAINST THE STATE GOVERNMENTS. They are not exclusive of any NATURAL rights on the parts of individuals. The constitutional prohibition upon individuals, to coin money, extends no farther than to prohibitions upon "COUNTERFEITING the securities and current coin of the U.S." Provided individuals do not "COUNTERFEIT" OR IMITATE "the securities or current coin of the U.S.," they have a perfect right, and Congress have no power to prohibit them, to weigh and assay pieces of gold and silver, mark upon them their weight and fineness, and sell them for whatever they will bring, in competition with the coin of the U.S. - It was stated in Congress a few years since, by Mr. Rayner, I think, of North Carolina, that in some parts of the gold region of that State, a considerable portion of their local currency consisted of pieces of gold, weighed, assayed, and marked by an individual, in whom the public had confidence. And this practice was as unquestionably legal, as the sale of gold in any other way. It was no infringement of the rights of Congress." - Lysander Spooner, Collected Works, I/18, in discussing the P.O. - What good is any constitution that can be so misunderstood or misinterpreted, for so long? - J.Z., 21.3.97. - CONSTITUTIONALISM
MONETARY FREEDOM, UNEMPLOYMENT & SALES DIFFICULTIES: Under free banking or monetary freedom, labour can offer itself effectively for sale through its own freely transferable scrip, IOUs, labour notes or clearing certificates, which only these labourers would have to be prepared to accept at any time in payment for their labour, which would have no other value and which would, therefore, tend to stream back to them, fast, to realize that value. The goods and service providers could effectively offer their goods and services and pay for the goods and services, as well as the labour of their employees, with their own freely transferable scrip, or shop currencies, or shop foundation money, or shop association money, which obliges only themselves to accept it at any time at par, when they sell their goods and services. To suppress that option is the essential feature of monetary despotism. - J.Z., 15.5.92, 26.5.97. - However, individual and other small issuers would require the existence or establishment of a close to perfect clearing system to get their notes or clearing certificates widely enough accepted. A transitional step towards such a perfect clearing system would be the issue and acceptance of cheques that are for clearing only, i.e., not redeemable in the government's legal tender paper money. The legal prohibitions against such issues should be abolished or effectively evaded. Such clearing cheques should also be issued in convenient money denominations and, preferably, upon a better value standard than the abstract and mismanaged one of the government's paper money. - J.Z., 10.9.02.
MONETARY FREEDOM, UNEMPLOYMENT & SALES DIFFICULTIES: With the realization of all monetary rights, most unemployment and sales difficulties would disappear. - J.Z., 7.8.75. - One should think that this fact would give unemployed and businessmen a vested interest in it. Alas, human beings are not as rational and just - at least not yet. Let's try to lead these horses to the water. - J.Z., 21.3.97, 4.8.11.
MONETARY FREEDOM: 1. That to make all traffic just and equal, it is indispensable that, in each separate purchase and sale, the money paid should be a BONA FIDE equivalent of the labor or property bought with it. - Dare you, or any other man, of common sense and common honesty, dispute the truth of that proposition? If not, let us consider that principle established. It will then serve as one of the necessary and infallible guides to the true settlement of all the other questions that remain to be settled. - 2. That so long as no force or fraud is practised by either party, the parties themselves, to each separate contract, have the sole, absolute, and unqualified right to decide for themselves, WHAT MONEY, AND HOW MUCH OF IT, shall be considered a BONA FIDE equivalent of the labor or property that is to be exchanged for it. All this is necessarily implied in the NATURAL right of men to make their own contracts, for buying and selling their respective commodities. - Will you dispute the truth of that proposition? - 3. That any one man, who has an honest dollar, of any kind whatsoever, has as perfect a right, as any other man can have, to offer it in the market, in competition with any and all other dollars, in exchange for such labor or property as may be in the market for sale. - Will you dispute the truth of that proposition? - 4. That where no fraud is practised, every person, who is mentally competent to make reasonable contracts, must be presumed to be as competent to judge of the value of the money that is offered in the market, as he is to judge of the value of all the other commodities that are bought and sold for money. - 5. That the free and open market, in which all honest money and all honest commodities are free to be given and received in exchange for each other, is the true, final, absolute, and only test of the true and natural market value of all money, as of all the other commodities that are bought and sold for money. - Will you dispute the truth of that proposition? - 6. That any prohibition, by a government, of any such kind or amount of money - provided it be honest in itself - as the parties to contracts may voluntarily agree to give and receive in exchange for labor or property, is a palpable violation of their natural right to make their own contracts, and to buy and sell their labor and property on such terms as they may find to be necessary for the supply of their wants, or may think most beneficial to their interests. - Will you dispute the truth of that proposition? - 7. That any government, that licenses a small amount of an article of such universal necessity as money, and that gives the control of it into a few hands, selected by itself, and then prohibits any and all other money - that is intrinsically honest and valuable - palpably violates all other men's natural right to make their own contracts, and infallibly proves its purpose to be to enable the few holders of the licensed money to rob all other persons in the prices of their labor and property. - Will you dispute the truth of that proposition? - Are not all these propositions so self-evident, or so easily demonstrate, that they cannot, with any reason, be disputed? - If you feel competent to show the falsehood of anyone of them, I hope you will attempt the task. - Lysander Spooner, A Letter to Grover Cleveland, Works I, 37/38. - FREE MARKET MONEY, HUMAN RIGHTS, MONETARY RIGHTS
MONETARY FREEDOM: A debt and a credit are the same thing, the same exchange transaction, just viewed from a different angle. For the whole economy, with ability and honesty on both sides and under free exchange conditions they cancel each other out, just as much for short-, medium and long-term credits, by their due dates, even when via instalment repayments, as certainly and immediately, as when we buy a newspaper. Under perfect clearing and honesty and in the absence of natural catastrophes and without any government interference, they could also be settled through competitively supplied exchange media that do use one or the other self-chosen sound value standard., not an imposed and fraudulent or fictitious one. Many of the payment disabilities that also occur naturally, sickness, accidents and deaths, can be covered by insurance. Even the damages from large natural catastrophes can be covered by soundly conceived and executed insurance schemes on the levy principle, as long as only the payment means or clearing avenues of monetary freedom are levied. Major difficulties arise usually only out of governmental prohibitions, regulations and controls, especially those of monetary and financial despotism. In their absence, almost all debts can be settled in some form of cash or clearing or indemnification claim, except unproductive credits granted undeservedly to debtors unable to pay them. The flawed investments by creditors can, will and should lead to them losing that investment totally or in parts. Some unforeseeable losses can be covered by insurance or out of the profits from other and sound investments. But there is no insurance against the dependency and risks arising out of monetary and financial despotism. These risks must be abolished by abolishing the laws upon which this despotism is based, mainly those on the money issue monopoly by the central banks and those of compulsory taxation. The aims would also be achieved, together with many other rightful aims, by the realization of individual and group secessionism, in combination with the establishment of exterritorially autonomous communities of volunteers, all doing their own things only among themselves and at their own risk and expense. That kind of autonomy would, obviously, also introduce all monetary and clearing freedom options as well as all financial freedom options at the same time, to the advantage of both, debtors and creditors and of all people, who depend upon their transactions remaining undisturbed, i.e., quite free. Naturally, sufficient information on these possibilities is required and the refutation of all ideas, opinions, errors and prejudices, false assumptions and conclusions that are obstacles to these developments. - Full monetary and financial freedom would minimize avoidable losses among those who rationally practise them. - The others would get the results of their different choices, in their self-chosen communities of e.g. various statists, including inflations, deflations and ever recurring economic crises with much involuntary unemployment and poverty. - J.Z., 8.1.11, 2.4.11. - PANARCHISM, SECESSIONISM, FREE BANKING, FINANCIAL FREEDOM VS. MONETARY & FINANCIAL DESPOTISM. EXTERRITORIALISM VS. TERRITORIALISM, VOLUNTARISM VS. COMPULSION, EXPERIMENTAL FREEDOM
MONETARY FREEDOM: A free market economy cannot permanently operate on a politically manipulated paper money standard. Free men need a market-selected money. Under present conditions, this means a gold standard. - Percy L. Greaves, Understanding the Dollar Crisis, quoted from Hazlitt's review in THE FREEMAN, 1/74.
MONETARY FREEDOM: A money deliberately controlled in supply by an agency whose self-interest forced it to satisfy the wishes of the USERS might be the best. A money regulated to satisfy the demands of group interests is bound to be the worst possible. - F. A. Hayek, Denationalisation of Money, p.25. - VOLUNTARISM VS. TERRITORIALISM, CHOICE VS. COMPULSION
MONETARY FREEDOM: Abolish state-issued currencies, and let the commercial banks issue notes in response to the demand for money. - Henry Meulen, THE INDIVIDUALIST, 2/75. - Not only the commercial banks - every potential issuer! - J. Z., 21.3.97. - MONEY ISSUE MONOPOLY, CENTRAL BANKING, BANKING MONOPOLIES, LICENSING
MONETARY FREEDOM: All over the world, government paper now forms 120 national fiat standards that are managed and depreciated at will. - The decline of monetary freedom and the concomitant rise of government power over money gave birth to our age of inflation. Step by step, government assumed control over money, not only as an important source of revenue but also as a vital command post over our economy. The result is continuing inflation. Only monetary freedom can impart stability. - Dr. Hans F. Sennholz, Inflation or Gold Standard?
MONETARY FREEDOM: All plans to make money stable are contradictory to human nature and dangerous to individual freedom, as they would call on government to enforce the impossible. The yearning for "stable money", therefore, is forever futile unless it means to want honest money that is free from the political processes of public treasuries and central banks. The best we can hope for is monetary freedom that embodies the freedom of contract and choice of money. In freedom, the American people once again could express their preference for gold and silver coins over depreciating political fiat. - Dr, Hans F. Sennholz, THE FREEMAN, 6/75, p341. - CENTRAL BANKING, MONETARY DESPOTISM, FIAT MONEY, LEGAL TENDER, EXCLUSIVE CURRENCIES, MONOPOLY MONEY, GOLD, SILVER
MONETARY FREEDOM: Allow all of the ready supply of consumer goods, consumer services and of labor and professional or trades services to become monetized, in good- or service vouchers by their providers, or in clearing certificates issued by them or in token monies or in book keeping credits or electronically conducted accounts, always using self-chosen value standards, acceptable to the potential acceptors of these notes, all offered by these providers in short term credits or in payments for the goods, services and labor they want or need, so that all these goods, services and labor can be easily and monetarily or through clearing exchanged with each other, within a short period. As optional ticket or token monies, all essentially clearing certificates, they could be freely refused or discounted in general local circulation but they would tend to keep, nevertheless, at par or close to their nominal par value, because their issuers would always have to accept their own issues at their nominal value. A competitive supply of them would prevent currency shortages and deflations while any significant oversupply of them and the inflation of the general price and wage level, when expressed in a sound value standards, would become impossible. The first discount of them would tend to stop further issues and acceptances and would force back to the issuers enough of the discounted notes, in payments at their par value to them, so that this discount would fast disappear and the price level expressed in sound value standards would remain the same. At most those would have suffered a small loss, who had accepted them at par, not used them against the issuer and could pass them on to others only at a small discount. The par value of such local currencies could be easily ascertained, e.g. by retailers stating in their shop windows that they would always accept the own local currency at par and which note issues by others they would at present only accept at a discount if at all. This method would not only indicate the sound value of shop currencies themselves, but also how the retailers would value e.g. the note issues by employees, and other service providers, accepting them either at par or only at a discount from their customers. This kind of “money market” would operate daily, even hourly, at most of the shops, supermarkets, department stores and shopping centers and would also be reported by the local newspapers, radio and TV stations. Full publicity would be an essential part of the system. I would even go so far as to demand that for the issuers and acceptors of their own currencies there should be no secret book keeping regarding their issues, their total current quantities, the daily and weekly reflux of their issues to them and their capacity to supply goods and services every working day. To the extent that the local issuers associated and issued a uniform local currency, with which they would carefully discount, the short term IOUs of their members, in accordance with the supply capacity of wanted goods and services, over-issues and their temporary discount effects in general local circulation would still become still more rare and insignificant. That degree of local central banking would have some value. There could be different groups of potential single issuers, issuing their combined notes. In history we had note issuing banks for as few as 2,000 to 20,000 local people. This kinds of shopping and service currency could have even more small issuing centers. A perfect clearing system could have an unlimited number of adult local and productive issuers of their own kinds of IUS and it would run well enough to present them back with their own IOUs in a short time, in payment for whatever wanted goods and services they have to sell. Naturally, infants and children could hardly offer enough local services to make their IOUs acceptable to other people than their friends, parents, grandparents and other close family associates, who would appreciate their productive help offers, conveyed with their own IOUs. – J.Z., 24.9.10.
MONETARY FREEDOM: Allow everyone to produce, offer, accept or reject tokens, coins or certificates, giving or taking them at any value they like or have committed themselves to. - J.Z, 7.6.79, 22.7.11.
MONETARY FREEDOM: Allow those who now find it hard to be successful as sellers of labour, services and goods, to appear on the market as buyers first, with their own and suitable assignments upon their labour, services and goods, using sound and accepted value standards, too in their exchange or clearing media. Then unemployment, sales difficulties, inflations, deflations, stagflations and their consequences could soon become problems of the past. - J.Z., 20.11.92, 16.5.97.
MONETARY FREEDOM: Anyone could open a bank under Spooner's system. "It leaves", he says, "the business of furnishing a currency open to free competition." - Charles Chiveley, introduction to Spooner, Works, I/27.
MONETARY FREEDOM: As money and credit constitute the most abstract features of free market trading, it is no wonder that they are even less understood than other simple market phenomena. They involve all and are thus understood by hardly any. - J.Z., 24.2.79. - Seeing how important they are and that everyone's interests are objectively involved, at least a number of committed scholars should get it right between them, and then publish all monetary freedom options, sufficiently, and popularize them. - J.Z., 22.3.97, 4.8.11.
MONETARY FREEDOM: As THE INDIVIDUALIST has tirelessly insisted, industry is fully capable of supplying itself with a sound and flexible monetary system, if only the State will not interfere. - Henry Meulen, THE INDIVIDUALIST, 12/74. - Not only industry! - J.Z., 21.3.97.
MONETARY FREEDOM: As we trust the grocer to furnish us with pounds of tea, and the baker to send us loaves of bread, so we might trust Heaton and Sons, or some of the other enterprising firms of Birmingham, to supply us with sovereigns and shillings at their own risk and profit. - W. S. Jevons' version of Herbert Spencer's proposal, are quoted by Hayek in Denationalisation of Money, 34.
MONETARY FREEDOM: Both, the present exclusive or privileged deposit and credit systems and central banks, their forced and exclusive paper money issues, and the subordination to and dependency of the other "private" banks upon the central-bank-system, the legislation on this system, statutory authorities and their regulations and licensing, ought to be replaced, fully, at least for exterritorially autonomous communities of volunteers and their monetary and financial systems and, within the supposedly democratic, free and representative system, thus become sufficiently challenged by competitive alternatives, too, so that they could continuously upon their merits, if any. - J.Z., 3/97. - CENTRAL BANKING, MONETARY DESPOTISM, PANARCHISM, EXTERRITORIAL AUTONOMY ALTERNATIVES
MONETARY FREEDOM: But the superstition that it is necessary for government (usually called the 'state' to make it sound better) which could not exist without it, probably originated in the naive belief that such a tool as money must have been 'invented' and given to us by some original inventor This belief has been wholly displaced by our understanding of the spontaneous generation of such undesigned institutions by a process of social evolution of which money has since become the prime paradigm (law, language and morals being the other main instances). ... - F. A. Hayek, Denationalisation of Money.
MONETARY FREEDOM: But, while governments have never used their power to provide a decent money for any length of time, and have refrained from grossly abusing it only when they were under such a discipline as the gold standard imposed, the reason that should make us refuse any longer to tolerate this irresponsibility of government is that we know today that it is possible to control the quantity of a currency so as to prevent significant fluctuations in its purchasing power. - F. A. Hayek, Denationalisation of Money, p.29. - I am not certain that Hayek knew enough about alternative monetary controls. He certainly didn't know enough about Prussian monetary history, which had its honest years, even decades, without a legal tender paper money, although many paper money issues were made by it. - J.Z., 21.3.97. - HONEST MONIES ISSUED BY TERRITORIAL GOVERNMENTS, PRUSSIAN MONETARY HISTORY, SOUND TAX FOUNDATION MONEY OR TAX ANTICIPATION CERTIFICATES. CONTRIBUTION-BASED MONIES, HONEST MONIES, MONETARY HISTORY.
MONETARY FREEDOM: Cash makes no enemies. - Quote in film series, No.1: The Barbary Coast, 10.6.76, on channel 10. - If it is highly inflated money that can be forced upon a helpless creditor, as if it were a full payment of a debt, then this kind of money can also make enemies. Alas, creditors and debtors rather blame each other than the real culprit, the territorial government and its monetary despotism. - J.Z., 22.7.11.
