Subject: Re: TURMEL: On Social Credit (24 pages)
On Nov 21 1995,
in article #114196 in Newsgroups: can.politics,
huyert@qed.uucp (Timothy Huyer) wrote:
:The first point that caught my attention
is Turmel's fixation with a
:shortage of money.
:
Fixation with
the prime criteria is not unusual among engineers.
Anyone who plays mort-gage death-gamble
borrows 10 and owes 11. I
think the automatic shortage of money
as the prime rule in the game
would make that shortage of money the
most likely idea to be fixated
upon.
It's only when
you believe that inflation is Shift A (see
Mathematics of Usury Analysis which follows,)
more money chasing the
goods, and you fail to perceive Shift
B, the same money chasing less
goods, that you can believe that there
is too much money.
The fact that
every dollar born of a banker's pen must be
returned with more is quite persuasive
in explaining why interest
causes an artificial chronic shortage
of money.
:In particular, it seemed that Turmel felt
that most,
:if not all, economic problems could be
solved simply by printing more
:money.
:
Tim, you're so
trained to believe that there are no solutions and
hence any proposed solution is wrong that
you haven't even realized
that we're talking about two possible
solutions here, not just one.
The old Social Credit solution and, for
want of a better name, the
Friendly Credit solution.
What you just
said I wanted was the Social Credit solution which
you yourself dubbed the "banker adds chips
to each pot" solution to
paying the extra interest owed. After
20 exchanges on the Social
Credit versus Friendly Credit Greendollar
theme, you should know that
eliminating the interest and stabilizing
the debt, not the money, is
the way I want to go. They're two different
solutions for you to
object to.
When I sought
a model to show the problem with paying the
interest, you came up with a model which
had the banker adding an
estimated amount to balance the interest.
The problem with
both Tim's banker adding to each pot and with
Social Credit governments adding chips
into circulation by government
spending and merchant discounts is that
they both have to estimate the
imbalance caused by the interest demanded
and compensate for it. My
way is to eliminate the imbalance and
not have to compensate.
If everybody
took out their loans at 20% instead of 10%, they'd
have to manage to estimate how much more
was needed for every pot.
Of course, my
solution of eliminating the interest imbalance at
the source means that we don't need the
Social Credit balancing act.
It stays in balance all the way.
What's funniest
in this is that when first confronted with the
problem of every player owing more than
every player gets which Tim
calls "irrational" though we suffer under
it, really, is that in
trying to come up with a solution, he
himself comes up with the same
old Social Credit solution of trying to
balance the interest. Their
balancing acts would have worked.
So though also
solved the irrational dilemma by adding chips, he
can't bring himself to believe his own
logic when it concurs with the
logic of every farmer trying to pay 11
for 10 had to. Reality for that
farmer was that he was mired in an irrational
contract where he had to
come up with 11:10 every year. And
no one was hypothetically adding
chips to his pot though it made sense
when a Socreds said they would.
It made sense
to everyone faced with more debts than their loans
that their government add chips directly
to their pots as a National
Dividend. They were short, giving them
some made sense.
So Tim, as I
hope you see, both the National Dividend to each
citizen and the manufacturer's rebate
are Socreds trying to add chips
to every pot to try to balance the increase
in prices due to the
interest in the same way you offered.
I guess you could
say Social Credit National Dividend and you
adding chips to our pots is reactive to
the interest plague while
Green and Time Credit systems are proactive.
They kill the usury
plague dead. They eliminate the exponential
interest charge by
replacing it with a linear service charge.
Like switching components
in the economic engine. Slide out the
Bretton-Woods Usury software and
load up the Greendollar software. Try
out the Social Credit software
if you really want to continue having
interest which you'll have to
balance off all the time but most will
soon choose that stable money
makes for the smoothest ride.
:In effect, since the only physical requirements
for money is
:paper and ink (and, technically, not
even that), and, since if the
:physical requirements became binding
we can simply change the
:denominations of the money (i.e., a $100
bill uses the same materials as
:a $2 bill), a central bank can literally
produce an infinite amount of money.
:
Pretty good argument
for linear service charges for our loans.
Now we pay $100 on the $1,000 transaction
and $100,000 on the
$1,000,000 transaction. Every year. I'd
rather pay the $15 service
charge one for both.
:Under those circumstances, if the economic
problem was _simply and only_
:lack of money, Turmel would be correct
in criticizing current economic
:systems.
