The Ideal Economy Of The Future
Here is an unusually
perceptive glimpse of the Future in a vision
of an ideal, moneyless, self-regulating,
consumer-based economy
scanned from an article in a prominent
American bankers' association
magazine. I thought it would interest
those Canadians who have been
duped into perpetuating the decrepit Ways
Of The Ancients in their
supposedly modern Canadian economy. keesy@pi.net
JCT: Could you
mention the name of the magazine and the date?
CONSUMERCARD
Ending Recessions, Depressions, Unemployment,
Inflation, and High
Living Costs - ConsumerCard
In both principle and practice, the permanent
solution to our
chronic unemployment problems is relatively
simple. In principle, all
we need do is base most of our industrial
production on the long-term
industrial orders of Consumers rather
than on the short-term industrial
orders of Investors. In practice, this
simply means contracting with
one of our major credit-card companies
to issue and administer a special
new credit card which would enable consumers
to place long-term orders
with industry and to pay for these with
their labor rather than with
money. Consumers and businessmen would
then do whatever else was
necessary to make the new credit card
work.
Unemployment is simply the result of insufficient
numbers of
consumer orders reaching Industry. Consumer
Orders are the fuel upon
which industry runs. When the flow of
consumer orders slows, industrial
production slows and unemployment results.
If industry is to maintain a
high level of productivity, its managers
must draw from a full fuel tank
of long-term consumer industrial orders.
JCT: There is
a lack of credit
In the past, we have always acted as though
only Investors
(private and governmental) could order
things for consumers and maintain
industry's backlog of orders. Therefore
our economic policies have
concentrated on encouraging more investors
to initiate more and more
job-producing industrial orders and then
providing investors with
convenient and reliable means of doing
so.
Regrettably, this short-sighted policy
neglects entirely the
second major source of economic orders:
the ultimate consumers
themselves. This neglect is unfortunate
since working consumers
outnumber investors ten to one, and they
have forty times more financial
capacity than investors. Consumers also
know more about what consumers
want, and in one month they can place
more firm long-term consumer
orders with industry than industry can
handle in fifty years.
JCT: It's true
there would be an explosion of industrial activity
if every consumer had his own LETS interest-free
credit card to
provide perfect demand information. And
I'd bet it would be for the
products like tractors, not tanks.
Thus to create lifetime full employment
for all Americans -
regardless of age, race, gender, education,
or disability - we must
expand our economic policies to encourage
consumers as well as investors
to place many long-term consumer orders
with industry and to provide
both consumers and investors with reliable
means of doing so.
Unfortunately, unlike investors, consumers
are provided no such means.
JCT: Until LETS
arrived on the scene.
Therefore we must establish in our local
and national banks a special
consumer-based credit system to parallel
our present investor-based
credit system.
JCT: And the
LETS program should apply to provide the accounts
running side by side with regular federal
currency accounts.
This new credit system could take the form
of a special
credit-card whose use would be identical
to that of an ordinary credit
card except for two major differences.
First, instead of being used to
BUY existing Investor-ordered products
off retailer shelves, the new
"ConsumerCard" would be used exclusively
to ORDER the production of
future consumer goods and services. Second,
instead of being repaid in
investor-created currency, consumer credits
could be paid only in the
labor of the ordering consumers.
JCT: I think
this guy will enjoy finding out that LETS is doing
that already though it hasn't yet been
applied to the extent which he
envisions.
Once distributed en masse to scores of
millions of current and
future credit-card holders, the many potential
benefits of this unique
ConsumerCard would induce consumers to
use it, and the potential profits
would pressure businessmen to facilitate
its use and accept its credits.
To the extent that it was used, unemployment
would end nationwide. So
would all other economic problems, from
monetary Inflation, cyclical
business recessions, and general economic
instability, to labor strikes,
unscientific pricing policies, misproduction.
haphazard development,
and gross misappropriation of human and
natural resources.
JCT: And of course,
Global Employment Trading Software would end
employment world-wide in the very same
way.