MONETARY FREEDOM: Competition would provide better money than would government. I believe we can do much better than gold ever made possible. Governments cannot do better. Free enterprise, i.e. the institutions that would emerge from a process of competition in providing good money, no doubt would. There would in that event also be no need to encumber the money supply with the complicated and expensive provision for convertibility which was necessary to secure the automatic operation of the gold standard and which made it appear as at least more practicable than what would ideally seem much more suitable - a commodity reserve standard ... - F. A. Hayek, Denationalisation of Money, p.83. - GOLD STANDARD? REDEMPTIONISM?
MONETARY FREEDOM: Completely free private banking has never yet existed in any country. It was always held back by laws, customs, errors, false assumptions and prejudices. Thus we cannot go back to it but only forward to it. - J.Z., 4.6.82, 22.7.11.
MONETARY FREEDOM: Contemplate the abolition of the monopoly of the issue of money and the free admission of competition into the business of providing currency. - F. A. Hayek, Denationalisation of Money, p.70.
MONETARY FREEDOM: Denationalize the money supply. - J.Z., 1973.
MONETARY FREEDOM: Don't rely on any money pope. Make up your own mind, make or, rather, issue your own money, your own value standard, just like you make up or choose your own religion or philosophy. - J.Z., 27.11.74, 22.7.11.
MONETARY FREEDOM: End the State socialism or State communism of the money supply and the value standard. - J.Z., 73, 21.3.97, 22.7.11.
MONETARY FREEDOM: Even the largest productive capital loses greatly in market value when its products or services cannot be easily sold because of a lack of sound exchange media, in the form of competitively supplied banknotes, clearing certificates or clearing accounts. All of the competitively supplied exchange media and clearing facilities require sound and freely chosen value standards as well which free issuers will offer in their own interest and free acceptors will insist upon. The idea that merely capital and more capital is required to overcome a monetary and economic crisis is false. (Apart from natural catastrophes, like e.g. floods, earthquakes, tsunamis and severe storms.) The best kind of exchange media are based upon ready for sale goods and services, are issued upon them and finally, within a short period, redeemed in them. They are issued in short-term turn-over credits to producers, to pay for their current expenditures, mainly their wage and salary bills and are secured by the short term claims of the producers against the wholesalers, for goods already produced and sold to them upon payment for them within a short period. In this way, using sound value standards, the volume of exchange media and the volume of wanted goods and services are kept in balance, in the absence of any legalized obstructions. Especially that of a monopoly for a forced currency (one with the legal tender privilege, i.e. with compulsory acceptance combined with a forced value), mostly that of a central bank, which is working for a territorial government, however much its "independence" is asserted. With such competitive supplied sound exchange media any number of people can be productively employed (including masses of refugees, asylum seekers, illegal "economic" immigrants and deserters from despotic regimes) even if the existing capital facilities may have to be used for a while in three shifts a day. Many of them are not even used to their full potential for one shift a day and not at all over weekends and on holidays. The total of productive capital can also be rapidly increased, e.g. from the refuge capital of the world. This is quite possible, once stable value standards are offered and exemption from all compulsory taxation and regulations, through the introduction of full financial freedom as well. - The potential for a large and fast influx of refuge capital, as well as that of a large number of refugees, deserters and immigrants within a short period will cease once monetary and financial freedom as well as individual secessionism and panarchism are introduced in the other countries as well. - J.Z., 23.4.11. - SHORTAGE OF CAPITAL? CRISES, UNEMPLOYMENT, DEFLATION, FINANCIAL FREEDOM, REFUGEES, IMMIGRATION, DESERTION
MONETARY FREEDOM: Every producer and trader is to become free to issue money based on his products or services, alone or in association with others. - J. Z., 75, 21.3.97, 22.7.11.
MONETARY FREEDOM: Every seller knows that it is essential that the money he accepts shall be acceptable to other sellers when he in turn wishes to buy. If men are free to experiment, we may be sure that the most suitable form of money will be invented, just as men's freedom to invent produced that marvellous thing, the aeroplane. - Henry Meulen, THE INDIVIDUALIST, 10/77. - In spite of such utterances, he was not an enlightened and thus uncompromising opponent of legal tender and of compulsory gold redemptionism. - J.Z., 22.3.97, 22.7.11.
MONETARY FREEDOM: Exclude politics from the issue of money. - Henry Meulen, THE INDIVIDUALIST, 2/73.
MONETARY FREEDOM: Finally, the people who think about such things will recognize that freedom of note issue is essential to promote competition in banking; and free competition in banking is essential to free production and exchange. - Henry Meulen, THE INDIVIDUALIST, 8/76. - FREE BANKING, FREE MARKET MONEY
MONETARY FREEDOM: Free Money Is Sound Money, - Dr. Hans. F. Sennholz, heading, in THE FREEMAN, 6/75.
MONETARY FREEDOM: Free money requires free pricing and free pricing requires monetary freedom. - J.Z., 15.9.75.
MONETARY FREEDOM: Free yourself of coercively manipulated money which is either inflated or deflated and, sometimes, both simultaneously. - J. Z., 12.10.74, 1978, 21.3.97. - STAGFLATION, INFLATION, DEFLATION, MONOPOLY MONEY
MONETARY FREEDOM: Freedom in monetary matters means no political manipulation of our medium of exchange. - Leonard E. Read, THE FREEMAN, 8/73. - And of our value standards! - J.Z., 22.7.11.
MONETARY FREEDOM: Freedom includes the right to issue one's own money if others will accept it. - Mr. W. A. Dowe, quoted in GOOD GOVERNMENT, 12/78, p.5. - Is he still alive and active? - J.Z., 22.7.11.
MONETARY FREEDOM: Freedom of note issue needs no help from the State. The notes from the new banks will make their own way into circulation. People who get cheaper loans from new banks will try to get those notes into circulation. Wage-earners may be offered higher wages if they are willing to accept the new notes in payment of wages. They will shop in those stores that are willing to accept the new notes. - Henry Meulen, THE INDIVIDUALIST, 8/76.
MONETARY FREEDOM: Freedom to express all our contracts in other and better value standards and exchange media than those which are now provided by our own governments or by foreign governments or by their privileged central banks. - J.Z., 19.11.93, 24.4.97.
MONETARY FREEDOM: Freedom to pay one's debts as efficiently and honestly as one can, via one's own notes, goods-, service- or labour vouchers, IOU's or clearing certificates, which only oneself has to accept at any time at par with their sound value standard. - J.Z., 27.5.97.
MONETARY FREEDOM: Government has no more responsibility for any honest money than for an honest measure of length. It just ought to leave both alone. - J.Z., n.d.
MONETARY FREEDOM: Hardly ever do the advocates of free capitalism realize how utterly their ideal was frustrated at the moment the State assumed control of the monetary system. There is to-day only one prominent liberal theorist consistent enough to advocate free, uncontrolled competition among banks in the creation of money. (Mises, Theory of Money, 1911.) Mises, whose intellectual influence on modern neo-liberalism was very strong, - has made hardly one proselyte for that extreme conclusion. Yet without it the ideal of the State-free economy collapses. - Gustav Stolper, This Age of Fable, p.64. - Mises was not the radical advocate of full monetary freedom that he is often made out to be. He was still stuck on gold convertibility by the issuer and wanted free banking only for such banks. - J.Z., 22.3.97. - Unless he became repentant in his old age. He may have made some statements on full monetary freedom after Hayek became committed to it. - All the important monetary freedom positions that any great thinker on money has taken should be listed together, under his name, also his remaining or earlier hang-ups, expressed in earlier writings. - J.Z., 22.7.11.
MONETARY FREEDOM: Have you ever considered repealing the legal tender of the Australian currency and of the Reserve Bank's privileges, and the competitive issue of exchange media, using any agreeable standard, so that good money will be free to drive out the bad? - J.Z., 12/75, 21.3.97. - GRESHAM'S LAW, Q.
MONETARY FREEDOM: He is arguing that the attempt for the past 50 years to depend on benevolence in government to manage money has failed and that the solution must lie in the self-interest of monetary agencies that will suffer by losing their livelihood if they do not supply currencies that users will find dependable and stable. - Arthur Seldon, introduction to Hayek, Denationalisation of Money, p.5. - SELF-INTEREST & FREEDOM VS. MONETARY DESPOTISM
MONETARY FREEDOM: How more paper money, which already is unacceptable in international trade, will buy us friends abroad or keep us warm at home is a puzzle. Have we not had sufficient experience with the bad money government provides, and the excessive waste of resources under government control, to get the message and relay it to Congress: "Stop the waste and leave us to our own choices in the world market. Let us buy and sell on our own terms in the money of our choice." - Paul Poirot, THE FREEMAN, 4/75.
MONETARY FREEDOM: I am accustomed to pay men back in their own coin. (Ich bin gewohnt in der Muenze wiederzuzahlen in der man mich bezahlt.) - Bismarck, Speech to the Ultramontanes, 1870. - This is a sound reflux principle. Having to anticipate it, issuers will also tend to make their issues self-limiting, i.e., sound. Look at it in another way: In their own self-interest all honest men will tend to limit their own obligations or IOUs to those they can fulfil. Dishonest men might try to spread dishonest money but their dishonesty is more likely to be fast discovered in this respect, than in any other. All the dispersed knowledge of all their actual and potential acceptors will act against them and a clearing house for their notes and all other local issues, would discover over-issues within hours. Communications are now that fast that he could be charged within hours, before competitive courts, with fraud and that he could lose, in consequence, all his property and carry moreover an indemnification burden whose payment could also be enforced upon him. - J.Z., 22.3.97. - FRAUDULENT ISSUES, OVER-ISSUES, LIMITATIONS, PUBLICITY, CLEARING, MODERN COMMUNICATIONS
MONETARY FREEDOM: I believe that if money is to be useful to traders as a medium of exchange then the decision as to what shall serve as money must be worked out by traders in the market, VOLUNTARILY, rather than by government edict. - Leonard E. Read, THE FREEMAN, Jan. 75. - Even somewhat depreciated governmental paper money, up to a certain degree of inflation, is still useful to traders as a means of exchange - when this is the only monetary option left to them. But it is not optimally useful and it ceases to be a good enough standard of value as soon as any degree of persistent depreciation occurs. Compare what Keynesian slow inflations have done to our currencies in recent decades. Otherwise the statement is correct. - J.Z., 22.3.97.
MONETARY FREEDOM: I ought to be free to oblige myself - within the limits of my labour, service and goods supply capacity, ready for sale upon demand, at market prices, and all my outstanding credits, to issue IOUs, labour, service and goods vouchers, clearing certificates and credit notes, all optional, market rated and referring to a sound value standard, which oblige only myself to accept them at any time in payment, at par with their nominal value - from anyone. With such notes I cannot inflate the general price level, my own prices or anyone else's payment, price and value standard system but I can reduce deflationary effects as far as my own spending and receipts are concerned. - J.Z., 25.11.89 & 27.5.97, 22.7.11.
MONETARY FREEDOM: If competition were untrammeled, it would produce an equilibrium of values in buying and selling at the point of equality of serviceableness. Isn’t that fair? - Louis F. Post, Social Service, New York, Wessels & Bissell Co., 1910, p.144. - FREE BANKING, COMPETITION, SUPPLY OF EXCHANGE MEDIA & VALUE STANDARDS
MONETARY FREEDOM: If government control of money is unavoidable, Professor Hayek thinks a gold system better than any other; but he maintains that even gold would be found less dependable than competing paper currencies whose value would be maintained more or less stable because their issuers would have a strong inducement to limit their quantity or lose their business. - Arthur Seldon, introducing Hayek's Denationalisation of Money, p.4. - Private competing monies, not being legal tender, would be market-rated and refusable. They would be market-rated against value standards which potential acceptors trust. Any currency not standing at par with its value standard, or very close to it, would be widely refused and any depreciated monies could and should be presented to their issuers, as soon as possible, at their face value. That they have usually no interest to issue their currency at a considerable discount and thus to confine their issues to a very few remaining voluntary acceptors, can be judged by an extreme and hypothetical example. How many would accept at all a private currency that is already 90% depreciated in general circulation? And why would the issuer go on issuing it, if he could still find acceptors, while getting only 10% of its face value in exchange? At the next moment he would have to accept any quantity of his own depreciated notes at their face value. For holders of his notes the forced sale of all his property to them, for his notes, would be bargains. For him they would mean ruin. After any considerable discount of his notes few people would ever touch them again - if they are interested mainly in getting readily usable means of exchange. - Another point cannot be stressed too much: When exchange medium and value standard are clearly separated in a note, then any multiplication of the note does perhaps depreciate the value of the notes but it cannot depreciate the value of its sound value standard. Nobody is forced to reckon only in his depreciated notes, at their par value, or to use them at all and sound value standard expression of wages and prices and other contracts can go on undisturbed. - J. Z., 21.3.97. - Even such an over-issuer (assuming he would have been able to so vastly over-issue, under full monetary freedom conditions and their appreciation by the public) would have to continue to price his goods, services, wages and other contracts in a sound value standard or no one would be prepared to deal with him. However depreciated his notes would have become, he would still have to accept them at par for everything he owns. Except, presumably, his own person. He would not be sold as a slave. But there would be a long term lean on all of his future earnings or other incomes! - J.Z., 29.8.02. - Not all panarchies would recognize the trick of having much of one's property in the name of one's wife. - J.Z., 22.7.11.
MONETARY FREEDOM: If individuals are to have their full freedom to make exchanges, they must also be free to determine the media in which their exchanges shall be made. Throughout history, gold has been the commodity chosen by free men to accomplish this end. - Robert G. Anderson, THE FREEMAN, 1/75. - If R. G. A. had bothered to study monetary history a bit more, then he would have discovered that silver, copper, platinum, bronze and numerous other exchange media means, including wooden tablets, leather strips, knots, stones, shells, a vast variety of things and representations, has served people as money - more or less well. - J.Z., 21.3.97. - Should they not be free to make their own choices in this sphere or to produce and offer their own alternatives? - J.Z., 22.7.11.
MONETARY FREEDOM: If the use of several concurrent currencies is to be seriously considered for immediate application in a limited area, it is evidently desirable to investigate the consequences of a general application of the principle on which this proposal is based. If we are to contemplate abolishing the exclusive use within each national territory of a single national currency issued by the government and to admit on equal footing the currencies issued by other governments, the question at once arises whether it would not be equally desirable to do away altogether with the monopoly of government supplying money and to allow private enterprise to supply the public with other media of exchange it may prefer. - F. A. Hayek, Denationalisation of Money, p.20. - FREE MARKET MONEY
MONETARY FREEDOM: In a natural economy each producer produces his own money. The issue of money is not a function of the State. The economic body can make MUCH money much more easily than all the restraints in the world. - Dr. H. G. Pearce. - Say, probably, had this idea and practice in mind when he worded his famous "law", namely that good and services produce their own currency. - J.Z., 29.8.02.
MONETARY FREEDOM: In effect, Professor Hayek is arguing that money is no different from other commodities and that it would be better supplied by competition from private issuers than by a monopoly of government. - Arthur Seldon, in F. A. Hayek's Denationalisation of Money.
MONETARY FREEDOM: In order to take from government the power to manipulate the currency and credit there is one simple constitutional right which must be conferred on all citizens: the right to hold assets in the currency and credit instruments of their own choice, with absolutely no restriction upon what that currency or those credit instruments may be. - H. S. Ferns, The Disease of Governments, p.121. - Not only financial freedom in form of investments in various foreign currencies and securities, should be expanded, but freedom to issue any financial securities - that are not fraudulent and any exchange media that are optional and honest and to use or agree upon any value standard. - Why have so many voices for monetary freedom have had almost no effect on the mass media, public opinion and most academic economists so far? - Their false views on money do not have legal tender but their authority is still unquestioned by popular opinion. The priests of the monetary religion of the people do still rule - with stupid slogans like e.g.: "BuyAustralian!" - J.Z., 21.3.97. - Is H. S. F. still alive and active? - J.Z., 22.7.11.
MONETARY FREEDOM: In sum, the belief that the creation and management of a monetary system ought to be the prerogative of the State - i.e., of the politicians in power - is not only false but harmful. For the real solution is just the opposite. It is to get government, as far as possible, out of the monetary sphere. - Henry Hazlitt, THE FREEMAN, 11/75, p.670. - Why are so many old arguments not settled at all but indefinitely adjourned, for years, decades and even centuries? One extreme case, the "free will" debate, has been going on for over 2,000 years! Should we not, by now, get rather impatient and systematically tackle such controversies? In this flow chart discussions, digital argument mapping, collections of different definitions of the same terms, encyclopaedias of the best refutations of popular errors myths and prejudices, could greatly help - and so could the Internet, if it were sufficiently mobilised for such discussions. It is riddle to me why the money system has not yet been thoroughly explored, with all the old myths exploded, for all people (except government crooks and dishonest debtors), who have a vested interest in sound money. And even the debtors would benefit greatly from the avoidance of any inflation, deflation and stagflation. - J.Z., 21.3.97, 22.7.11.