:
And if it's only
part of the problem, why would I not still be
correct in criticizing economic systems?
Why does the problem have to
"_simply and only-" the lack of money
and not just a component of the
problem. Shall it be discarded because
it doesn't solve everything all
at once but only one small part of the
market mechanism? Actually, it
does solve everything all at once.
Give me access
to a global Greendollar account and I'll retire
from all political and economic activity,
my personal engineering
project accomplished. I won't even run
in my 40th record breaking
political election. That's how much getting
an interest-free global
Greendollar account is the only thing
on my mind. That you must also
end up with an interest-free credit card
to use or not at your
discretion is a healthy by-product of
my endeavor.
I hope you don't
think I'm infringing on Rockefeller's property
rights by giving you an interest-free
credit card so you'd don't need
to borrow from him at interest.
And again, make
the distinction between the old Social Credit
solution to lack of money which is to
balance the growth of the debt
with more money, your banker-adds-chips.
The new Greencredit solution
is to eliminate the imbalance in growth
of debt in the first place
eliminating the artificial shortage and
making more money unnecessary
when there's always just enough.
:
However, it is not money which is the problem; it is the amount
:of goods and services which can be purchased.
These are finite, and
:demand is non-satiated, infinite.
This is where scarcity occurs, not in
:the money supply.
:
To say scarcity
occurs in nature and therefore not in the money
supply needs remedial Boolean algebra.
Scarcity can and does occur in
both real life and in the money supply.
One is real, one is
artificial. Looking at the real scarcity
will not help you in your
examination of the artificial one we're
discussing here.
:
For example, let the economy consist entirely of 10 watches and
:let there be 100 tokens representing
the entire money supply. Thus,
:there are 10 tokens per watch, and in
this very simple example, that is
:the price of each watch.
:
The perfect example
but let's call them chips because that's how
it's done in a poker game. The banker
lends them all 10 chips per
watch.
:
Now double the money supply. Are people wealthier? No: since
:only 10 watches can be bought, the watches
rise to 20 tokens each in
:value.
:
Wrong. If the
chip supply doubled, there had been be 20 watches
in the cage or else. My 10 chips better
always be worth my watch or the
Casino Supervision authorities will be
immediately notified. I think Tim's
assuming an equitable doubling. If the
new chips were shared out
equally, I could handle my watch going
to a value of 20 chips instead
of 10. But if some benefit out of changing
the value of money more
than others, then I'd rather we stick
to the rule where a cashier who
"double's the chip supply" continues
to be fired and sent to jail.
Before the chip supply could double, the
watch supply had to double
first.
This is a standard
flaw in economic methodology. Economists seem
incapable of retaining the linkage between
the chips issued and
collateral taken in at the cage.
But in real life,
if my watch does rise from $10 to $20 in value,
is it that same watch that went up in
value or was it that the watches
have risen to 20 "Half-tokens" each for
no rise in value at all?
What does "double
the money supply" really mean?
Does the casino
cashier give everyone a share of the new chips or
does he dump them onto the casino floor
where players scramble for
them? Do the operators pocket the new
chips and introduce them into
circulation.
I think Tim's
assuming an equitable doubling implying they're
breaking even. But it makes a difference
on spending patterns if the
doubling of the money supply is shared
or stolen. I don't ever see
poor people's lot improving when the money
supply doubles so I deduce
rich people usually get all the benefit.
:
Introduce a second good, say 5 televisions, and let the equilibrium
:be, arbitrarily, with 100 tokens, that
each television is worth 10 tokens
:and each watch 5. In other words,
each television is worth two watches.
:Doubling the money supply does not affect
the relative worth of the
:television -- it is still worth two watches.
:
This is the point
I was making about the relative price of treats
like chocolate bars, chips, cones staying
relatively uniform. If
doubling the money supply every few years
has a benefit to someone, it
doesn't seem to be me.
So it's just
as easy to pay for a television with 2 watches
whether money has gone up or down, but
middling the transaction with
money costs interest which is not now
taken into consideration.
:
Thus, real prices, or the relative price between goods, does not
:change when one changes the money supply.
:
If it's fair.
But if the new money is issued to some businesses
and not others, they can compete with
better equipment and have better
prices while the non-preferred have to
compete with whatever they can
which is less than optimal. Because your
doubling of the funds is not
spread out uniformly, prices will rise
due to inefficiency as well as
demand.