The use of the new consumer-based credit
system would produce an
energetic surge of efficient, sensible,
and stable industrial activity
which would double our Gross National
Product and everyone's wages
within one year and every seven years
thereafter.
JCT: I'd like
to see his numbers because I think diverting the
mis-employed to useful employment might
increase GNP in useful
production versus non-useful production
by a factor of 2 as he
suggests to a factor of 9. I really believe
that the whole world will
only have to chip in full time work until
surpluses reach acceptable
proportions and then retire to lives of
leisure and dividends.
I think the idea
of getting a dividend as a share in robot
paychecks was the greatest idea of Maj.
Clifford H. Douglas, the
engineer who proposed a workable, though
not-optimal, sociable credit
solution. He said that as the lever of
technology got longer and
longer providing more and more with less
human work, dividends as a
share in that robotic production would
replace wages as the means of
allocating purchasing power to society's
members. It was was this
conclusion which forever banned my fear
of technology putting people
out of work when it really was never the
work people wanted but the
life-support tickets that came along with
the job.
Real Caouette,
the Great Quebec Social Credit leader, said it
best:
"Do you think
you want more jobs? You can have all the jobs you
like. Take out the bulldozer and put in
50 men with shovels. Do you
want more jobs, take away their shovels
and give them spoons."
Consumers would receive what they wanted,
not what investors thought
they wanted or should have, or what investors
could afford to order.
JCT: It's as
if all LETS members could vote for what they wanted
produced by how they spend their money.
Full employment would promptly shrink the
public dole while the
new affluence would greatly enlarge our
tax base. Huge new tax revenues
would quickly convert government budget
deficits into surpluses and
enable governments to repay their ponderous
public debts within three
years while providing ample new funds
for education, defense, public
health and public works, and the maintenance
of our crumbling
infrastructure.
JCT: I think
"Defense" will be taken over by the Salvation Army
"Life-Guard" programs for more than just
swimmers.
The new employment security would stabilize
jobs and thus families,
individuals, communities, and cultures.
These stabilized communities
would in turn reverse urban decay and
elevate public morale
and morality.
JCT: I've had
too many friends commit suicide, with more on the
way, to not appreciate how a chance at
LETS employment creates hope
and sense of self-worth after living under
a system where their
wallets remind them "Near-Zero" all their
lives. There's no making me
slow down in engineering this guy's vision.
Stabilized social pressures would also
discourage crime, fraud, and
debt evasion while tighter financial controls
and the disuse of
negotiable cash would prevent them.
JCT: I don't
think tight financial controls are necessary and do
not intend to forgo negotiable tokens
for any reason until a better
medium is available. Controls were not
needed in the 1950s and 1960s
when there was plentiful employment and
they should not be needed once
full employment is achieved.
Consumer orders would enable businessmen
to set prices and wages
scientifically since consumer evaluations
of ordered products could be
properly compared with worker evaluations
of the jobs created by those
orders. This practice would permit
the economy to establish proper
production priorities and to determine
the optimum allocations of human
and natural resources. This would
end the aggressive tug-of-war method
of setting prices and wages and the subsequent
frustrating misplacement
of invaluable workers and wasteful mis-allocation
of irreplaceable
resources.
JCT: Yes. And
it would eliminate commercials and advertising now
needed by industry to induce an insufficient
market to buy theirs, not
their competitor's, products. Imagine
a world with no advertising
other than signs. It's never there when
you don't need it, only
available when you do want it. That's
what I'll appreciate most.
Long-term consumer contracts would reserve
limited land and
mineral rights for the exclusive use of
specific individuals and
families. These individual allocations
would inspire a broad
conservation of natural resources and
restrain excessive fertility. The
limits of these personal allocations would
thus discourage current
excessive population growth, the rape
of natural resources, and the
further extinction of species without
official intervention.