MONETARY FREEDOM: Individualists insist on freedom of demand and supply in goods and services because it is beyond the power of any body of men to decide what shall be produced, how much, when and where. It seems therefore reasonable that since every exchange of goods and services involves the use of money, exchangers should be free to use any money that both parties are willing to use. Only thus can we be sure that money will appear where and whenever it is needed for exchange. - Henry Meulen THE INDIVIDUALIST, 10/77. - Quite free and comprehensive clearing, using sound value standards, but no physical media of exchange, would not need any kind of money tokens and yet could mediate all the exchanges that free people would wish to make. - J.Z., 22.7.11. - CLEARING, EXCHANGE MEDIA
MONETARY FREEDOM: Issuers of alternative, optional, competing, discountable and refusable money tokens should not be obliged to deliver gold for them upon demand. That is not what most of them are able and willing to supply, but only the goods, services and labor, as well as debt payment receipts than they can and should supply for them, as promised in their readiness to accept them declarations on their notes or tokens. However, the value standards of their issues could also, optionally, be expressed e.g. in gold-weight units. Then they would be largely enabled to freely and easily exchange what they have to offer in locally sufficient wanted goods, services and labor, even if they should not possess a single gold coin. To the extent that they are involved in international trading, they could also offer their own clearing certificates, ultimately redeemable in their export goods, but, in the meantime, usually sold to internal importers, who would pay their imports with them. Then the foreign recipients could use them to pay for their imports, to the extent that they are provided by our exporters, who had issued these international clearing certificates. Free gold markets, fully publicized, could provide all the value standard measuring details required, if one adopts gold weight units as one’s value standard. - Details are described especially in the writings of Prof. Edgard Milhaud and Ulrich von Beckerath. – J.Z., 5.10.10. – CLEARING, GOLD VALUE RECKONING & ACCOUNTING, FREE BANKING, LOCAL CURRENCIES, INTERNATIONAL TRADE CERTIFICATES FOR EXPORTS & IMPORTS.
MONETARY FREEDOM: It allows putting demand for one's own goods and services into circulation - by using one's goods and services as a cover for the issue of exchange media of one's own, with which one buys the goods and services of others and thereby enables them to buy one's own goods and services. Morally this is as rightful as barter or swap or clearing transactions are. But economically this monetary settlement is much easier to achieve in an economy based largely upon division of labour and free exchange. No exchange is free when exchange media or clearing avenues cannot be freely chosen, rated, refused or accepted and when the choice of value standards is not free, either. Under monetary freedom one can "monetise" or "liquidify" one's readiness to sell goods, services and labour, with one's own typified and standardised notes, goods-, service-, labour- warrants, vouchers and certificates, in convenient money denominations, using a sound and acceptable value standard, whose acceptance is optional and market-rated by others. One would only bind oneself to accept them at any time from anyone at par with their nominal value, for everything one has for sale or in payment of remaining debts. - Such issues could be undertaken by individuals, under a perfect clearing system, using e.g. money-like clearing certificates or account credits, in monetary denominations. In their absence voluntary associations could be formed that would make their exchange media and value standards more acceptable, at least locally. Among the most suitable issuers for such notes etc. would be shopping centres. Under full monetary freedom other types of optional money and clearing facilities could, naturally, be provided, too, by and for all those who do like them. - J. Z., old MFNL notes & 30.5.97, 22.7.11.
MONETARY FREEDOM: It is essential that we be permitted to make contracts with each other payable in gold, or in the dollar value of gold. Whether this is permissible now under our present laws is a grave question. But there is no doubt that in a free society contracts made in gold should be just as permissible as contracts made in any other commodity. This - plus the ownership of gold - would act as a brake on the insatiable appetite of government for more and more printed paper money. It would be a most important aid in the fight against inflation. - Lawrence Fertig, THE FREEMAN, 3/75. - Legal tender as a pre-condition for inflation is not even mentioned here! - J. Z., 21.3.97.
MONETARY FREEDOM: It is my thesis that the public would select from a number of competing private currencies a better money than government provides. - F. A. Hayek, Denationalisation of Money, p.55. - GRESHAM'S LAW.
MONETARY FREEDOM: It would mean, among other things, that all suppliers of wanted goods, labor and services could also serve as suppliers and acceptors of their own exchange media, with a goods, service, labor or clearing cover, and also as suppliers and acceptors of alternative, optional and thus as a rule sounder value standards in all their transactions than most territorial governments have so far been able and willing to supply in the long run. Everyone would then be free to adopt for himself, alone if he can or in association with a sufficient number of other producers and exchangers, his own kind of money issue and acceptance system, his own turnover credit system, his own kind of clearing system, using paper certificates, book accounts or digital means of payment, using also an alternative value standard that he (she or they) do prefer for themselves. No one has a right to interfere in their free exchanges, which, at most, could harm only the voluntary participants and which would, in the average and in the long run, benefit, to a great extent, most of these volunteers. Naturally, they would still have to bear the costs and risks of their remaining errors, ignorance and mistakes. – J.Z., 4.5.10, 25.9.10.
MONETARY FREEDOM: It would therefore now be possible, if it were permitted, to have a variety of essentially different monies. They could represent not merely different quantities of the same metal, but also different abstract units fluctuating in their value relatively to one another. In the same way, we could have currencies circulating concurrently. - F. A. Hayek, Denationalisation of Money, p.25.
MONETARY FREEDOM: It would therefore now be possible, if it were permitted, to have a variety of essentially different monies. They could represent not merely different quantities of the same metal, but also different abstract units fluctuating in their value relatively to one another. In the same way, we could have currencies circulating concurrently ... - F. A. Hayek, Denationalisation of Money, p.25. - Such practices have long existed, although mostly only on a limited scale and were, nevertheless, largely ignored by scholars like Hayek. During depressions and inflations in this century alone there were more issues of emergency monies, not only by public authorities but also by private or cooperative issuers, than anyone has so far been able to document fully. Some catalogues of coin and money collectors come close to such documentation but most of their authors would deny that their listings are already complete. - J. Z., 21.3.97. - FREE CHOICE OF VALUE STANDARDS & EXCHANGE MEDIA VS. EXCLUSIVE RARE METAL VALUE STANDARDS & EXCHANGE MEDIA, ISSUES OF EMERGENCY MONIES, TOKEN MONIES.
MONETARY FREEDOM: Leave all creative activities, including the medium of exchange - money - to the wisdom of the market. Do this or our country will end up with a five-cent thousand-dollar bill. - L. E. Read, THE FREEMAN, 1/75. - FREE MARKET MONEY
MONETARY FREEDOM: Leave the decisions about money to the market. Limit the government to its proper function of policing the market and punishing traders who cheat or rob or wilfully injure other peaceful persons. - Leonard E. Read, THE FREEMAN, 1/75. - Why assume that the government can and will fulfil these other tasks better than any others that have been surrendered to it? - J.Z., 22.3.97. - TERRITORIALISM, LIMITED GOVERNMENT, MONETARY DESPOTISM
MONETARY FREEDOM: Let anyone issue or accept only Mises’ kinds of exchange media and value standard and even try to make them their only means of exchange and value standard in their own payment sphere, freely and voluntarily chosen by all its participants. But do not outlaw any other exchange media or clearing certificates and their self-chosen and accepted value standards. No currency, not even the best one, can be rightfully turned into an exclusive and forced exchange medium and value standard. Especially gold weight value accounting and clearing should not be outlawed but become optional. That includes pricing of all goods, services, wages and other debt relationships in gold weight values, making them payable in all kinds of other exchange media or clearing certificates that are found acceptable by the creditor, but only at their current market rate against gold weight units. Convertibility to metallic gold should be referred to the free gold markets. – J.Z., 27.4.05, 4.10.10.
MONETARY FREEDOM: Let buyers and sellers choose what to use for money; let government prevent fraud. - Leonard E. Read, The Love of Liberty, ch.6. - Let the worst fraud of all pretend that he could and would prevent fraud? Since governments were the worst defrauders in this sphere it would be tragi-comic to entrust them with this role. - J.Z., 21.3.97.
MONETARY FREEDOM: Let the good money drive out the bad. - As it would, inevitably, under competitive issue for private money tokens subject to a free market rate. - J. Z., n.d. - GRESHAM'S LAW, FREE MARKET MONEY, FREE MARKET RATING & VOLUNTARY ACCEPTANCE VS. LEGAL TENDER.
MONETARY FREEDOM: Let those who exchange goods and services (and that, one way or another, is nearly all of us) choose and use as money the most trustworthy marketable item available. - Ralph Bradford, THE FREEMAN, Aug. 74. - Even that should not become an exclusive currency, even if it is favoured by 99% of the people. Each marketable item favoured by some can serve to conduct or promote their exchanges, at least until they adopt something they think is even better. Neither experts nor laws nor majority votes should be authorised to decide these matters for them. Freedom of contract. Freedom to exchange. Monetary freedom. Not just the monetary freedom practice that some people think would be the best for all. - J.Z., 21.3.97.
MONETARY FREEDOM: Let those, who supply the consumer goods and services also competitively supply their exchange media and their preferred value standards or clearing certificates. That would end the inflation, deflation and stagflation risks and most other economic crises as well. These privately or cooperatively issued currencies would be 100% covered by wanted or needed consumer goods and services (also priced out in a freely adopted sound value standard) and would keep the goods, labor and service side in balance with the money side. Whenever a third party becomes legally authorized, through an issue monopoly for money and legal tender power for it (compulsory acceptance and a forced and fictitious value) then inflation, deflation and stagflation do follow as a rule. Then the bad money drives out the good money and the good money is not free to drive out this bad money. - Governments and their central banks can rightfully and at best supply only sound "tax foundation" money, anticipating due or soon due tax-payments, if one can consider compulsory taxation as rightful. Such money issue attempts could become quite rightful only for communities of volunteers, as their kind of subscription, insurance or protection money. - J.Z., 23.2.11, 24.4.11. - GRESHAM'S LAW, INFLATION, DEFLATION, STAGFLATION, MONEY SUPPLY, TAX FOUNDATION MONEY, SUBSCRIPTION MONEY, PANARCHISM, CENTRAL BANKING, MONETARY DESPOTISM.
MONETARY FREEDOM: Means of payment should not be pursued and struggled for - but issued instead, so extensively and so soundly that everyone who has goods and services for sale, that others are prepared to exchange for their goods and services, will have no difficulty to sell them for soundly issued exchange media, which are immediately redeemable by the issuers in their goods and services. - J.Z., n.d. & 22.3.97.
MONETARY FREEDOM: Monetary freedom cannot be realized under a public opinion that is close to a vacuum when it comes to knowledge of and interest in the potential of monetary freedom, while it is saturated with the WRONG assumptions, observations, opinions, arguments and hypotheses, explanations, predictions, hopes and promises of monetary despotism. - J.Z., 20.4.93, 15.4.97.
MONETARY FREEDOM: Monetary freedom covers the whole distance from the free issue of any forms of individual IOUs, using agreed-upon value standards, to any kind of IOU obligations that are standardized in money denominations, with an agreed-upon value standard and offered as well as accepted world-wide, by voluntary participants, especially producers and exchangers in the process of the division of labor and free exchange. No kind of exchange medium or clearing avenue or value standard should be granted a constitutional, legal or juridical monopoly for whole populations and against the will and choice of many of this population. - J.Z., 28.3.11, 2.4.11.
MONETARY FREEDOM: Monetary freedom does not permit inflation but does allow the issue of as much private currency as the market requires for its equilibrium, i.e. to bring about all desired and possible exchanges at market rates. - J. Z., 25.10.76, 31.7.78, 21.3.97. - INFLATION, MONETARY EQUILIBRIUM, LIQUIDITY, ABILITY TO PAY
MONETARY FREEDOM: Monetary freedom requires the repeal of all laws restricting money issues, clearing, credit and value standards used. - J.Z., 74. - MONETARY DESPOTISM, MONETARY LEGISLATION, CURRENCY LEGISLATION, CENTRAL BANKING
MONETARY FREEDOM: monetary freedom we may have to retrieve it slowly and painstakingly on the road back to freedom, which gives it birth and meaning through inexorable economic law. This is why we seek no reform law, no restoration law, no conversion or parity, no government cooperation, merely freedom. The road is short and direct. And yet, depending on the resistance offered by popular ignorance and prejudice, by government greed and lust of power, it may take us many years to traverse. - Dr. Hans Sennholz, Inflation or Gold Standard? p.62.
MONETARY FREEDOM: Money is usually defined as THE generally acceptable medium of exchange, but there is no reason why within a given community there should be only one kind of money that is generally (or at least widely) accepted. In the Austrian border town, in which I have been living for the past few years, shopkeepers and most other business people will usually accept D-Marks as readily as Austrian schillings, and only the law prevents German banks in Salzburg from doing their business in D-Marks in the same manner as they do 10 miles away on the German side of the border. The same is true of hundreds of other tourist centres in Austria frequented mainly by Germans. In most of them dollars will also be accepted nearly as readily as D-Marks. I believe the situation is not very different on both sides of long stretches of the border between the U.S. and Canada, and probably along many other frontiers. - F. A. Hayek, Denationalisation of Money, p.46. - VARIETY OF MEANS OF EXCHANGE, PARALLEL CURRENCIES, COMPETING CURRENCIES, BORDER AREAS.
MONETARY FREEDOM: No unemployment and no inflation - long before next Christmas - if only we adopt monetary freedom. - J.Z., 9/75.
MONETARY FREEDOM: Once American citizens are properly depressed over government waste through monetary manipulation, they may then get the message to Congress to let money be whatever the market says it is. Then, if government has need for resources, let them be taken directly and openly from owners - not through a mystifying monetary procedure. - Paul Poirot, THE FREEMAN, 4/75. - FREE MARKET MONEY
MONETARY FREEDOM: One can and should, with Mises, reject all inflated, all forced currencies – but without subscribing to the kind of exclusive currency that he recommends. Let all people be free to try to issue and accept as sound and even better exchange media and clearing certificates for what they have to offer, thereby unilaterally obliging only themselves to deliver, upon presentation, whatever they have to offer in wanted goods, services or labor, or debt payment receipts. Let them be free also to us a value standard for their kind of ticket money or clearing certificates, and the things or services they have to sell, which the acceptors find to be good enough or even ideal for them. Under fully free competition in this sphere the results of these liberties and their practice is bound to be much better than it is now under central banking and its monetary despotism. – J.Z., 27.4.05, 5.10.10.
MONETARY FREEDOM: Only because there was active trading on the currency exchange would the issuing banks be warned to take the required action in time. Only because the frontiers were open to the movement of currency and capital would there be assurance of no collusion between local institutions to mismanage the local currency. And only because there were free commodity markets would stable average prices mean that the process of adapting supply to demand was functioning. - F. A. Hayek, Denationalisation of Money, p.94.
MONETARY FREEDOM: Only because they were under the sharp control of competition could the private banks be trusted to keep their money stable. - F. A.Hayek, Denationalisation of Money, p.94.
MONETARY FREEDOM: Only Mises’ kind of money for all his followers. But all kinds of alternative and sound currencies, and clearing options which others prefer for themselves, for their issues and acceptances, including those, which adopt gold weight units as their value standard. No monopoly money should be forced upon anyone as an exchange medium and a value standard. Only their issuers should always have to accept them at par with their nominal value. – J.Z., 27.4.05, 4.10.10. - MISES, LEGAL TENDER, FREE BANKING
MONETARY FREEDOM: Our initial mistake was to allow governments to issue paper money at all. Notes should be issued only by commercial banks, whose issues are checked daily by the Clearing House; and these notes should be convertible into gold on demand at the issuing bank at the gold price ruling on the previous day in the bullion market. Freedom of note issue was working well when the government abolished it in 1844. What was not working well then, and what never has worked well, was a fixed gold price, and the 1844 Act did not change this. - Henry Meulen, THE INDIVIDUALIST, 12/75. - He had fixed ideas on the fixed gold price and on convertibility by the issuer. - J.Z., 22.3.97. - GOLD STANDARD VARIETIES.
MONETARY FREEDOM: Our opposition to a common (state) currency relies on the principle that, just as producers should be free to make and exchange their products, so they should be free to choose the method of exchange. - Henry Meulen, THE INDIVIDUALIST, 12/77, p.70. - The same applies, naturally, to all the other traders as well, e.g. all the members of a shopping centre. - J.Z., 22.7.11.
MONETARY FREEDOM: Our wealth and our liberty are based on "plugging in" to a flowing, monetary current which becomes increasingly easy to siphon off. We depend absolutely on the integrity of the medium and on free, uninhibited exchange. - Leonard E. Read, Deeper than you Think, page x. - Also upon free choice of value standards. - J.Z., 22.7.11.
MONETARY FREEDOM: Producers and traders could by rights and in practice issue notes as local currency, alone or in association, based only upon the goods and services which they have to offer ready for sale at market prices. All their issues would then be self-limiting and self-liquidating, balancing the goods and service offers with the monetary demand for them - No third party is morally authorised or can sufficiently and elastically supply them with exchange media that are exclusive currency and have a forced value. All attempts to do so end in catastrophic economic crises. - The supply of sound exchange media and of sound value standards should, in the interests of everyone, be as free and competitive as that of tooth brushes, bicycles and socks. Then neither an over-supply nor an under-supply will occur and anyone can acquire or produce just as many of them as he needs for his purposes and this at the qualities that he prefers. - J.Z., 17.11.93, 24.4.97, 22.7.11.