:Thus, without loss of
:generality, we can actually ignore money
altogether, and value all goods
:in terms of watches. The good designated
as the base good for prices is
:called the numeraire.
:
And for Tim's
exclusive use, we'll use the example of Tim's
Casino where the numeraire for his chips
is standard $100 (10hrs
labor) watch. As long as everything has
a price in watches, I'll use
Tim's chips.
: It should be
clear that with n goods, designating any one good
:with non-zero value as the numeraire
creates an n - 1 dimensional simplex
:from which the general equilibrium markets
can be established. This
:methodology was first proposed by Leon
Walras about 100 years ago.
:
Sure, designating
running shoes with $50 value as the numeraire
would create a simplex (list) of new prices,
most doubled. If it used
to cost one watch, it now costs two sets
of running shoes.
: In other
words, money is simply a method of making the barter
:system between goods more efficient.
Money acts as an intermediary.
:
But money screws
up when it tries to become one of the
commodities which it is not.
:
What happens, then, if the money supply changes (say increases)
:and nothing else?
:
The cashier goes
to jail. If he hasn't added collateral to the
safe, he's off to jail. It's as reliable
as that.
Isn't it funny
how economists just can get it that if the law
says there's going to be no inflation
because chips will always match
collateral or else, there can be no inflation
or else we get new
cashiers until it does. It's the reason
they don't teach about chips
linked to collateral in Economics.
:The prices of goods relative to one another
remain
:constant, but relative to money, increases.
In other words, inflation.
:
But no worse
off if I got my 10 new chips for my watch. Such an
inflation which wouldn't hurt as much
as inconvenience.
The inflation
in real life is the one which has the benefits
diverted to a few while the destitute
are made worse off.
Estimating the
effects of policies on the rich is not as clear as
estimating the effects of policies on
the poor. This year, the Ontario
Government slashed 22% life support from
the weakest of the weak to
allay the financial fears of the strongest
of the strong. When one
considers that over 50% usually goes into
rent, that's like slicing
half the money for physical needs. What
a crushing genocidal blow to
the poor. There will be increases in crime
and violence in the
streets, misery and suicides will hit
new highs. Over a bank computer
software bug with an upgrade ready to
go for years.
:
This is all independent of how money is created. Turmel argues
:that, since money is created through
debt, the amount of money that must
:be repaid is always greater than what
exists -- another possible case for
:a shortage of money.
:
I've never complained
about "money created through debt." That's
an old Socred misexplanation that I've
not only ever used but that
I've spent years trying to correct.
I might have
complained about "debt for money never-created" but
never for "money created through debt"
because I think money created
through debt is as good as money created
through credit. It's the
interest that makes each grow which is
the problem.
Example: Good
Debt Money
Let's say Canadian
Tire Stores have 1,000,000 credit account
holders and let's say that they all owe
on average -100.
Example: Good
Equity Money
Let's say that
a consignment store or casino cage accepts goods
so that everyone who leaves product has
on average +$100 on deposit.
If they were
to offer transfer checking privileges so that I
could transfer and and now owe them -120
so you'd owe them -80, again,
we simply equity swapped while everyone
is positive.
So whether money
is based on debt or credit, it's always good as
long as it's value is fixed at the central
cage where it was issued
and new debt or credit is issued at that
same rate.
Old Socreds decry
"Debt money" for two reasons. Socreds expected
their government to issue money like Tim's
banker added chips to the
pots and this money could cover government
expenses. It was not owed
to the banks and was not "debt money"
in their eyes and they therefore
concluded that since "non-debt-money"
was good, therefore "debt-
money" was bad. All money is good, only
interest is bad.
:
I had commented earlier that new money is created by the central
:bank, the monetary authority, through
open market transactions. Turmel
:argued that this was not sufficient.
:
No, I argued
that the Bank of Canada's contribution was
insignificant and that the discussion
was not on the Bank of Canada's
tiny contribution but on the hefty bulk
from the private banks.
:
However, let the reserve ratio that banks maintain be r,
:0 < r < 1. The reserve ratio
is the ratio of reserves to deposits.
:All other money is loaned out,
:
This is false.