JCT: A stewardship
system with payment for what you use is what a
stable currency could help organize. With
LETS, a compulsive gambler
cabbie could buy a car, get on the road,
work until he's got enough
savings to sell it back, pay the depreciation
and fly off to Las Vegas
and see how long his savings last knowing
he can come back home and do
the same thing over and over again. I
would think the bridge playing
cabbie would do the same.
Pollutants in our air, land, food, and
water would gradually
disappear once its high costs persuaded
consumers to pay higher prices
to manufacturers to fund the suppression
of pollution at its source.
JCT: The best
part of it all. Finally, the cost of cleaning up
can be afforded in the price of goods
and services offering enough
profit so no one needs to cheat.
Scientific research would be stimulated
since its estimated value
would elicit ample investments from consumers
and from the many
businessmen looking for better and more
efficient ways to fulfill
their fifty-year backlogs of orders.
Similarly, useful inventions
would find immediate applications and
markets through the consumer
agencies which would be organized to utilize
fully the many
opportunities of this new consumer-ordering
device.
JCT: And with
sales forecast up front, no interest to include in
the cost of production, prices will first
jump down to their natural
and just level.
After we have controlled unemployment at
home, as world leaders
we can inspire similar economic reforms
abroad. In doing so we would
not only help other nations improve their
economy and our international
relations, we would also divert the flood
of illegal immigrants fleeing
the economic chaos in those nations. Full
employment abroad would also
persuade economic refugees already here
to return voluntarily to their
own countries, while our newly closed
local economies could compel them
to do so.
JCT: No compulsion
would be necessary. With enough jobs and
peace back at home, no one minds a Latin,
an African, an Asian, a
Caucasian working on the same production
line with them. With no lack
of jobs to create friction between tribes
back at home, those who
would like to return to their homelands
could do so while those who
are happy adding multi-cultural charm
to our societies would remain.
As this brief review Indicates, the potential
benefits of this
consumer-based credit system are enormous.
In monetary terms alone,
the system is potentially worth at least
One Trillion Dollars Annually
to the people of the United States and
proportionally more to other
peoples of the world.
JCT: The Fraser
Institute estimates total Government debt at $1.8
trillion and commercial and private debt
at $1.4 trillion for a total
of $3.2 trillion. At 10% interest, debt
service is over $300 billion
so that Canadians share the payment of
almost $1 billion a day for
interest. Guessing US debt service as
8 to 10 times that of Canada, it
is fair to wonder if installing a national
US LETS in monetary terms
alone would be worth at least another
$2.4 trillion just on the
interest saved. If you think Americans
will be surprised to find out
they can be at least One Trillion Dollars
Annually better off than
before with a LETS consumer-based credit
system, imagine how surprised
they'll be to find out it's actually closer
to Four Trillion dollars
more they'd be getting in value?
When I hear the
Canadian Government announce they're going to
spend $25 million to save the Great Lakes
this, I think they're going
to spend the equivalent of 45 minutes
worth of interest. When they
announce $2 billion for infrastructure
repair, I think 2 days
interest. They're trying to get us to
applaud for a drop while the
river's running by.
So, yes, liberating
all that interest from the pockets of those
who already have abundance and putting
it into the pockets of those
who do not have abundance will have all
of the above effects and more.
This guy knows what he wants, he just
may not know that the LETS
software is already being used to do just
what he suggests.
If he sees Eden,
I see the same Eden too.
In 1 John 5:16, he notes the problem in
one breath,
Of all the sins the greatest is "the sin
that leads to death."
MORT-GAGE DEATH-GAMBLE USURY.
I think this
fellow has encompassed more conservatively the
benefits I expect national and global
LETS would instantaneously
deliver. I hope it explains why I have
not been involved much in the
long-term planning at the grass-roots
level going on around the world.
There are plenty of more experienced people
to be doing that.
I do hope that
this vision explains why I've pushed "Big Bigger
Biggest" so "Loud Louder Loudest" so "Long
Longer Longest." This is my
vision of Global LETS. I hope you see
it too.