MONETARY FREEDOM: Reduce or remove the power of politicians over the supply of money. - Arthur Seldon, introducing: F. A. Hayek, Denationalisation of Money, 4/5.
MONETARY FREEDOM: Repeal Legal Tender and the monopoly of the Central Banks. - J. Z., n.d., ca. 1975.
MONETARY FREEDOM: Seeing the addiction to system gambling, snowball or chain letter system (pyramid scheme or multi-level marketing), welfare statism, doubtful guaranties and insurance schemes, the little interest that exists in alternative and competitive sound monetary and credit and clearing theories and practices, the frauds that numerous finance companies and banks do get away with and what we allow or politicians to do to us, at our expense, - even in the far future, under full monetary freedom, a lot of fraud and deception might still go on, although usually on a much smaller scale and confined largely to voluntary or foolish victims. - J.Z., 29.3.82, 21.3.97. - FRAUD, DISHONESTY, TRICKERY
MONETARY FREEDOM: Some doctrinaires say: You must only exchange with the help of our government money. Others, like Mises, said: You should only exchange with our kind of gold standard currency. The consistent freedom lovers say: Exchange freely, with any kind of exchange medium and any kind of value standard that you find acceptable, satisfactory or ideal for your exchanges or that you have to agreed to with others, in your kind of private or cooperative payment and clearing community, to accept and use. – J.Z., 27.4.05, 5.10.10, 4.8.11.
MONETARY FREEDOM: Some favor only governmental paper monies and others e.g. only gold coins and gold certificates. By all means, let both groups have them, to their heart’s contents, as long as they are willing to put up with these self-limitations. But do not, in any way, try to block how others, by their own free choices, wish to supply themselves with sound exchange media, clearing certificates and digital clearing accounts, using a value standard they know and trust and are quite satisfied with. Mind your business in your way and let them mind theirs in their way. To each his own! Laissez faire and laissez passer in this sphere as well, all only for volunteers and their communities. – J.Z., 24.4.05, 5.10.10.
MONETARY FREEDOM: Sound money, in form of short-term turnover-credit notes, representing wanted goods already sold to wholesalers (RBD discounts with banknotes representing goods on the road to the retailers and thus consumers), or, more directly issued, goods warrants or service vouchers, in monetary denominations, issued by their providers, offering these millions of items ready for sale, in huge quantities, but limited to those offered by the issuers and their debtors, in local markets, but, to a large extent, coming in great variety from all around the world, i.e., as a kind of ticket monies or clearing certificates or digital account credits, should be, under full monetary freedom, as cheap as possible to produce (issue, in acceptable form, locally acceptable at par with their nominal value) and as easy as possible to obtain, through the sale of wanted goods, services or labor. Its physical substance need only be paper or plastic. It can even be as insubstantial in its form as digital and transferable accounts are. Nevertheless, they could have a sound enough and self-chosen as well as acceptable value standard, like a gold- or silver-weight unit and, thereby, they could buy as much as a corresponding rare metal coin could, at least at the issuers and, by contract, at their debtors. Such money could also be kept at par or, mostly, very close to par in local circulation, with discounts temporarily stopping further issues while accelerating the reflux of the discounted notes to the issuers and their debtors. The possibility of a discount, and a total refusal to accept them, i.e. their free market rating, as opposed to legal tender (compulsory acceptance of a monopoly money and a forced and fictitious value for it) belongs to monetary freedom’s various monies, just as it belongs to capital certificates, on a free capital market, on the various stock exchanges. Even these short-term turnover monies, to the extent that they are saved, could become invested on medium and long terms, credit-insured and with value preserving clauses and at high interest rates (representing no more but also no less than the fair share in the additional productivity thus attained) and, finally, or in installments repaid in then current ticket money or clearing certificates. Being man-made products, cheaply made, without large commodity value, like rare metal coins, they would, nevertheless, represent rights and claims to real values, like consumer goods and services (including labor), at market prices, by contracts or by unilateral self-obligations, i.e. they would offer in their cover and redemption the kind of goods, services and labor that their holders really want, and this while reckoning in sound value standards, including gold weight units, but with all of the value standards also subject to an individual human right, namely free choice of value standards. Thus gold weight units, as value standards, only might come to dominate most local, internal and external trading, in free competition with other value standards, but not all of this free market. How rare and insufficient as exclusive means of payment gold still is on this planet is indicated under other entries under GOLD, with figures supplied by Julian L. Simon. – For value storage purposes such turnover credit monies would refer to the rare metal markets and to the markets of capital certificates. – They would not circulate lastingly but only for short periods, during which they would fulfill their function and, streamed back to their issuers, they would be cancelled or destroyed and replaced by new issues. A limited circulation period, 3 to 12 months, might even be expressed upon them. As ticket monies they would not be valid forever or for many years, but just for the promised performances. – Being issued competitively, locally, refusable and discountable into its circulation area, measured against its own and other value standards, and with its issue and reflux details fully published, they would be self-regulating, self-limiting and stand, usually, at par with their nominal value – or close to it in general local circulation, while in other districts or countries they might get a discount, which, as an exchange rate favorable for their foreign note holders, it would drive them soon back to the local issuers and their debtors, who would accept them at par. The debtors only by contracts with the issuers and the issuers themselves under the obvious obligation to accept their own notes and IOUs at their nominal value – We can deal with a variety of exchange media as we can with a variety of credit cards and cheques. Exchange offices, apart from banks, are already common at air ports and in tourist centers. – A sufficient supply of varied but sound exchange media is more useful than an insufficient supply of uniform but unsound and all too centrally and bureaucratically mismanaged exchange media, even when they are legalized, as another enormous and supposedly justified and rational territorial robbery. - If you can express all this in fewer and clearer words, please, do so and send me a copy. - J.Z., 5.10.10. – CHEAP MONEY, EASY MONEY, HARD MONEY, STABLE MONEY, SOUND MONEY, GOLD STANDARD CLEARING & ACCOUNTING, FIAT MONEY, TICKET MONEY, MONIES OF MONETARY FREEDOM OR FREE BANKING, TURNOVER CREDITS, TICKET MONEY, READINESS TO ACCEPT FOUNDATION
MONETARY FREEDOM: Spooner's number one selling point was that, "The system would furnish, at all times, an abundant currency" ... Free competition would increase the number of banks and, thereby, the amount of money in circulation. Almost until the 20th century, the U.S. suffered (as the colonies had) from a lack of money. There were never sufficient funds for all the needs of the country. Spooner's system was intended to remedy that need. - Charles Chiveley, introduction to Spooner, Works, I, 25. - DEFLATIONARY CONDITIONS EXISTED FOR MOST OF HISTORY! - Gold bugs still deny that for their kind of exclusive exchange medium and value standard. - That merely proves that most people, even if they are otherwise radical libertarians, do not learn enough from history or from sound theories and principles, but remain stuck on traditional errors, false definitions, assumptions, conclusions and popular prejudices, at least in some spheres. Their adherence to limited governments is another example of their failure to example rightful alternatives, like individual sovereignty, individual secessionism, personal law or exterritorial autonomy for communities of volunteers. - J.Z., 22.7.11. - LIMITED GOVERNMENTS & LIMITED MONETARY FREEDOM VIEWS, GOLD BUGS, KNOWING ONLY "THE" GOLD STANDARD BUT NOT ITS REMAINING FLAWS & LIMITATIONS.
MONETARY FREEDOM: The circulation of more than one kind of money has been, historically, the rule rather than the exception ... - Samuel Brittan, THE FINANCIAL TIMES, Nov. 20.75. - VARIETY OF MEANS OF PAYMENT, OBJECTIONS, DIS.
MONETARY FREEDOM: The commercial banks should issue their own notes. There is no more reason for the government to fix the volume of notes issued than to fix the volume of linen washed by housewives on Mondays. - Henry Meulen, THE INDIVIDUALIST, 6/77, p.33.
MONETARY FREEDOM: The competitive supply of sound exchange media, clearing certificates and clearing accounts, combined with free choice of value standards, could supply the "wage fund" to keep production going and increasing, or to start it up again, while also assuring the turnover of the produced goods and the services offered, in the reflux of these monies to their issuers, to be redeemed in the goods and services they to offer between them, ready for sale. Their market value, especially their par value with their nominal value, measured in a sound value standard, would depend upon this kind of redemption, to satisfy the needs or wants of the sovereign consumers as earners of wages or salaries, paid in this way. However, only the issuers would always be obliged to accept their own notes, certificates and account credits at par. But this par acceptance by local retailers, would also tend to assure the par acceptance by local wage and salary earners. If their residence is far from their place of work then they might have to exchange the local currency they get from their employers into the local currency of the place where they are home, just as if they were now working in a foreign country, for a while, away from their families, and would have to exchange their foreign exchange earnings into their own national currency. Associations of local retailers would be the most suitable issuers for such local shop currencies. Currencies so based, issued and streaming back to their issuers, would keep the balance between the goods produced and the services offered with the purchasing power issued to buy them. This purchasing power would consist in goods warrants or service vouchers in monetary denominations and using value standards that are found acceptable to the recipients of these notes etc. and that are also used in the pricing of the goods and services offered in them. No monetary policy of a government would be required. These note issues etc. would be self-regulating, in the interest of the issuers and acceptors alike. The employers would, as a rule, get such short term loans e.g. in return for short term debt certificates, issued by them in anticipation of the payment for the sale of previously produced goods, already sold to the wholesalers, on credit, anticipating the payment of these debts. (These short term debt certificates would be the equivalent to the former real bills, discounted by note-issuing banks. By now they might be expressed in digitized credit accounts with the wholesalers of their goods. The workers and clerks etc. would spend their earnings largely in the shops or in payment of other of their debts (rent, electricity, water, gas etc.) and the recipients of these other debt payments would then themselves largely spend them in the shops. Lastly, these alternative exchange media would all be spent for consumer satisfactions through goods and services, regardless of how many times they changed hands before that. The retail shops would pay the wholesalers and the wholesalers would redeem with these payments their short-term debts to the issuers. We would have an ever renewed or revolving turnover-credit cycle, quite independent of the "monetary policy" of any government and of its supposedly ideal and uniform currency, with its inherent and inevitable monetary crises, due to the exclusive and forced nature of such monopoly money or that of their central note-issuing bank. Territorial governments should become monetarily confined to their tax foundation currencies and competing or voluntary governments or exterritorialy autonomous communities and societies of volunteers, to their own kind of contribution or subscription or insurance premium monies. All of them subject to the competition from other and sound currencies and themselves refusable and discountable by all potential acceptors. Other than short-term turnover credit debts or shortly due debts (taxes, subscriptions, premium payments) should never be turned into currencies. Medium- and long-term loan certificates, apart from their shortly due instalment repayments and interest payments, do not have enough "reflux" or demand or need for them to keep them at par with their nominal and sound value standard, whenever and wherever they are freely rated. - Only those currencies which are as soundly based as is here hinted at, do to really deserve the term "exchange media". Only exchange media, clearing certificates and clearing accounts that have such a "readiness to accept" foundation, for wanted goods or services (or soon due debts) and which use a sound value standard can really be so current, at least locally, that they deserve the term currency, or local currency. - J.Z., 22.4.11. - WAGE FUND, TURNOVER CREDITS, EXCHANGE MEDIA, CURRENCY, LOCAL CURRENCY, SHOP FOUNDATION MONEY, SHOP FOUNDATION, TAX FOUNDATION, CONTRIBUTION FOUNDATION, REFLUX
MONETARY FREEDOM: The fact that freedom of note issue is useful to both buyers and sellers is enough to ensure that a suitable note will be introduced. It is useful to buyers because it enables a man more readily to convert his reputation into buying power; and it is useful to sellers because it provides for more automatic sales of their goods. - Henry Meulen, THE INDIVIDUALIST, 12/77, p.1.
MONETARY FREEDOM: The issue of money is not a state prerogative. - Dr. H. G. Pearce.
MONETARY FREEDOM: The medium of exchange should be governed by possible turnover and not the turnover by the available means of exchange. - Ulrich von Beckerath, in PEACE PLANS 9. 83. - His other monetary freedom books, as well as many other of his shorter monetary freedom writings are already accessible now on www.reinventingmoney.com - J.Z., 22.7.11.
MONETARY FREEDOM: The monetization of commercial credit would be like a wagon way through the air. - Adam Smith, in Wealth of Nations, according to Dr. H. G. Pearce.
MONETARY FREEDOM: The money issue must be left to the market. -J.Z., 12.6.73. - FREE MARKET MONEY
MONETARY FREEDOM: The money of monetary freedom can be a “do it yourself” or “self-help” kind of money of a free enterprise or cooperative or of a voluntary issue and acceptance and payment or clearing community, cheap to produce and yet as valuable in its local purchasing power as a gold coin would be of equivalent denomination, if enough of such coins were available. I can see huge stocks of goods ready for sale every week in my shopping – but I only rarely ever see a gold coin and the last time I handled one is many years ago. How well are you supplied with gold or silver coins for your purchases? How well is your employer or potential employer or customer or client supplied with such means of payment? Should, alternative, optional and market rated currencies can turn a community with, presently, great sales difficulties for producers, retailers, laborers, clerks, professionals and tradesmen - very rapidly (theoretically even within hours or days) into a liquid, ever more prosperous, productive and progressive community, one that does not waste anyone’s goods or capital assets that are ready for sale or use, does not waste any willing and able labor, knowledge or skill and would employ all of them productively to the limits of their ability to supply and sell whatever they have to offer. – Only optional and competitively supplied as well as market rated exchange media, using sound value standards, can really be effective as EXCHANGE MEDIA. Governmental, exclusive and forced national currencies can only pretend to be sound exchange media, in sufficient supply and never in over-supply, with which depreciate them in their purchasing power, as has been the case, all over the world now, for about a century. How more of such deterrent examples and practices do we need before we get serious in learning to know and to apply our full monetary freedom options, our monetary rights and liberties? - J.Z., 2.11.10.
MONETARY FREEDOM: The money supply needs no regulation; it can be left to the free market in which individuals determine the demand for and supply of money. - Hans F. Sennholz, THE FREEMAN, 9/73. - FREE MARKET MONEY
MONETARY FREEDOM: The monies of monetary freedom are competitively supplied, have freely chosen value standards and are free market rated, those of monetary despotism are monopolized and legally imposed and this at a forced value, via legal tender laws. - J. Z., 1.6.76, 21.3.97, 22.7.11.
MONETARY FREEDOM: The need or demand for money, rather obvious in any monetary economy based upon division of labour and free exchange, can and should also be the source for the competitive supply of money, to the extent that anyone has wanted goods, services or labor to offer that are not yet fully and easily sold through the current and all too restricted exchange process. To that extent additional exchange media could still be offered soundly, by these suppliers and their associations, i.e. at par with their nominal value, expressed in one or the other freely chosen or agreed-upon value standard and, finally, "redeemed" in the equivalent value of goods, services and labour, that are also so priced, by these suppliers. By their issue and voluntary as well as ready acceptance, these issuers would establish a monetary demand for what they do have to offer in a free market. Under freedom this could be done as naturally and rightly as if all the goods, services and labor could be freely and easily bartered against each other, or as if their values, all the credits and debts involved, all by their nature, as free exchanges, in balance with each other, could be freely and easily cleared against each other, however indirectly. Only the laws of monetary despotism and of banking prevent that kind of settlement, in all too many cases, which are the various monetary and credit crises, either by means of the issue of sufficient and sound exchange media or by conventional sound book-keeping and non-cash transfer of book accounts or, nowadays, also via free and computerized clearing. Exchange media and exchange accounts so issued and used are also, essentially, mere clearing certificates or clearing account credits. Without all the current and near future turnover exchanges of goods, services and labor being thus made possible and easy, even the greatest capital assets will lose much of their potential market value and do become under-utilized, so that productivity and thus the standard of living remains under its potential. A sound capital market and the utilization of all productive capital assets requires sound supply of exchange media and of clearing options, i.e. of the "current" of the daily turnover-credit, in either of its forms, via either kind of sound currencies or clearing facilities. - Too many economists, journalists and other economics writers, capitalists, anti-capitalists, businessmen, manufacturers, miners, farmers, businessmen and ideologues overlook that aspect and imagine that only private or official additional capital would be required to overcome any crisis caused, fundamentally, by monetary despotism or the lack of monetary freedom. All the other supposed causes of economic crises would not happen without that fundamental flaw. All the economic or, rather, anti-economic control, regulation, monopoly, prohibition and subsidy systems, however legalized and sanctioned by constitutions, laws, jurisdiction, public opinion and the supposed "experts", are, essentially, a mere foundation of loose sand, upon which no sound structure can be built. - If a few others and myself are wrong on this, please do refute us. If we are right on this, please try to express it more clearly and convincingly. - The daily needed exchanges, which keep the economy fully functioning, must become quite free. - The formula with which Ulrich von Beckerath tried to sum up his system of complete monetary and clearing freedom, does, in my opinion, not yet clearly enough explain it with its all too few words: "Needs must be transformed into effective demand." Welfare statists might likewise use that formula. Mere needs are not enough. The needy must also be able and willing to offer wanted goods, labor and services, in a process of division of labor and free exchange. They must also be able and willing to learn how to do so effectively, e.g. productively with tools and machines and with a minimum of intelligence, knowledge and communication ability. - J.Z., 30.4.11. - FREEDOM TO ISSUE, THE ALTERNATIVE & NATURAL REDEMPTIONISM, CLEARING, BARTER, NON-CASH TRANSACTIONS, TURNOVER CREDIT, CLEARING, FREE EXCHANGE, CAPITAL SUPPLY
MONETARY FREEDOM: The people turn to privately issued monies, and the private sector takes over from the government the function of issuing currency. This is truly an exciting possibility. As money is the basis of all economic activity, a free market in money could prove the basis of a truly free society. - Mark Tier, REASON 10/78.