This was the whole point of whether depositors
savings come from the tap or whether they
come from the savings
reservoir. After quelling any question
that it wasn't coming from the
tap, here he once again has forgotten
about the tap and says that
depositors' funds are loaned out from
the reservoirs. People aren't
getting savings deposits, they're getting
loan deposits to the
accounts. Therein lies the confusion.
:the loans are then spent on some
:transaction, and the person receiving
the transaction deposits the entire
:value of the transaction back into the
bank.
:
Usually, the
person receiving deposits the check first and it
comes out next. But this is still just
splashing savings deposits
around. What's important is what's going
on at the tap and the drain.
: Assume the central
bank buys a bond for $1 from the bank and credits
:the bank's account $1, i.e., $1 of new
money is created. The bank keeps
:$r in reserves, loans the rest out.
:
Notice again,
he's lending out the rest of the depositors
savings, like in the piggy bank. We went
over this. His piggy bank
does not create money. It comes out of
a tap and he needs a tap.
:That loan money is then eventually
:re-deposited in the bank. The bank
adds r*$r to its reserves, and loans
:out the remainder, and so on.
:
No, it doesn't
loan out the remainder. It loans out a
corresponding amount of money from the
tap. Without a tap, you can't
come up with new money.
:As was noted in earlier posts by Turmel
:(and confirmed by e-mail to me and a
quick check of a math text) the
:total amount of new money created is
$1/r.
:
My model with
a tap created this amount of new money but his
model only created this amount of new
IOUs, no new money.
:Note, though, that the amount
:of money that the bank has on reserves
is $1, or r*$1/r. Thus, if new
:money is only responsible for 2% of the
money supply, as Turmel claims (I
:have no actual figures myself, perhaps
Turmel can explain where the 2%
:figure came from), the bank's reserve
ratio is thus also 2%.
:
That's right.
It was was taken out of "The Deficit Made Me Do It"
by Dr. John Hotson, University of Waterloo
Economics, Dr. Harold
Chorney, University of Concordia Political
Economy, Dr. Mario
Seccareccia, University of Ottawa Economics
It all depends
on the different reserve ratios for the different
M1, M2, M3 classification of chips used
by bankers. M1 are the chips
instantly available in the casino or from
safety-deposit boxes, M2
includes the chips in special long-timer
safety-deposit boxes, M3
includes the credit for chips authorized
by the house. To create
different kinds of chips, the banks have
to use different reserve
ratios. For one kind of red chip, the
bank needs a deposit to the
reservoir of 10 red chips before they'll
turn on the tap and issue 90
new red chips. For another kind, they'll
need only 5 on reserve for
every 95 loaned out. Blending them all
together to get an average,
read that the private banks can created
98% of the bulk of money
leaving the central bank 2%.
: An exceptional
amount of empirical evidence shows that increasing
:the money supply and thus lowering the
interest rate lowers the bank's
:reserve ratio and vice versa.
:
No, lowering
the interest rate does not lower the bank's reserve
ratio. Yes vice versa. The reserve ratio
has been defined in
legislation by Parliament. Cutting it
allows for more and therefore
cheaper borrowing into circulation. But
whatever then happens in
circulation has no effect on the rate
the Banker sets.
:Sufficient conditions exist under fixed
:point theory for the equilibrium to have
interest rates such that the
:requirement for money meets the reserves.
:
We're not talking
about money meeting reserves. We're talking
about money meeting the debt. And no sufficient
conditions exist to
have money meet debt with interest.
:
Generalizations that allow for leakages in the circular flow
:model that I outlined in words above
make things a little more
:problematic, but would not fundamentally
change the sketched results that
:I gave above.
:
Forget that you
don't deal with the little leakage problem. Can
you deal with the flood?
: Turmel
also commented about how engineers use plumbing models as
:a pedagogical method and a simplifying
method. I will acknowledge that,
:correctly used, these models may have
pedagogical value in economics.
:
But you don't
comment on whether I used my plumbing model
correctly enough to have a pedagogical
value in economics. We know it
works for engineers. You tell us it also
works for economists. Did it
work for John The Engineer?
: In
:fact, I recall one professor who had
created a system of beakers and
:tubes with a pump that ran liquid through
a simple macroeconomic model.
:In this model, too much money (i.e.,
liquid) had a definite problem -- it
:caused overflow. In the prof's
words, a liquidity problem.
:
I would hope
not. Casino cashiers handle those liquidity problems
by moving to larger spaces. But speaking
of overflowing chip as a
problem needs to be addressed. Handling
financial liquidity poses no
physical constraints whatsoever. There
is certainly never too much.
:The analogy
:could be extended to some of the problems
caused by inflation.
:
No it can't.
Overflowing money is not inflationary Shift A. I
keep repeating it's inflationary Shift
B, the foreclosure of
collateral after interest is passed on
in prices.
: In general, dynamic
optimization and dynamic methods are used in
:economics although generally only at
the graduate level and higher. In
:fact, whole texts are devoted to teaching
the necessary math using only
:economics examples.
:
Okay, whole courses
are given on dynamic methods at graduate
levels but that being so, is my blueprint
of the bank's interior
plumbing correct or not? Is it of value?
Telling me about more
sophisticated ways of modelling doesn't
state whether this simple
model has sufficiently done the job.
:I had referred Turmel on a number of occasions
to economics texts and
:encouraged him to read the literature.
This was from two motivations:
:(1) Most, if not all, of what I
have posted to this thread can be found
:in the texts, and the text will, in general,
explain things more clearly
:(less unclearly?) and more completely
than I have, and, moreover, the
:texts will more likely be free of errors
than my posts. Thus, if Turmel
:wishes to refute the substance of my
arguments rather than my
:extremely modest skills as a debator
in this medium, he should refer to
:the literature so that his arguments
can criticize that.
:
Every time you
imply that the weakness is in your presentation,
I'll rebut that no one has failed to get
your presentation. We've
watched your presentation flow through
our pipes. These aren't things
that I can't handle forcing me to call
in higher authorities, these
are things you can't handle. I haven't
had to quote from more than a
few books. This stuff makes sense. You're
the one coming across
arguments you can't handle and taking
the standard economist's way
out, telling me my defeat is over there.
The fact you
can't bring yourself to comment on the merit of my
use of an admittedly valuable engineering
modelling tool is a major
hint at how this is hitting at your cognitive
dissonance. The fact
that you're already back telling us that
they "lend the rest out"
means the whole lesson on the monetary
tap didn't register at all.
:(2) In general, if he wishes to
replace the existing economic system
:with a new one, his arguments will need
to include what is wrong with the
:current system as well as why his ideas
are superior. In order to
:understand completely what is wrong with
the current system, he needs to
:understand it, and therefore, should
be familiar with the literature.
:
I don't want
to replace the existing economic system with a new
one. I want to replace the existing economic
system's accounting
software with an upgrade.
And who to better
understand the usury banking system than the
engineer who first drew its Laplace Transform
Control Circuit? Check
it out in my Mathematics of Usury. Other
engineers have vouched for
it.
The problem is
that I'm way past argument. I'm into offering you
better working models. I've offered historical
paper and metal ones.
Now the Green or Time computer dollar
systems to here to actually use.
You're not supposed to continue to not
understand when there's a
working model for you to get on and pedal.
How many economists
do you know have a Greendollar account? I'd
bet it's not many. I'd like to hear a
prof explain banking to a
student who is a LETS member.
:(3) Some of the problems that have
been recurring in this thread are
:ones from jargon. Notwithstanding
any conception of the scientific
:validity of economics, the discipline
has, in the scientific vein,
:precisely defined many concepts and terms
so that what is being discussed
:is clear. In the interests of brevity
and conciseness, I have used some
:of that jargon in posts, although, recognizing
that this is hardly a
:forum of economists, attempt to keep
the language as everyday as I
:possibly can. As a result, Turmel
has mis-interpreted several of my
:statements. Similarly, I have mis-interpreted
several of Turmel's since
:I am uncertain of his meaning.
:
That's why I
keep trying to talk about the plumbing. I'm the one
trying keep things in clear simple engineering
language and I seem to
have no difficulties with my my simple
terminology adequately handling
the discussion.
:Turmel also points to a number of examples
which he cites as examples of
:interest free systems in history, which
he claims are not analyzed in any
:economics literature. I will certainly
agree that I have never read
:anything on these examples. However,
this is not my field -- those
:examples do not fall into my particular
discipline.
:
But for the topic
"Interest-free banking" not to exist at all
tells quite a lot. I thought it was an
Economics "given" that there
must be interest.
:I cannot state
:whether there exists any literature that
does mention any of these
:examples in an economic sense -- I would
_suspect_, though, that economic
:history and comparative economic systems
might include literature on the
:topic.