MONETARY FREEDOM: The possibility of free competition between a multiplicity of issuing institutions and the complete freedom of all movements of currency and capital across frontiers are equally essential to the success of the scheme. Any hesitant approach by a GRADUAL relaxation of the existing monopoly of issue would be certain to make it fail. - F. A. Hayek, Denationalisation of Money, p.94. - Contrary to this I hold that even from a limited monetary freedom experiment, in a village or small town, monetary freedom could spread and become complete, based on its own inherent strengths and tendencies, if only it is not coercively suppressed. Moreover, one can make it as difficult as possible for a government to suppress it. For instance, monetary freedom might e.g. become practised among people, who are, anyhow, already up in arms against a despotic government. It might be practised during a galloping inflation or under mass unemployment conditions shortly before an election. Then, if it is well enough prepared, it might be so fully and rapidly effective, at least locally, that the going-out rulers and the coming-up politicians would not dare to suppress these experiments but rather jump on the band wagon. Revolutionaries and freedom fighters might e.g. properly finance their revolution through their own monetary and financial issues. Free trade can also be practised on a limited scale in free trade industrial zones and duty free shops for a limited clientele. It can even be taught via some suitable monetary games, engaged in for entertainment and learning purposes. I believe that several such games have already been invented but do not know whether they do sufficiently clarify all monetary freedom issues. - If they were all published and criticized together, which could be done on line, on disc, via emailed attachments … Numerous monetary freedom experiments have already happened and are still happening in spite of monetary despotism. But most are still full of theoretical and practical flaws and few of them have so far been fully recorded and correctly examined and evaluated. - J. Z., 21.3.97, 22.7.11. - GRADUALISM OR RADICAL MONETARY FREEDOM REFORMS OR REVOLUTIONS? START-UPS.
MONETARY FREEDOM: There are relatively many advocates of concrete or commodity value standards, combined with concrete or commodity means of payment, that are also proposed as exclusive ones, and, likewise, advocates of abstract value standards and of various more or less despotic reform attempts of money and currency (exchange media and value standards). All would be rightful only if freely chosen by volunteers for their own payment communities. All could, with some good will, be exchanged for each other in a free market, at market rates. Alas, tolerance is missing in this sphere as well. The established system is intolerantly, nay even despotically, upheld and the vast majority of dissenters merely aim at another form of monetary despotism - to be forced upon the adherents of the old form of monetary despotism and of all other monetary reformers. Advocates of full monetary freedom, who pay more than lip service to it, by subscribing to a general principle of it, are still extremely rare. Presently, I know of no one else in Australia but myself. Thousands my exist - but they are more or less hidden, not organized, not pulled together by a periodical, newsletter meetings or correspondence. - At the same time, there are tens of thousands, who participate in very limited monetary freedom and free clearing experiments like the LETS. But even they show no serious interest in their full monetary freedom options. They are more like religious sectarians than advocates of religious liberty. Moreover, like most sectarians, they are usually not much better in their ideas, dogmas and cures than the old churches were, which they attempt to replace. - The problem is: How can one give value, in they eyes of the market, to the ideas and literature of monetary freedom? How can one give an exchange value to full monetary freedom views and literature? How can the good and truthful money and currency, exchange media and value standard, clearing and credit ideas, drive out the bad and false theories and practices, which by ignorance, law, habits, custom or prejudice have been given almost legal tender power in all opinion exchanges on such subjects? How can one freely trade and spread monetary freedom views under present conditions? - To me some of the obvious steps are to provide more and more such literature upon demand, cheaply, at least in an alternative medium like microfiche (or floppy disks, or CDs). Likewise, a full bibliography, library and information service, abstract and review compilation and an on-going and well recorded published and retrievable discussion on microfiche etc. and online. Also an up to date association directory is required and an address list, listing their special preferences and interests. Furthermore, ideas archives and charted surveys and comparable studies ought to be offered of the different means of payment and value standard and clearing systems advocated, with all their good aspects and remaining flaws. All the options to start new monetary experiments with a chance for success, ought to be fully discussed and listed. Historical records of all monetary freedom experiments ought to be compiled. Collectors of notes and coins ought to be contacted and be made familiar with correct monetary theories. Useful plans for a monetary revolution ought to be prepared and contacts made with all other revolutionaries, all those among them who are already fighting somewhere for significant liberties, showing them how monetary freedom could facilitate their struggles. Somehow or the other the dozens of millions of unemployed should be interested in cause and cure for unemployment, even if, for this purpose, one would have to draft a million leaflets before one would design one that would be a hit with them. - I still hold that the most advanced advocate and pioneer of full monetary freedom was ULRICH VON BECKERATH, 1882 - 1969, whose works I have reproduced in several languages and of whose correspondence I have also reproduced much already, with more to follow. - Much of this material is already online e.g. at www.reinventingmoney.com - J.Z., 28.4.97, 22.7.11. -TOLERANCE, PANARCHISM, EXPERIMENTAL FREEDOM, INTOLERANCE, MONETARY DESPOTISM
MONETARY FREEDOM: There certainly can be and has been money, even very satisfactory money, without government doing anything about it, though it has rarely been allowed to exist for long. - F. A. Hayek, Denationalisation of Money, p.31.
MONETARY FREEDOM: There exists now, perhaps, a better chance than ever before to get all the arguments and texts for it together and to publish them widely and cheaply and to introduce them in all public discussions where they are needed most. Interest in this option and readiness to work on it are needed more than money to finance such efforts. - There is now more old and new literature available on this than ever before and more people are interested in such questions than ever before. The trend towards deregulation and denationalisation or for reprivatization is strong. The new information channels and publishing options make it possible to cheaply gather and spread all relevant information. The tie-ins of monetary despotism with all major social, economic and political problems and monetary freedom as their solution - could and should be stressed. Even the nuclear, biological and chemical war threats may require monetary freedom for their abolition. Panarchism could probably not be realized without it. Budget difficulties, inflation and unemployment troubles exist for all governments - and all their victims. The trend towards tax strikes is strong. Numerous revolutionary and resistance attempts need perhaps only sound financing, including monetary freedom realisation, to succeed or succeed faster and with no or little bloodshed. International trading barriers and migration barriers are more and more seen as evils to be broken down and without introducing monetary freedom these aims can probably not be achieved. The freeing of the international exchange rates between exclusive national currencies ought to be followed by the freeing of the internal ones and full competition for alternative national and local currencies and free market rating for all of them. - J.Z., 7.4.97, 4.8.11. - Google recently offered more than a million search results upon my search for "free market money"! - J.Z., 22.7.11.
MONETARY FREEDOM: There is no good reason why an exchange medium or a value standard should be a monopoly good (or why they should be coercive) and every economic and moral reason to leave their production and usage free, i.e. confine them to individual acceptance, discounting or refusal. - J.Z., 16.5.78.
MONETARY FREEDOM: There is only one answer to monetary chaos and monetary despotism: monetary freedom. - J.Z., 5.3.75.
MONETARY FREEDOM: To each his own monetary theory and practice. - J.Z. 11.7.91. - The monetary theories and practices preferred by some should never be forced upon others. - J.Z., 22.4.97. - See TOLERANCE, EXPERIMENTAL FREEDOM, CONSUMER SOVEREIGNTY, FREE CHOICE OF EXCHANGE MEDIA & VALUE STANDARDS, FREEDOM OF CONTRACT, FREE ENTERPRISE, FREE TRADE, FREE EXCHANGE, etc.
MONETARY FREEDOM: To provide a sound and honest currency is not impossible, it's merely outlawed. - J.Z., 29.7.75, 22.7.11. - Not even one but several sound and honest currencies can be privately or cooperatively provided and peacefully coexist in free market competition with each other - as long and to the extent that their voluntary users find them useful for their transactions. - J.Z., 21.3.97.
MONETARY FREEDOM: Under free competition in the supply of exchange media everyone who offers them must endeavour, in his own interest, to keep them stable. Otherwise he will be pushed out of the market by his competitors, particularly through the public itself. - K.H.Z. Solneman (Kurt H. Zube), Drei Kernforderungen zur Vermoegensverteilung, S.16.
MONETARY FREEDOM: USA loudly protests that every man should be free to choose what goods he will make and at what price he will offer them, what work he will do, when he will work, and for what wages. But what is the use of all this freedom if the State tightly controls the means of exchanging the goods he makes - the money he shall use? Men work generally only in order to exchange the results of their labour. Surely, freedom of choice in the means of exchanging goods is just as important as freedom to offer goods and services. Yet governments everywhere, including the government of "The Land of the Free", not only monopolise the issue of permits to exchange goods and services, but proceed to regulate the volume of such permits regardless of the whole principle of demand and supply in an open market. - Henry Meulen, THE INDIVIDUALIST, 12/74.
MONETARY FREEDOM: Using its issue, clearing and value standard options, all providers of consumer goods and services in daily demand, could readily buy from each other, pay their employees and their suppliers and provide short term loans, largely for wage and salary payments, thus leading to the production of more consumer goods. The sales and production of wanted consumer goods could thus rapidly reach their potential limits, using a larger fraction or even all of the existing productive capacities. That would lead to extra savings and investment in larger production capacities for still more and still wanted goods, requiring for their turnover still more competing currency issues, a larger total circulation corresponding to the additional production and trade. In spite of the increase in optional and market-rated paper currencies, which would be involved (*), the larger scale of production and turnover would lead to some savings, so that prices, most likely, would not be increased at all, according to the predictions of those who uncritically applied observations of forced and exclusive currencies to competing and market-controlled ones, but would rather be decreased. That price decrease would go in parallel with further price decreases due to technical, scientific or management and self-management advances. The elimination, under full employment, due to monetary freedom, of the costs of supporting unemployed, of strikes, of go-slow practices, of make-work schemes, that waste labour, of the destruction of crops, the scrapping of unsold books, of unnecessary advertisement costs for goods and services, which would then practically sell themselves via the goods and service vouchers in which they are offered, the costs of the resistance against labour saving equipment and methods, and the reduction of personal despair (among unemployed, under-employed or people in jobs that they do not like), conditions which leads personal depression conditions, to drunkenness, drug use, gambling, crimes, often sickness, the use of the abilities and willingness to work of all old and young people, now excluded by age limits or minimum wage laws, the elimination of all protectionist policies (compulsory licensing, tariffs, quotas, exchange rate controls etc., etc.), would all help to achieve an enormous increase in productivity and in the total volume of exchanges, that is, to a great increase in the general standard of living. The economic, technical and biological capacity to deal with conservation, pollution and ecology problems would also be greatly increased. Class actions, property rights, alternative court systems, more assured indemnification claims, alternative education systems, competitive crime prevention, crime prosecution, penal institution and restitution services, utilising prison labour to the fullest, further realisation of individual rather than collective responsibility, private covenants, private parks, gardens, forests and wilderness areas, a greater purchasing power for organically grown, pesticide and additive-free foods etc., could also help to greatly reduce pollution and conservation problems. People reduced to buying only the cheapest goods to enable them to survive, cannot insist on them being of high quality and free of pollution or unwanted additives. Most of our current problems would either disappear or become much more manageable under full monetary and financial freedom. - J.Z., 23.8.85, 3.5.97, 22.7.11. - (*) Some opponents of "mere paper currencies" or what they call, uncritically, "fiat money", seem to think that the paper nature of such monies must, inevitably, make them valueless or unreliable. They do this, although many of them have made investments in the capital securities markets, which do also use mere paper certificates. Some of these securities had even gold clauses! - At least in the sphere of capital certificates they do not insist that all of them be covered, fractionally or 100% by rare metal coins. Nevertheless, they seem to be unable to apply that insight to exchange media required for daily consumer and producer turnovers. - J.Z., 22.7.11.
MONETARY FREEDOM: We claim the right to pay or clear our debts with our creditors to their and our satisfaction, with our own exchange media or clearing certificates, using a value standard of our own choice, or even a gold weight unit – and this without possessing a single gold coin or gold bullion bar. – J.Z., 27.4.05, 5.10.10.
MONETARY FREEDOM: We must end the power of the government to create "dollars" at will; money must once again be a commodity such as gold, produced solely on the free market. As we have seen, these measures would end the boom-bust cycle as well as inflation, but we can speed up the adjustment to recession, and grow and prosper far more if we cut taxation and government expenditures drastically. - McBride, A New Dawn, p.32.
MONETARY FREEDOM: When man is free he chooses natural money that is free from all strictures of government and politics. - Dr. Hans F. Sennholz, THE FREEMAN, 2/75.
MONETARY FREEDOM: When people become free to agree upon alternative exchange media, value standards and clearing avenues among themselves then they become independent of all monetary policies and measures of the practitioners of monetary despotism, of "their" central banks, "their" interest rate-, discount- and "open market" policies to control the governmental forced and exclusive currencies, their inflations, deflations, credit restrictions and stagflations. - J.Z., 18.7.96, 19.3.97, 22.7.11.
MONETARY FREEDOM: When stating that monetary freedom is required for full employment, this does not mean that free pricing is considered as unnecessary. On the contrary, it is assume as given and to be perfected by freeing monetary transactions also from all price controllers, regulators and coercers, including territorial legislators and institutions. - J.Z., 2/75, 22.7.11.
MONETARY FREEDOM: Who are the potential issuers and who are the potential acceptors for alternative, competitive, privately or cooperatively issued local currencies? It would, possibly, help if sufficiently complete lists for both groups were compiled, combined with references to historical experiences with them. Most people, including businessmen, money changers, financiers and bankers have been so conditioned to think and act only in terms of governmental, forced and exclusive currencies that they cannot easily enough envision sound, multiple, private, cooperative, partnership issuers, freely competing with each other for voluntary acceptors of their optional and market rated currencies, as many of them as a free local market would willingly accept. We have all too much adapted to statism in this sphere and almost take it for granted, assuming it to be rightful and necessary. Far less have most people considered how to organize all their desired exchanges via efficient clearing transactions, always using sound value standards in them, which are acceptable to them or which they suppose to be ideal. I would not presume to be able to supply a complete list of potential issuers and acceptors myself but can only pass on a few general suggestions that were pointed out to me. - - Potential issuers: 1. Associations of wage and salary recipients, who would declare that they would accept their the exchange or clearing media of their own associations like ready cash in payment for their wage and salary claims. That is also a very large and so far unused reflux foundation for notes and clearing certificates. Naturally, they should use a better kind of value standard for them than most governments are now able and willing to offer. Whether, in the long run, the goods and service vouchers of shops etc. or these exchange media would come to predominate could only be decided in free competition between them. - 2.) Shop associations, department stores, supermarkets, chain stores, shopping centers. - 3.) Suppliers of basic services: Postal systems, telephone and Internet service suppliers, petrol stations or oil companies, water works, gas and electricity plants, transport companies, freeways for their cash or electronic tolls. - 4.) Insurance companies. - 5.) Protection services. - 6.) Juridical services.- 7.) Educational services. - 8.) Institutions that levy taxes, rates and fees for monopoly services. 8.) Associations of tradesmen and contractors. - 9.) The hospitality industry. - 10.) The entertainment industry. - 11.) Industrialists. - 12. Agriculturists and market gardeners. - 13.) Associations of exporters, to the extent that they are able and willing to supply goods for export that are wanted in other countries at market rates. – These could be sold to local importers, or when already used, to pay with them for imports, would soon stream back to our exporters, to be redeemed in what they have to offer for them. – Foreign exchange thus need never be in short supply. It can be self-created by a country’s exporters. - Generally, self-supporting institutions and associations which have many and frequent payments to make and to receive. Those offering ready for sale and wanted consumer products and services in a wide enough range would find it most easy to get their notes accepted. With their notes they could, largely and to extent required, discount the notes issued by the others and thus achieve a more uniform supply of locally almost generally useful and readily accepted currencies. However, free issuers and acceptors would decide the issue in the long run. - - Potential acceptors: Wage and salary recipients, pensioners, private contractors, suppliers of goods, services, raw materials and consumer services, consumers, tax offices. Naturally, all issuers themselves, for their own notes or clearing certificates. - FREE BANKING, EXPORTS, IMPORTS, FOREIGN EXCHANGE.