:
I can't either.
I know of the two economists quoted by Walter
Stewart in the Oct. 4, 1993 Toronto Sun
article titled "No-interest
loans may save us." Dr. Jack Kersell,
political science and Dr. Robert
Needham, director of the Canadian Studies
Program at Waterloo.
Their information
included the Guernsey Island currency system
and the Sovereignty movement in the USA
of 3000 municipalities voting
for interest-free Greendollar loans from
the Federal Reserve.
If there were
any information on Guernsey or the Tally system,
they would probably be your best bets
in the Economics world.
It gratifies
me to hear economists talking about interest-free
money systems at last though I haven't
heard much since.
:I am aware of one person who, as a Master's
project, analyzed
:interest free systems since interest
is still considered usury in Islamic
:law and thus, in fundamentalist Islamic
states, does not exist if I
:understand correctly.
:
And how do you
answer Mohammed who would have you executed for
admitting to him that you take usury and
you'll continue? Maybe his
age saw evil in the device that our age
is blinded to. I see it but
I'm of a new age and know why they made
loansharking punishable by
death in olden days. It robbed people
to bankruptcy and bankrupt
people end up dead sooner.
I'm not sure if Islamic systems have interest-free loans
only among those borrowers splashing in
the pool or whether the loans
are also interest-free from the tap in
the pump-house. Somehow, the
mere lack of startling success of the
Islamic banks, the lack of
wonderful success stories as generated
by the pleased customers of
LETS banking, would seem to indicate that
they haven't beaten the
interest drain in the pump-house yet.
But they're be great candidates
for an interest-free pumphouse too.
:I did comment, though, on Turmel's example
of the
:LETSystem, that the non-existence of
interest was not sufficiently
:demonstrated.
:
If the non-existence
of interest cannot be sufficiently
demonstrated when it's been designed out
of the blueprint, then
you've got your eyes closed. I call this
"judicial disease."
The worst corruptions
can go on in courts of justice when a man
can keep his eyes closed and say he has
not been sufficiently shown.
In the hundreds of legal actions I've
undertaken in the decade and a
half, half the judges used the alibi of
not having been sufficiently
shown. That you've got a case but not
enough of a case. It's a sleazy
judge's trick to deny the truth in a crooked
decision because it's the
perfect alibi if the truth ever wins.
"Sorry, I wasn't convinced."
I don't know
how many times we have to stick that plumbing in
your face before you're sufficiently shown.
You haven't objected to
one point in the plumbing. You haven't
once said that this didn't come
out of that pipe and had nowhere else
to go. You look at pipes pumping
liquidity and turn around and say "I'
have not been sufficiently
shown" so I'm going to continue saying
that loans are coming out of
the reservoir. That's too weak.
That's one advantage
of economists never admitting they're wrong.
When we're discussing the pipes at some
other conference years later,
someone will speak up and point out that
Tim Huyer was not
sufficiently shown.
:
Personally, I consider all of this a moot point. I see no reason
:why there cannot be interest free lending
going on in society. It is
:also entirely possible that a society
which is entirely interest free can
:find a stable equilibrium -- in fact,
if any of the examples that Turmel
:mentioned sufficiently demonstrate that
interest did not exist (including
:implicit interest) the proof is already
done.
:
Thank you. Now
let's get on the machine and start pedaling.
Surely your student union could start
one for pennies.
As I said, in
my society where everyone has their interest-free
credit card, loansharks would be free
to try to peddle their savings.
But how would they do it? Would they stand
in the stores and as people
approach to use their own interest-free
credit cards, say "let me use
mine to buy it for you today and you can
reward me with more more
tomorrow for having saved you using your
own card today?"
When you've got
a world of interest-free credit card holders,
when do you think you're going to get
an opportunity to loanshark to
anyone? And though you've bemoaned Rockefeller
losing that opportunity
to loanshark as a possible violation on
his property right to own debt
slaves, Rocky just won't find any customers
among a civilization of
people who all have their own personal
connection to a global
interest-free money system.
Really great
times are almost here. It's fair to trust in the
probability of those dreams. Mankind won't
be chasing the food tokens
in an evil rat race forever. Soon the
food will be falling off the
robot trees and I think the allure of
spending one's life in the care
and accumulation of tokens will pale to
the intellectual, physical and
scientific accomplishments we'll be able
to attempt.