MONETARY FREEDOM: Why should monetary exchanges be less free than barter exchanges? The right to barter is obvious. Clearing, using a sound value standard, is obviously also quite rightful. Any sound monetary exchange medium is, essentially, a clearing certificate, too, regardless of what material is its made out of. Without legal tender power and a monopoly status no unsound money can drive out sound money. Without these wrongful impositions, sound monies are free to drive out unsound ones. That is exactly why governments established their money issue monopoly and legal tender power (compulsory acceptance and a forced value) for their inferior money issues and paper value standards. - J.Z., 21.4.11. - CLEARING, BARTER
MONETARY FREEDOM: With freedom in money, the scientific discoveries and mechanical inventions made in each country, will not only be used to the utmost in that country, but will be carried into all other countries. And these discoveries and inventions, given by each country to every other, and received by each country from every other, will be of infinitely more value than all the material commodities that will be exchanged between these countries. - In this way each country contributes to the wealth of every other, and the whole human race are enriched by the increased power and stimulus given to each man's labor of body and mind. - Lysander Spooner, Cleveland, Works I, 51. - Towards that aim the abolition of patent and copyrights monopolies would be required, too. Tucker was more consistent in advocating this liberty, too, than Spooner was. - J.Z., 22.3.97. - Spooner still insisted upon copyrights.
MONETARY FREEDOM: Withdraw the right of note issue from governments and restore it to the commercial banks, who suffer no such temptation ... - Henry Meulen, THE INDIVIDUALIST, 12/74. - Allow both to issue - NON-COERCIVE MONEY TOKENS! - Meulen never fully realized the significance and consequences of legal tender. Even today may assume that because legal tender fails to coerce in the last stages of an inflation, when people ignore it even at great risk and choose alternatives agreeable to them, that, therefore, legal tender is not really effective. But it took legal tender to bring a currency to the desperate stage of a galloping inflation, where it finally becomes ignored or simply too useless and even expensive to utilise. In 1923 the printing costs came to 48% of the market value of newly printed notes. In the Hungarian inflation after WW II this percentage may have risen even higher. Imagine a government trying to hawk its money around when it is merely its printed paper, not covered or redeemed in rare metals, not legal tender (forced acceptance and forced value), not a monopoly money - and if it were (since governments ignored sound tax foundation for so long) not even accepted in payment of taxes. - Towards the end of the Great German Inflation of 1914 to 1923 most of the income of governments came no longer from taxation but from its printing presses! - J.Z., 21.3.97.
MONETARY FREEDOM: You have the right to issue your own money - and to refuse that of anyone else, even that of the government. - J.Z., 11.2.73.
MONEY & CLEARING: Why do so many, when writing or talking about money as an exchange medium, forget about clearing as an alternative to cash payments? Sound clearing needs nothing but freedom and a sound enough value standard. Then it could achieve the turnover of unlimited goods and services, including labor, without causing an inflation. Clearing media and accounts should, naturally, have no legal tender power, except towards those, who issued them. Physical exchange media, especially paper monies, were all too often given legal tender power (compulsory acceptance and a forced value) also an issue monopoly, practiced by a central bank, when they had no other clearing foundation than tax foundation. Thus they could and mostly were over-issued and caused inflation. Clearing is a fundamental monetary settlement that turns multiple sound barter exchanges into monetary exchanges, while avoiding most of the difficulties involved in barter exchanges. – J.Z., 17.8.10, 4.8.11.
MONEY & WEALTH: 3. The fallacy of “money is wealth.” The mercantilists of the 1600s raised this error to the pinnacle of national policy. Always bent upon heaping up hoards of gold and silver, they made war on their neighbors and looted their treasures. If England was richer than France, it was, according to the mercantilists, because England had more precious metals in its possession, which usually meant in the king’s coffers. - It was Adam Smith, in The Wealth of Nations, who exploded this silly notion. A people are prosperous to the extent they possess goods and services, not money, Smith declared. All the money in the world - paper or metallic - will still leave one starving if goods and services are not available. - The “money is wealth” error is the affliction of the currency crank. From John Law to John Maynard Keynes, great populations have hyper-inflated themselves to ruin in pursuit of this illusion. Even today we hear cries of “we need more money” as the government’s monetary authorities crank it out at double digit rates. - The good economist will recognize that money creation is no short-cut to wealth. Only the production of valued goods and services in a market which reflects the consumer’s wishes can relieve poverty and promote prosperity. - Lawrence W. Reed, 7 Fallacies of EconomicsTHE FREEMAN, April 1981 - Money isn't wealth when there is nothing or not enough to buy with it. Not every money can buy wealth. Only the money with sufficient purchasing power can buy wealth. That requires sound money, in sufficient supply and with a sound value standard. When there is an abundance of goods and services ready for sale, in a division of labour economy, then these suppliers are largely dependent either upon perfect clearing, which hasn’t even been achieved today as yet, or on a sufficient supply of sound money, which monopoly coiners and note printers and issuers will not always or only rarely supply. The best suppliers of sound money are all those, who have wanted consumer goods and services to offer. Their goods warrants and service vouchers, in suitable money denominations, with their prices and the notes marked in freely chosen sound value standards, can assure them their sales and thereby wealth, also employment in productive work for all able and willing to work. Their goods and services ready for sale are the main working capital of any country, apart from buildings, land, machines, transport facilities etc. - All even of these can operate effectively only when there is a constant supply of sufficient consumer goods and services available and these supplies can be exchanged, effectively, only via ideal clearing or sufficient sound exchange media. And these exchange media could and should be produced, spent and lent and ultimately redeemed in these goods and services by the suppliers of these goods and services. Then, their kind money will keep the turnover of goods and services going and achieve not only survival under the standard of living made possible by division of labor and free exchange but also the accumulation of more and more productive and other wealth, e.g. houses and trucks. - J.Z., 8.7.11. - DIS.
MONEY CIRCULATION: The quantity of money which can be used in a country every year depends upon the value of its useful commodities being exchanged in it. – The quantity of money in a country would therefore have to increase when the value of the annual exchanges increases. – Albrecht Forstmann (Volkswirtschaftliche Theorie des Geldes, 2. Band, p. 282), retranslated by me, ascribes this view to A. Smith, (a.a.O., Bd. I/2, pages 90 & 91). While I share this view, I could not find this quote in any of my English editions of The Wealth of Nations. – Alas, the view that via free pricing the circulation of exchange media would not matter, because prices would adjust to any quantity of exchange media fast and efficiently enough, without friction, is still prevailing in some heads of libertarians. For that reason it would be helpful to locate that passage in the original - better than Forstmann did. – On many subjects, except e.g. the labor theory of value, Adam Smith is still considered an authority by many libertarians, who often choose his flawed passages in preference to his correct ones. - J.Z., 18.10.10. - MONEY & GOODS RELATIONSHIP, MONEY CIRCULATION& GOODS CIRCULATION
MONEY CRANKS: So far the worst once were, probably, the advocates and practitioners of the coinage monopoly and of the central banking system for monopoly and forced paper monies, of which most followers of Silvio Gesell form only a variety, the metallic redemptionists – responsible for centuries of deflations, holding up economic development - and those who believed that all kinds of capital security certificates would also form a suitable and sound foundation for the issue of paper monies, the Social Credit advocates, in all their variety, the index standard fanatics, each insisting upon the general use of their preference in this sphere, the greenbackers and inflations, the advocates of “land banks”, those, who thoughtlessly condemn all easy and cheap or paper money, even if it is soundly issued, managed and usable. Have all of them as yet been sufficiently listed and criticized? – J.Z., 1.11.10.
MONEY SUPPLY: The surest guaranty of optimum stability is a money supply determined not by the government "expert", but by the impartial mechanism of the free market. - Richard W. Grant, The Incredible Breadmachine, self-published, n.d., indexed, 286pp, p.222. - FREE MARKET VS. MONETARY DESPOTISM, LEGAL TENDER, FORCED & EXCLUSIVE CURRENCIES, EXPERTS, CENTRAL BANKING, CURRENCY POLICY
MONEY, CAPITAL, TRANSFERABILITY: Not only 1.) consumer goods and services and productive labor have to achieve turnovers but 2.) real capital (tools, machines, building, transport facilities etc.) have to become transferable as well. Only that gives them their full value - apart from monopoly or privilege values, which are wrongful and to be rejected by all their victims as such. The suitable exchange media for the first kinds are different from those of the second kind. For the first exchange media or clearing avenues are needed and for the second capital certificates and their exchanges and clearing facilities. Unfortunately, both are often called merely “money” or “capital”, which does not help to clarify the facts in most people’s minds. The turn-over facilitators of the first kind do not promise interest upon their papers, but interest can be charged when they are lent to others. Capital certificates promise interest or dividend payments; perhaps only in form of being issued below par and later accepted or traded at par. Capital certificates are shares in properties or represent limited and stated rights towards property or capital owners or managers. Interest upon exchange media may be involved in their issues by a bank, in form of discounts of suitable short term IOU’s or bills. Shop associations, that promote their own sales by the issue of shop currency, or transport and other services that offer their services in form of “ticket monies” or “subscription monies” to their services, may also charge interest for them but not when they pay with them e.g. some of their wage bills and other bills but only if they grant short term loans with them, especially short-term turnover loans for the payment of wages and salaries by other employers. This would make them at least somewhat independent from the supply of a government’s central bank currency. The capital certificates may promise interest or dividends upon them or capital gains but achieve it not in every case but only in the average. – Each should be free to make his or her kind of certified promises and to recognize them as such against himself or herself, when they are presented for redemption in goods, services or labor or as entitlements to decision-making votes on the use of large capital assets. Each should also be free to reject or discount the exchange media or capital certificates of others – but not his own. Capital certificates have a more limited “acceptance foundation”. They are not currency or current for shopping for consumer requirements. In this sphere, i.e. outside of “stock exchanges”, they do not encounter sufficient readiness to accept them or “shop foundation”. While they can be used in take-over bids and in bankruptcy proceedings they are, mostly, useless as means of payment against their issuers. But to the extent that promised dividends are due or soon due, the issuers of such capital assets could also issue optional and market rated exchange media or clearing certificates, with which they could make these due or soon due payments and then accept them at par for the goods and services that they do have ready for sale. At the same time they are very important to build up capital for large projects which can only rarely be financed by rich individuals. - All truths are dependent for their validity upon making sufficient distinctions between them and other truths. – Vague generalizations are often quite useless, regardless of how impressive they sound at first. - J.Z., 3.10.10, 4.8.11.
MONEY, INTEREST-FREE MONEY & DEBT FREE MONEY: Whoever thinks that he is able to provide "interest-free" should be free to try to establish such a service, at the own risk and expense and that of voluntary followers. But it should certainly not be a compulsory service for those, who disagree. The same applies to all proposals for "debt-free" money. I hold that the provision of exchange media and of clearing certificates, as well as of short-, medium- and long-term capital is a service worth its price and one that earns its price, as a rule or in the average. Also, that every exchange involves mutual debts and insofar no monetary exchange can be "debt-free". However, if with "debt-free" is meant that capital values or capital asset certificates should not be turned into money in form of currency, then I would agree. For such "money" does not assure its immediate or rapid-enough redemption in wanted or needed consumer goods or services - it is not "current" or a genuine "currency". Interest or dividend coupons have, sometimes, been used as money towards those, who were under obligation to redeem them, soon. Likewise, tax anticipation certificates had tax foundation for due or soon due taxes. Thus their sound reflux and thereby their value preservation against a sound value standard was assured. Capital assets not immediately or soon enough due do not have a sufficient reflux to preserve the value of any monies issued upon them. Only barter transactions can be interest free. But to match-up people for such transactions can be rather laborious and thus costly, at leat in time and energy, unless the process is computerized. Thus there are, inevitably, transaction costs involved, or fees for such services involved. - J.Z., 25.4.11, 4.8.11. - DEBT FREE MONEY? INTEREST FREE MONEY? BARTER, DIS.
MONEY VOLUME: Is there such a thing as too much money? - www.progress.org/2008/fold564.htm - - Cached - Land-value tapping or taxation plus free-market money and banking would provide price and financial stability. Only the free market can know the right money ... - At least some of the Henry George followers have also been or still are monetary freedom advocates. E.g. Dr. H. G. Pearce, in Australia. Has anyone listed them and their texts together, in a special honours roll, for those, who do not consider the "single tax" to be a cure-all? - J.Z., 24.7.11. - Even the "single tax" is still wrongful, because compulsory tax. Only among voluntary victims could it be rightfully practised. - J.Z., 27.7.11. - To come to a sound conclusion on the volume of sound money that is possible and desirable, one has at least to distinguish between monopoly monies and competing monies, optional, discountable and refusable monies and monies with legal tender power, i.e. compulsory acceptance at a forced and fictitious value, money as an exchange or clearing medium and money as a value standard. The soundness of money does not require that its fundamental material itself is valuable, like in gold coins or redeemable gold certificates. Its material might be merely printed paper, plastic, wood or stones, shells etc. Its purchasing power can be quite independent from its material value or might merely be expressed in fleeting electronic symbols. It might be convertible into gold or silver only on the free metal markets. Otherwise, it might be convertible only in the nearest shops into the wanted or needed consumer goods or services, which MIGHT be priced out in gold- or silver weight units - or otherwise, corresponding to the value standard used in the money. Without having a material value in itself, it can be as good as gold- or silver-coins or a as certificates that are redeemable in them. Such sound money can also be issued far beyond the gold- and silver stocks that are available for coinage. Freedom in this sphere, too, offers numerous options which many libertarians haven't imagined so far or read about. - J.Z., 9.8.11.
MONEY: All the perplexities, confusion, distress in America arise, not from defects in their constitution or confederation, not from want of honour and virtue, so much as from downright ignorance of coin, credit, and circulation. – John Adams, quoted in: Eustache Mullins, This Difficult Individual, Ezra Pound. p.219, Angriff Press, Hollywood, 1961. – JZL. – The Constitution did not offer individual secessionism, full monetary freedom, panarchism, decision on war and peace by the people, a complete and correct and complete bill of genuine individual rights and liberties. It did not outlaw slavery and was also unable to prevent the rise of monetary despotism, tax slavery, "educational" enslavement, militarism, imperialism and the construction and use of mass murder devices. – A single hypothesis rarely explains all the phenomena. - J.Z., 30.7.10.5.8.11. - IGNORANCE, DIS., CONSTITUTIONLISM.
MONEY: As a supposedly free entrepreneur you are not free to compete with the government’s central bank. As a supposedly sovereign consumer you are not free to accept other than governmental and usually unsound and depreciating currencies and then to spend them as you please among all who are willing to accept them, usually their issuers and the debtors of these issuers. Legal tender and money issue laws force you to accept the government’s monopoly money and this not at its market rating but at a forced value. – Uniform money is no good enough substitute for sound monies in sufficient because competitive supply. - J.Z., 26.8.10. - Let individuals and groups secede from monetary despotism, too and do their own things, at their own expense and risk. Individual and minority group sovereignty instead of collectivist and territorial sovereignty. - J.Z., 5.8.11.
MONEY: Defining money as mere information seems also to imply, although unintentionally, that information is money. At most one can only say that good enough information is an opportunity to make some money, even if only the opportunity to make some of the imposed monopoly money, not any of the sound and sufficient monies that monetary freedom would offer for useful information, useful knowledge and abilities. To make enough of the monopoly money, even with the best kind of information, is still hard during deflation or stagflation times and even in times of inflation. It is easier to make when it is fast inflated, but then this money is becoming more and more depreciated and sound or sounder alternatives monies are still scarce and hard to get. Moreover, at the last stage of an inflation prices tend to race ahead of the printing presses and create thereby deflationary shortages of money in the middle of a fast inflation. – Only a particular kind of information is involved and exchanged, namely that of purchasing power. Thus the term “information” should not be used without sufficient qualifications on what kind of information is meant. Inside information on stock markets may have a monetary value for its user. Inside information on further unjustified increases of the government’s monopoly money circulation would also have some value to a trader national currencies. Definitions that merely misapply general terms should not be used at all. Information on the credit status of a customer will have some value to a businessman. So will knowledge of the foreign exchange rate of a foreign currency. But to attempt to cover all the flawed or incomplete notions that exist on money and all the supposed or real laws on it and its very nature only with the term that it is “information”, will certainly not convey sufficient information on it. An encyclopedia or a whole library offer “information” as well, correct and incorrect information. But they are not “money”, either. - At best this “definition” may be considered as a “bon mot” or as a challenge to think more seriously and comprehensively about money. Naturally, the total volume of an exclusive and forced currency compared with the total quantity of goods and services offered for sale in a country, supplies information, to those, who seek it. Governments often fail to publish sufficiently their increases of the volume of their monopoly money. They rather blame business, greed, speculation or excess wage claims of unions for the resulting nominal price and wage rises. - Information still in short supply is e.g. that on the clearing nature of all money, understanding of the necessity to distinguish between exchange media and value standards, free market rating of monies and legal tender for governmental fiat money, which turns them into a kind of requisitioning certificates. All too short is also information on e.g. the real bills cover for notes issued in sound bill discounting, of bills which represent goods produced and sold and already on their way to their final consumers. Thick volumes of handbooks on money, banking, currencies and finance, provide much “information” but often only little if any correct information on the money of monetary freedom. Matter of fact, the information on this kind of money has not yet been sufficiently compiled and published in any handbook on monetary freedom. To say that money is information really does not convey any useful information except, perhaps, a notion that money does not have to be valuable in itself, as a commodity or materialo, like e.g. gold and silver coins are, and even copper coins. It would make more sense to say that it is a very useful tool to transfer, rightfully and peacefully, real values, rights to properties and services. – An old Swedish term called banknotes rather aptly "transport tickets". The “definition” saying that “money is information”, does certainly not help to clear up, sufficiently, the muddle in most people’s heads on the “money”. phenomenon – Has a quite flawless definition of money been offered as yet? If so, it should be put online, together with all other definitions and their pro and con, to get it checked out by many people. - J.Z., 2.11.10. 5.8.11. - DEFINED MERELY AS INFORMATION, DIS., DEFINTIONS OF MONEY, DIS.