I guess the Bible
is once again right in mentioning you cannot
serve the money rat race and serve your
fellow man too. Makes sense in
a law of the jungle where it's always
him or me.
:
There are two issues that I view: (1) does the current system
:with interest have all of these fundamental
evils which Turmel attribute
:to it? and (2) would an interest
free system necessarily be superior?
: I believe that
I have been speaking mainly in regards to (1).
:For (2), again, I merely note that interest
free lending is still
:possible in this society. Therefore,
the set of feasible outcomes under
:the interest free system is strictly
a subset of the set of feasible
:outcomes under the current system.
This is sufficient to show that
:social welfare, or whatever measure of
social value, is at least as good
:in the interest system as the interest
free system.
:
The other way
around. Social welfare is at least as good in the
my "interest-free" system as the current
"interest" system, if not
better is my claim. Even if you argue
me to a standstill on any point
where both systems suffer the same
calamities, in most other
respects, problems associated with poverty
will not arise. Read the
press results. Open your newspaper and
read the financial stories of
death and dying then read some articles
from the Greendollar world
about people getting on with life and
loving what they're doing.
As long as I
keep reading things like "LETS was my life-boat" and
"Greendollars made me love my community,"
I'll argue by fiat that
everyone should have a taste of financial
security in a LETS life-boat
and judge for themselves. It's really
Heaven when you can never owe
anyone for anything but your time.
Can you imagine
the sense of accomplishment I feel when I realize
I had a helping hand in getting that Greendollar
service to them which
changed their economic circumstances?
Can you imagine
the jokes and batterings I took before the
LETSystem was launched when I could only
suggest that poker chips
would make for better money. For 5 years,
I ran in every election I
could to tell me people that they could
run a bank themselves with
poker chips. Many did it every Friday
night. The media reported it the
way it was to be seen, a clownish suggestion.
I argued with
economists when I picketed the Bank of Canada
every Thursday for 5 years. Our debates
would draw hundreds so don't
wonder why I handle all your "buts" quickly
and most effectively, I've
seen thousands of times before. I will
grant that you've challenged me
into some innovative expression, the expansion
of the pipe flows being
the best.
Now, it's Greendollar
poker chips by computer and everybody's
raving about this new-fangled computer
invention. Imagine the picture,
poker chips, albeit computer poker chips,
receiving acclamation from
around the world. Poker chips saving the
world. It's true.
:The mathematics of
:the explanation is rather vaguely described
in this paragraph but I am
:hoping that readers will be able to grasp
the intuition.
:
There's no reason
to resort to intuition if they think in terms
of chips or Greendollars. There are better
models to help visualize
rather than intuit.
:: Let's
remember that "Are loans old depositors' savings or new
:: chips?" is the original question of
debate.
:
:Perhaps this is an example where I have
mis-interpreted what you have
:stated. Economists categorize money
in several levels, M1, M2, etc.. M1
:would roughly be the new money created
by the central bank, the other
:levels include M1 but also include what
happens when banks loan out
:money, etc.. The supply of money
is substantially greater than M1, so,
:in that sense, banks create money.
:
That's the whole
point of this stream. Economists all admit that
banks create money. When I say, "let's
use plumbing, here's a tap,
where do you put it?" they don't know.
They don't realize that they
turned the tap when they made the loan
because they're too busy
telling the people it's from the reservoir.
Most admit
that it's when they make loans so it's evident that
the loans pipe is connected to the tap.
Why won't they admit that?
Why is it so hard for them to say "The
banks create money when they
make loans, loans come out of the tap."
They cannot accept
loans from a tap because they they're holding
all these deposits they said they needed
before the could lend. And
it's not comfortable telling a banker
that he had access to a tap all
these years when people needed liquidity
even though he thought he was
limited to what was in the reservoir.
Accepting that loans come from
the tap raise a whole series of moral
issues not yet addressed.
So it seems that
Tim admits that they create money. Does he also
accept that it's when they make loans
and that's what's coming out of
the loan pipe from a bank is from the
tap and not the reservoir?
:However, each loan is matched by a
:deposit, and each deposit by a reserve
amount -- this much I know is
:taught in first year macroeconomics.
Banks loan out deposits,
:
There are two
kinds of deposits, the ones the saver put in his
savings account and the one the banker
put in the borrower's account.