MONEY: If money is merely information, like some people have asserted, then information should be money. Alas, this is far from being always a fact and general experience. Information, like skills, knowledge, arts and crafts, has still to be properly marketed to be sold and this for a competitive supply of sound money tokens or clearing certificates, to be turned into “money", as every unemployed, every contractor, artist and professional knows. The monopoly money of central banks does not always and sufficiently or well enough supply this needed service in economies depending upon monetary exchanges or extensive enough clearing transactions. Thus money is not merely information, although it does supply a certain and useful information, namely, purchasing power at least at certain locations and for particular services and goods or batches of them in a large enough variety to satisfy modern consumers and service users. It supplies the knowledge of a certain degree of acceptance foundation, not necessarily just for rare metal coins but for all kinds of sufficiently wanted goods and services, just like tickets do. Can we afford to continue operating successfully with all too many flawed, incomplete or false definitions of money, through which we are confronted again and again with more and more monetary, exchange or sales crises for our labors, knowledge, goods and services? – J.Z., 19.2.10, 24.9.10. - DEFINITION, INFORMATION, GOLD COVER & REDEMPTION OR A SUFFICIENT READINESS TO ACCEPT FOUNDATION? DIS.
MONEY: If you set money free you set the people free.” – THE LONDON DAILY EXPRESS, quoted by: Paul Bakewell, Jr., What Are We Using For Money. D. Van Nostrand Co., Toronto, New York, London, 1952, p.208. – Alas, it may have only referred to foreign exchange controls vs. freely floating exchange rates. – J.Z., 29.7.10. – MONEY MONOPOLY, MONETARY FREEDOM
MONEY: Money honestly acquired is the representative of services performed, for which the (*) community is still in debt; and the transfer of money from Peter to John is the transfer for claim for wages due, and not yet paid in kind.” – William B. Greene, … Fragments, p.28. – (*) This is only true for e.g. the kind of competitive private payment community that has issued its form of money used. Monetary dealings in a form of monopoly money are, somewhat, comparable to dealings in stolen goods. Those dealing “innocently” with the monopoly money may not have established that monopoly or uphold it but have they publicly criticized it and attempted to abolish it? There is also a kind of guilt by omission. – No territorial community is under any obligation to bacvk up, with its assets, goods or taxes, any privately issued banknotes or coins. The notion that it should do this, is all too collectivistic or communistic. - That also applies, somewhat, to the current bailouts, often of huge corporations, which had mismanaged their affairs, with or without the "help" of governmental regulations. - J.Z., 27.7.10, 5.8.11.
MONEY: money is an accounting system. … money is but a medium of evidencing barter balances. – E. C. Riegel.
MONEY: Money isn’t everything – but whatever comes second behind it is a hell of a long way back. – Source unknown. I came across it many decades ago. – J.Z., 26.8.10. - JOKES
MONEY: Money isn’t everything, but it’s a wonderful substitute. - “CHANGING TIMES” - JOKES
MONEY: Money isn’t everything. In fact, the way things are going, it soon won’t be anything. – “CHANGING TIMES” - Decisive, in a positive sense, is not money but sound money or sound clearing, in other words, the ability to pay. Decisive, in the negative sense, is monetary despotism. The ability to pay is greatly diminished through the money-issue monopoly and other despotic monetary powers of the central banking system and the wrongful laws backing it. – J.Z., 26.8.10. - INFLATION, CLEARING, JOKES.
MONEY: money springs from mutual interest and cooperative action among traders, and not from authority. – E. C. Riegel. - This is true only under monetary freedom but not under monetary despotism. - J.Z., 6.8.11.
MONEY: money, which has the effect of enslaving people. – Leo Tolstoy, What the Must we Do? Aylmer Maude translation, OUP, 1925, p. 122. – That could at most be said about the money of monetary despotism, the only kind which Tolstoi considered here, but not of the money of monetary freedom. It liberates rather than enslaves. It promotes prosperity rather than poverty. Alas, Tolstoi remained very ignorant of economics and addicted to popular errors and prejudices in this sphere, as he demonstrates again and again in this book. It should never be published again without a reference to all the required refutations, which could or should be offered online or on disk or they should be added in footnotes to the text. Alternatively, references should be provided at all passages which require it, to all the refutations of such errors, prejudices etc. in a special encyclopedia of the best refutations of popular errors, myths and prejudices. To republish such a book without such corrections amounts to supporting the struggle against enlightenment. – He concludes that chapter XVII by saying, p. 123: “But science denies this, and says that money is only an instrument of exchange which has nothing in common with the enslavement of people. Let us see whether that is so.” – Alas, he sticks dogmatically to the first statement and many other and similar incomplete or incorrect statements on economics. - J.Z., 19.10.10. – DIS. - A comprehensive encyclopaedia of the best refutations of popular errors on money, currency, credit, finance, banking, corporations, interest charges etc. should also contain a section on Tolstoi. - J.Z., 5.8.11.
MONEY: Only by turning our backs on the muddle of past monetary economics can we fully understand the subject of money. … Error has labyrinths; truth is an obelisk. – E. C. Riegel, Flight from Inflation: The Monetary Alternative. The Heather Foundation, P.O. Box 48, San Pedro, CA, 1978. - The required obelisk in this sphere has still to become erected, perhaps in form of a comprehensive A to Z like this one at least aims at, or in form of an electronic databank as is being prepared by Klaus Falke with his www.monetary-freedom.net - J.Z., 5.8.11.
MONEY: Something that brushes by you on its way to Washington. - “CHANGING TIMES” – Even if it is not taxed through other taxes, it is still taxed through the inflation tax while you have it in your pocket or in your account. – J.Z., 26.8.10. - TAX SLAVERY, INFLATION, JOKES
MONEY: Still the most efficient labor saving device. – Franklin P. Jones - However, it usually costs much labor to acquire enough of it for this purpose. - J.Z., 5.8.11.
MONEY: To the present day, money is that part of the market order that government has most suppressed. It is also the part of the market order that silly rulers and economists have most tinkered with. … it will not be present knowledge but discoveries by free experimentation that can show us the best solutions. [Hayek was not familiar with the German, Swiss and Jewish school of monetary freedom in Germany, of the early 30’s. – J.Z.] … government jealously guarded its monopoly, for purposes quite different from those for which money had been introduced. … Today money is chiefly not an effective medium of exchange but a tool of government for fleecing us and for “managing” (*) the economy. … If government were deprived of their power over money, private firms would quickly begin to define new monetary units and to issue liabilities denominated in terms of these units. Competition among issuers would compel them to seek to define their units in ways most useful to the public and to make them available to the public at the most attractive feasible terms. - Friedrich von Hayek, The Future Monetary Unit of Value, in Money in Crisis, Barry Siegel, ed., Pacific Institute, San Francisco, 1984, pp. 324-327. - (*) Rather: mismanaging! - J.Z., 5.8.11.
MONEY: When we sell any thing for specie, we buy the specie; and, when we buy any thing with specie, we sell the specie.” – William B. Greene, in Mutual Banking, quoted in his Fragments, p.36. - That applies, naturally, not only to rare metal coins but to any kind of money. – Any monetary exchange can also be considered as a form of barter or of clearing. - J.Z., 27.7.10.
MOORE, RODERICK, Money and How to Privatise It: An Introduction - Roy Halliday, in section on Genuine Money.
MOSELEY, D. ALEXANDER, Abolish Legal Tender - February 1999. - "Legal tender laws effectively have nationalized currencies, making them the prerogative of the state. Economics teaches that money cannot be invented or created by decree, that it is very much the result of traders’ decisions across many markets and over much time. It is time to return currency to the market." - Roy Halliday, in section on Counterfeit Money.
MOTOR CITY TIMES.COM: What Would Money Look Like If We “Ended The Fed?” | motorcitytimes.com - motorcitytimes.com/.../what-would-money-look-like-if-we-ended-th... - Cached - 26 Nov 2010 – White's book “Free Banking in Britain” explains how free-market money-issuing in Scotland during the 18th and 19th centuries resulted in ... - FED, CENTRAL BANKING, MONETARY DESPOTISM
MULTIPLE ENTRIES ON THE SAME SUBJECT: The general topic, namely sound and sufficient monies, is so important that multiple entries on the same subjects should not be avoided, at least in a first published collection, made as complete as possible. Editorial volume reductions should be postponed or invited from anyone, at any later stage. - J.Z., 5.8.11.
MURPHY, ROBERT P. & LARA, L. CARLOS: - A free online book, "How Privatized Banking Really Works" by L. Carlos Lara & Robert P. Murphy is at http://consultingbyrpm.com/uploads/HPBRW.pdf - Hint by George Thomas Kysor, email of 22.7.11. - 4.46 MBs in PDF. - So far I have only skimmed the book and got, thereby, the impression that it promises much more than it delivers. - J.Z., 5.8.11.
MURPHY, TURK & BOEHRIINGER, Murphy, Turk & Boehringer answer questions on gold and silver ... - www.watchingtheworld.org/.../murphy-turk-boehringer-answer-que... - Cached - The explain the importance of sound, free market money to human liberty and how central banking and centrally planned fiat currencies are doomed to fail. ... - The wrong premise, once again, seems to be that gold or silver are the ONLY SOUND options for free market money. For instance, much of the trade of China used to be done of a copper weight standard. Moreover, there are hundreds to thousands of different index standards on offer. - J.Z., 25.7.11.
MURPHY, ROBERT P., Can Gold Cause the Boom-Bust Cycle? - June 28, 2010. - "In the real world, of course, the real danger of credit expansion and the boom-bust cycle comes from fiat money and fractional-reserve banking. Yet it is still important for economists in the Austrian tradition to think through hypothetical scenarios in order to refine our thinking and weed out any inconsistencies in our principles." - Roy Halliday, in section on gold.
MURPHY, ROBERT P., Defend the Gold Standard - by Bob Murphy. ROBERT P. MURPHY? - "It's true that the government can always renege on its pledge to maintain a fixed peg to gold, but at least everybody would know exactly when the government cheated." - Roy Halliday, in section on gold. - Defend the meter, litre & the kilogram, too, also the hour, minute or the second? Or, rather, the right to use any standard that one likes, for one's transactions and to abolish any power to impose, change or abolish any standard, which others have chosen for themselves? - J.Z., 9.8.11. - Halliday's entry is under Bob Murphy. - I assume that he is identical with Robert P. Murphy. - J.Z.
MURPHY, ROBERT P., Gold: The Market's Global Currency - November 11, 2010. - "Regardless of the machinations of the political insiders, the laws of economics cannot be denied. Central bankers cannot be trusted with the printing press, especially when there is no formal check on their inflationary policies. It is no coincidence that gold is hitting such heights as investors the world over hunker down for what may very well be a collapse of the dollar system." - Roy Halliday, in section on gold.
MURPHY, ROBERT P., Putting the Country Back on Gold - July 28, 2011. - "When it comes to "second-best" policy recommendations in a world of government intervention, we can never find perfection (by definition). But if we are going to have the government providing a monopoly of domestic currency, Ludwig von Mises's proposal for a return to a gold standard is theoretically elegant and eminently practical." - Roy Halliday, in section on gold. - That is a territorial, collectivist and coercive notion and as such a large step backwards rather than forward. - J.Z., 9.8.11.
MURPHY, ROBERT P., The Fractional-Reserve Banking Question - June 14, 2010. - "In the present article, we have walked through a simple example to illustrate the strange nature of fractional-reserve banking. In a very real sense, this process creates money out of thin air. This observation alone doesn't prove its illegitimacy, let alone its connection with the business cycle, but it should give pause to those who see nothing wrong with the practice." - Roy Halliday
MURPHY, ROBERT, The Fed as Giant Counterfeiter - February 3, 2010. - "Once you understand the details of modern central banking, you are able to step back and see that it truly is a way for the government to use the printing press to pay its bills. All of the complicated process of targeting interest rates through buying Treasuries simply hides this essential point — and perhaps deliberately so." - Roy Halliday
MURPHY, ROBERT P., The Gold Standard: Myths and Lies - June 13, 2011. "Precisely because a gold standard is such a hot topic lately, it's important for people to understand its rationale. In the present article I'll try to clear up a few misconceptions." - Roy Halliday, in section on gold. - If only its rationale, among its adherents, were quite rational, unprejudiced and tolerant! - J.Z., 11.8.11.
MUTUAL BANKING: Let us suppose a community in which are men pursuing all branches of useful industry - and by the word useful we mean to include the fine arts with the trades producing articles of luxury and elegance - whatever beautifies as well as what supports life - farmers, mechanics, manufacturers, housekeepers, schoolmasters, artists. They form an institution of mutual credit, or Bank of Exchange; it issues its notes, loaning them to A, B, and C as they are wanted and as security is given. (*) Every man in the community (**) belongs to the bank, and is bound to receive the notes in exchange for whatever he has to dispose of. (***) They are, in fact, payable at the farm or the workshop of every one of the members, not in gold and silver (****), but (*****) in consumable products (*** ***); and, indeed, they are not bank-notes, but bills of exchange, drawn, so to say, on every member of the bank, and bearing the signature of every other. They are true representatives, since they stand directly for articles of use. (*** ****) - Charles A. Dana, Proudhon and His Bank of the People, in Henry Cohen, Proudhon's Solution of the Social Problem, New York, Vanguard Press, 1927, pp. 15-31. Reproduced in: Leonard L. Krimerman & Lewis Perry, Patterns of Anarchy, Anchor Books, 1966, p.334/35. - (*) The only "security" to be offered is the declaration of the potential acceptors, that they would accept the notes up to a certain amount, for the kind of consumer goods, services or labor that they do have to offer. It could also be offered in form of a bill, representing such a claim against others, who are similarly able to and willing to accept the bill as if it were silver or gold coins of the same value. - (**) Every man in this particular payment community, not necessarily every man in the geographical community. The latter my have several local currencies, largely depending upon its size. Historically, there were note-issuing banks for populations as low as 2,000 to 20,000. And other potential issuers of kinds of token money, down to single general stores, not to speak of large shopping centres. The same community may also have e.g. petrol money, bus money, railway money, electricity money, telephone money, water supply money, gas money and rate-money or tax foundation money for members of any political community, whether territorial or exterritorial. - (***) If he signed up for this! - (****) Although, possibly, if this is agreed upon, up to a certain nominal value of weight units of gold or silver, as expressed in the notes and in the prices of what he has to offer. - (*****) redeemed! - (*** ***) or wanted services or labour! - (*** ****) or wants! - In mere verbal descriptions too many errors and false assumptions tend to creep in. - Some circulation charts are clearer in describing this process and its various options. - J.Z., 11.5.11. - (*) and other productive activities, including the productive distribution and sales activities! - (**) exclusive! - (***) whole! - (****) and services, including labour! - (*****) another misjudgement! - (*** ***) Some misinterpreted this as a "justification" not only for the expropriation but also for the mass murder of the supposedly unproductive "classes", as if all of them had been merely unproductive, monopolists and exploiters, as if only e.g. blue colour workers were productive. - J.Z., 11.5.11. - FREE BANKING, BANK OF EXCHANGE, NOTE-ISSUING BANK, SECURITIES, READINESS TO ACCEPT FOUNDATION, SHOP FOUNDATION
MUTUAL BANKING: to issue bills redeemable at sight, not by having specie paid down on their face, but by being receivable at their face value, in discharge of claims, by each and all of the members of the particular mutual banking companies issuing them.” – William B. Green, Mutual Banking, quoted in his Fragments, page 50. – This clause should be amended: 1. Members should not be obliged to accept notes of their issuing banks for any large amounts going beyond their debt to their note-issuing bank. 2.) They should neither be granted loans beyond a) their stock in their shops or b) beyond their usual volume of turnovers within a short period. If their issuing bank does increase their turnovers, then, naturally their loans could be increased as well. An unlimited acceptance at par obligation should exist only for the bank of issue itself. Otherwise, the right to refuse of discount the notes of the bank, of which they are a member or subscriber, should still be applied. In small scale free banking attempts it has happened that those of the payment community, who offered the best shop foundation, would be flooded with notes of the bank, of which they could use only a fraction in payments to the other members of the bank. Thus they had soon to limit their acceptances to the due or soon due amounts they owed their bank. – Even within a private payment community or community that issues notes, there should be a sufficient reflux or acceptance foundation for all their issues. For community currencies that would mainly mean their local tax foundation and foundation via local public service charges raised upon their members. The alternatives to rare metal redemption must be themselves sound enough, especially in their volume and in their timing. – J.Z., 27.7.10. - PAPER MONEY, CENTRAL BANKING, COMMUNISM, LEGAL TENDER
MYKBGOLD.COM, 2010 July | My KB Gold - www.mykbgold.com/2010/07/ - Cached - Free markets require free market money. Fifty percent of every transaction involves currency. You have to allow the market to pick what money is and what ... - FREE MARKET MONEY, GOLD AS EXCLUSIVE CURRENCY?
MYTHS ON MONEY, MARKET, INTEREST, POWER: Free market - Ideology and ethics - www.experiencefestival.com/free_market_-_ideology_and_ethics - Cached - The Myth of the Free Market - Money, Interest and Power! The Myth of the Free Market - Money, Interest and Power! A video to send to those who think the ... - DIS.
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NATHAN, PAUL, Can Gold Be Valued in Currency or Is Itself Money? - June 23, 2010. - "My suggestion to Ron Paul and all those wanting to return to gold, is the best way to accomplish this is not by proclaiming your determination to replace the Federal Reserve Board with the gold standard, but to attack the legal tender laws of this country." - Roy Halliday, in section on gold.
NATURALMONEY.ORG:Naturalmoney.org - How Much Money Should There Be? www.naturalmoney.org/howmuchmoney.html - Furthermore, while the free-market money is associated with rising real wealth, the present monetary system is inherently inflationary and leads to economic ...
NAUTHAUSE, BERNARD von: Free Market Money Vs. Government Terrorism. Apr 8, 2011. - 3:06 - Free Market Money Vs. Government Terrorism - Fox Business Video ... - video.foxbusiness.com/.../free-market-money-vs-government-terror... - Cached - - Bernard Von Nauthaus on his conviction. You must have JavaScript enabled to watch video ...
NDTV Updates, A bank that lends you goats - November 7, 2010. - "Our effort is that every member of the bank has a capital of at least 20 goats so that they become self-reliant financially." - Roy Halliday, in section on Free Market Banking.
NEW AMERICAN, THE, In a free market, money doesn't grow on trees: supporters of big ... - www.thefreelibrary.com - The New American - November 24, 2008 - Cached - 24 Nov 2008 – Free Online Library: In a free market, money doesn't grow on trees: supporters of big government have been blaming the current economic ... - However, false or flawed views on exchange media, value standards, credits, interest, capital, clearing and free exchange do seem to grow like leaves on trees. - J.Z., 27.7.11.
NEW CLARION, THE, Review of Meltdown — The New Clarion - www.newclarion.com/2009/07/review-of-meltdown/ - Cached - 31 Jul 2009 – Strictly speaking, free market advocates want “free market money.” In actuality, the market would choose a parallel standard of both gold ... - As if the market had ever been sufficiently informed and free in this respect. That is no more true in this sphere than in religion, territorial politics and in economics in general. - J.Z., 27.7.11.
NEW PALGRAVE DICTIONARY OF ECONOMICS, Money. - money : The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics - www.dictionaryofeconomics.com/article?id=pde2008_M000217 - Cached - Money as a social institution and public good; Precious metals as money; Functions of money; Commodity money vs fiat money; Free market money? ... "Commodity money vs. fiat money."- A case of incomplete or even false alternatives! - J.Z., 23.7.11.
NEWMAN, FREDERIC, DGC BLOG: DGC Blog - www.dgcmagazine.com/blog/ - 20 Jul 2011 – ... federal reserve, Frederic Newmann, free and unashamed, free game, free market money, free markets, free online game, free seminar ...
NEWS-BUSINESS.VLEX.COM: In a free market, money doesn't grow on trees: supporters of big ... - news-business.vlex.com/.../supporters-blaming-shoot-fallacies-fault-... - 24 Nov 2008 - In a free market, money doesn't grow on trees: supporters of big government have been blaming the current economic crisis ...
NIAL-DEVLIN.COM: Wealth Creation and Protection - Part 2 - niall-devlin.com/page/2/ - Cached - 22 May 2010 – 7) Gold and Silver re-emerge as Free Market Money (cycle continuous to repeat). A SOBERING THOUGHT Inflation Erodes Savings and Destroy ...
NOPOM.INFO/: Physical Object MONEY: Why Things Go Wrong - Invisible Hand - Free ... - nopom.info/ - Cached - We need a free market money, a money which is not only compatible with a free market but which produces, creates, encourages, and brings into being a free ...
NORTH, GARY: Academia's War Against Free Market Money - Academia's War Against Free Market Money by Gary North - www.lewrockwell.com/north/north666.html - Cached - 1 Dec 2008. DIGG THIS. In a confrontational and much-needed LewRockwell.com ... - [PDF]
NORTH, GARY, Dialogue #1 On the American Gold Standard - "This dialogue is between two vocal advocates of limited civil government: Private Money Guy (PMG) and State Money Guy (SMG)." - - Dialogue #2 on the American Gold Standard - "The Private Money Guy (PMG) and the State Money Guy (SMG) are still going at it." - - Dialogue #3 on the American Gold Standard: Science Is as Science Does - "The gold standard has advocates, but the problem is, there are competing versions. The government-enforced gold standard is the one that gets all the space in the history textbooks. This is because it is the only version governments allow." - - Dialogue #4 on the American Gold Standard: Trust and Distrust in Banking - "The private money guy and the state money guy go at it again." - - Dialogue #5 On the American Gold Standard: Winners and Losers - "The Private Money Guy and the State Money Guy do not seem to be communicating. Like ships in the night, they pass each other, each flying a flag called 'Gold Standard.'" - Roy Halliday, in section on Counterfeit Money.
NORTH, GARY, End The FED. Get The Gold. - October 16, 20. - "The law would be very simple. "The Federal Reserve Act of 1913 is hereby abolished." This wording leaves nothing to the imagination. Anyone can understand this. There do not have to be any additional qualifications, exemptions, or anything else. There is no need for an army of lobbyists to recommend the insertion of all kinds of special-interest language." - Roy Halliday
NORTH, GARY, Gold: A Valuable Thing to Store - March 4, 2011. - "Gold is a valuable thing to store. However, it is not a store of value. Gold has intrinsic properties that make it valuable. However, it does not have intrinsic value." - Roy Halliday, in section on gold.
NORTH, GARY, How To Create a New World Reserve Currency - "The reason why the BRIC nations – Brazil, Russia India, and China – do not want to see their currencies replace the dollar is because central bankers and politicians are Keynesians. They believe in salvation by inflation. The few Chicago School economists in the staffs are convinced that the central bank can and should inflate to forestall a recession. That was Milton Friedman's main legacy to the modern world as far as the modern world's leaders are concerned. He blamed the Federal Reserve System for not inflating, 1930–33. - This is why we see no candidates to replace the U.S. dollar. Any of the BRIC nations could establish policies that would elevate its currency to number-one status. But the price is too high. It is as high as adopting the gold coin standard. It would mean the end of monetary intervention. - The modern world believes in salvation by inflation. So has every civilization except one: the Byzantines, who had a stable gold currency for a thousand years after 325 A.D." - Roy Halliday
NORTH, GARY, How to Defend the Free Market Gold Coin Standard: Stop Defending the Government Counterfeits - December 27, 2010 - "First and foremost, a government-guaranteed gold standard is a rotten idea. It is just a little better than a fiat-money standard. But advocates of the gold standard" almost always mean "a government-guaranteed gold standard.' Therein lies the problem. Governments lie. They cheat. They steal." - Roy Halliday, in section on gold. - Secede from all territorial governments - especially those practising monetary and financial despotism! - J.Z., 9.8.11.
NORTH, GARY, How To End the Federal Reserve System - March 9, 2011. - "The Post Office looked unbeatable for over 250 years. Technology has made it peripheral. The same will happen to the Federal Reserve System. It looks unbeatable. But the Internet can beat it. There are ways out of the FED's trap." - Roy Halliday
NORTH, GARY, Keynes, Crackpots, and Deflation - www.garynorth.com/public/5182print.cfm - Cached - 10 Jul 2009 – None of the four believed that a free market money system would allow prices, including the interest rate, to allocate capital, ...
NORTH, GARY, Mises on Money. Visit http://www.freebooks.com. For a free subscription to Gary North's newsletter on gold, click here. He offers free a Gold newsletter. His essay: The Myth of the Gold Standard, offered by the Mises Institute and Rockwell com, criticizes at least all government intervention in this sphere. - J.Z., 20.4.11.
NORTH, GARY, Rothbard's The Mystery of Banking - August 1, 2011. - "It is the only money-and-banking textbook I have read that forthrightly identifies the process of central banking as both immoral and economically destructive. It identifies fractional-reserve banking as a form of embezzlement." - Roy Halliday
NORTH, GARY, The Moral Issue of Honest Money - February 1982. - "The appeal of specie metals is not the lure of magical talismans, as some critics of gold seem to imply. Gold is not a barbarous relic. Gold is a metal which, over millennia, has become acceptable as a means of payment in a highly complex institutional arrangement: the monetary system. Gold is part of civilization’s most important economic institution, the division-of-labor-based monetary system. Without this division of labor, which monetary calculation has made possible, most of the world’s population would be dead within a year, and probably within a few weeks. The alternative to the free market social order is government tyranny, some military- based centralized allocation system. Any attempt by the state to alter men’s voluntary decisions in the area of exchange, including their choice of exchange units, represents the true relic of barbarism, namely, the use of force to determine the outcome of men’s decisions." - Roy Halliday
NORTH, GARY, What Is Money? - "Through the influence of the FED among foreign central banks, and through the influence of the top dozen American graduate schools, the confusion over what money is has spread to the entire world." - - What Is Money? Part 2: Precious Metal Coinage - "The case for precious metal coinage as the best form of money arises from two things: first, an understanding of how money developed in the past; second, an understanding of economic theory." - What Is Money? Part 3: Schizophrenic Economists - "Monetary policy today is set by banks that are not governed by the same theory of contracts that binds individuals." - - What Is Money? Part 4: Bait and Switch - "Bait and switch is at the heart of all fractional reserve banking. It is not illegal. It is the heart of the modern economy." - - What Is Money? Part 5: Fractional Reserve Banking - "The heart of the modern monetary system is fractional reserve banking. This system is based on fraud. At the very heart of the modern economy is fraud – fraud on a gigantic scale." - - What Is Money? Part 6: What Makes Money Different? - "An increase in the money supply conveys no verifiable social benefit. Early owners and early users gain benefits. Late-users experience losses. There is no way of knowing whether there are net gains or losses from an addition of money. But in times of mass inflation and then hyperinflation, the losses become obvious. The increased money supply forces a society back to barter, which is inefficient compared to a money economy where the money supply is stable. Zimbabwe has experienced this. That nation has been impoverished." - - What Is Money? Part 7: Gresham's Law - "A correct version of Gresham's Law is this: "In an economy with a government-legislated fixed price between two currency units, the artificially overvalued currency drives out of circulation the artificially undervalued currency." This does not have quite the same ring to it as the more familiar version." - - What Is Money? Part 8: Why Gold Has No Intrinsic Value - "Whenever you hear someone speak of gold's having intrinsic value, you can be sure that he has a confused theory of economics in general and monetary theory in particular. There is no such thing as a free lunch. There is also no such thing as intrinsic value." - - What Is Money? Part 9: Monetary Reform - "Central banking is the most brilliant device of profit-seeking monopolists and oligopolists in human history. Nothing else comes close. Hardly anyone understands it so there is no organized opposition." - - What Is Money? Part 10: When Money Dies - "Hyperinflation in a modern urban nation would kill people. I think it would kill a lot of people." - - What Is Money? Part 11: The Great Default - "The governments of every major nation are going to default on their debts." - - What Is Money? Part 12: Why Central Banking Persists - "Mises and the Austrian School economists present their monetary policy in terms of the general laws of the free market. In contrast their opponents – whose name is legion – argue that monetary policy must be consciously developed and enforced by national governments and government-owned or protected central banks." - - What Is Money? Part 13: Exported Inflation - "Bank-created inflation is not exported. It is merely copied. When foreign prices rise alongside America's rising prices, this is because foreign central banks are matching the monetary policies of the Federal Reserve. Domestic digital inflation is always a domestic bank–inflicted wound. Central banks compete with each other to debauch their domestic currencies. This is not free market competition. It is competitive plunder by government-licensed counterfeiters." - - What Is Money? Part 14: Money and Uncertainty - "The free market lets us buy and sell uncertainty. Buyers of uncertainty spend money, buy capital goods, and restructure production." - -What Is Money? Part 15: Hoarding, Old and New - "Keynesian economists hate Uncle Scrooge and everything he stands for. He knows how to make lots of money. He stores up gold. He is the essence of the non-consumer. He is an anti-Keynesian – in thought, word, and deed." - - What Is Money? Part 16: Inflation and the Savior State - "The savior state always becomes the inflating state. It promises more healing than it can deliver. It taxes. Then it inflates. Then it defaults. Its default creates hard times for court prophets." - - What Is Money? Part 17: Conclusion - "There must be a default at some point. The question is: "Which kind?" If the central bank ceases to inflate, a recession begins. If the government or the central bank refuses to intervene, many banks go under. This shrinks the money supply. The recession becomes a depression." - Roy Halliday, in section on Genuine Money.
NORTH, GARY, Withdrawal Tax', How to Stick it to the Big Banks that Got Bailed out, and Make Money while You're at it. - 'Withdrawal Tax': How to Stick It to the Big Banks That Got Bailed Out, and Make Money While You're at It. Pass It On! - "Let's pull our money out of the bailed-out banks and put it in local banks that lend to locals." - Roy Halliday, in section on Government-Regulated Banking.
NOTHAUS, BERNARD von, YouTube - Free Market Money gets you 15 years in the slammer? - www.youtube.com/watch?v=BMMMM72iTws - 3 min - 12 Apr 2011 - Uploaded by Daniel44125. - Free Market Money gets you 15 years in the slammer? Bernard von Nothaus is being railroaded for issuing gold medallions in order to help ... More videos for "free market money" »
NOZICK, ROBERT: EconomicPolicyJournal.com: The Day Robert Nozick was Konked - www.economicpolicyjournal.com/.../day-robert-nozick-was-konked... - Cached - 30 Jun 2011 – They are evil, when controlled and manipulated by the state, but free market money and free market IP are not evil. ...
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O'DRISCOLL, GERALD P., Jr.: Stable Money And Free-Market Currencies - www.cato.org/pubs/journal/cj3n1/cj3n1-17.pdf - File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat - Quick View - A FREE-MARKET MONEY: COMMENT ON YEAGER. Gerald P. O'Driscoll, Jr., Economic Coordination and Calculation. In his paper, Professor Yeager has appropriately ...
O'DRISCOLL, GERALD P., Jr., Why Do We Have a Central Bank? - December 3, 2010. - "Why do nations have central banks? Countries have developed without one, and sophisticated financial systems have evolved in their absence. Some countries with a central bank have suffered for having one. Zimbabwe comes to mind." - Roy Halliday
ONLINE BANKING TRADING AND INSURANCE.COM: Lamenting Economic Solutions: Time to Return to Sound Money for ... - onlinebankingtradingandinsurance.com/.../lamenting-economic-solutions-... - The cover story of the November 24, 2008, issue correctly points out, “In a Free Market, Money Doesn't Grow on Trees.” As stated in the article, ...
ONLINE INTERNET MARKETING EDUCATION NET: Wealth Cycles | - OnlineInternetMarketingEducation.Net / New Economy ... onlineinternetmarketingeducation.net/free-training/wealth-cycles/ - Wealth Cycles | OnlineMarketingBusinessModel.com / New Economy ... onlinemarketingbusinessmodel.com/free-training/wealth-cycles - Cached - 23 Jan 2011 – Cached - 24 Jan 2011. - The Great Lie. What do you mean, free markets don't work? You can't have a “free market” without free market money! ...
ONLINE MONEY REVIEW: The Money Masters – Full | Review Of Making Money Online - online-money-review.net/articles/the-money-masters-full/ - Cached - 7 May 2011 – The world needs free market money. Such a system would probably result in a gold standard. We also should have banking reform which treats ...
ONLY MONEY INFO: Q&A: Does the absence of free market competition for taxpayers ... - www.onlymoney.info/qa-does-the-absence-of-free-market-competit... - Cached - 8 Feb 2011 – Categories: Best Money Market Tags: absence, competition, dismal, education, explain, free, Market, Money, public, state, taxpayers ...