Tim doesn't make this plumbing to know
the distinction.
:and the flow of money in the loop creates
the extra money.
:
As I earlier
demonstrated to another reader's satisfaction, if
you flow money through your piggy bank
loop without a tap, you end up
with more IOUs and more Deposits Slips
but not extra money. Only when
you have tap can there be extra money.
:Fundamentally, all new money comes from
the central bank.
:
And it is absolutely
incorrect that all new money comes from the
central bank. The central bank's original
2% is rolled over 50 times
by the private banks who have their own
taps. You're saying the only
tap is at the Bank of Canada. This is
absolutely incorrect.
:: What social
democrats support LETSystems? And why aren't they out
:: here spreading the good news of a do-it-yourself
self-help private
:: money system that allows you to bypass
the interest debt system.
:
:For the record, I do. To
repeat, although I vehemently disagree with
:you as to why a LETSystem is good --
I completely reject your arguments
:regarding the evils of interest and that
the LETSystem is a correction
:for this, I feel that the LETSystem remains
valid for social democratic
:reasons. Part of my basis for this
comes from strict economic analysis
:as well, so my expectation is that a
LETSystem is also beneficial
:economically speaking.
:
My previous explanation was clearly too terse, since I think it
:was mis-interpreted (my fault).
Markets are not complete when goods or
:services do not reach the market -- i.e.,
if there is no market for a
:particular good or service.
:
Clearly, there are many people who have marketable skills or
:goods but do not have the opportunity
to market these skills. In
:particular, these people include lower
income and unemployed (hence a
:social democratic view). If the
LETSystem allows these people to find
:markets for their skills that they could
not find in other markets, then
:the LETSystem is necessarily of net benefit
to society (more strongly, it
:Pareto Dominates, which is an economics
term).
:
So clearly they
can't market their skills because there's
insufficient medium of exchange. And LETS
allows them to trade their
skills because it provides medium of exchange.
And no interest to
cause decay of their promissory Greendollar
IOUs. My point is that the
world is now a Grand Financial Hell with
people under deathgamble
contracts enslaved everywhere but LETSystems
provide little gardens of
financial Heaven which should not long
remain unnoticed.
: I
am aware of some social democrats working on
:developing/expanding a system in Calgary.
You might even be surprised to
:know that I forwarded your e-mail address
to them, since I suspected that
:you would be able to provide better technical
advice than I can even if
:your motivations are wrong. As
possible policy development, I would suggest
:using the LETSystem within community
development projects, which I
:consider to be social democratic policy
ideals.
:
Right you are.
I think getting a bunch of small home-grown
entrepreneurs trading together is small
potatoes compared to when it
hits the database of any large community
development projects. Imagine
all the work which could be perform if
everyone in the project could
sign and contribute ten 1 Hour IOUs which
management can disburse to
fund 24 hour surveillance. Kids young
people could be out earning the
working parent's share of the Hours owed.
: I do not advocate,
however, abolishing the world banking system
:and replacing it with LETS. LETS
complements the existing system, it
:adds to the system, but it does not replace
it.
:
I don't want
to abolish the world banking system, I want to
replace the world banking system's software
with LETS. If the present
system stinks and people find that the
LETS helps, why keep around
anything that stinks.
This sort of
follows my experience with the Green Party of
Canada. I joined within the first year,
1984, and encountered amazing
resistance to the idea of the Greendollar
system being used on a
national basis. Five years later, LETS
is on the policy program of the
Green Party of Canada but with local use
recommended, not national or
international use. I keep screaming "We've
got a rocket engine, here,"
and they keep wanting to put it in the
lawn-mower.
I do appreciate
your giving those Calgary people my address for
information on LETS. Quite a class move,
I grant. If Calgary builds
itself a huge life-boat, you'll have had
a positive hand in it. It's
reward enough for me to know they're trying.
You've earned an A-slab
by speeding up the solution versus earning
a K-slab by working to keep
the problem.
Abolition of
interest rates is the greatest crusade in the
history of all civilizations since I don't
believe many civilizations
rise up without a medium of exchange and
money cancer is money cancer
whenever money starts being used. Interest
is the lash of the money-
lender's whip. It is the enslavement device.
It's been decried as sin
in the history available and we're on
the verge of being rid of it.
If you really
want to know about the Heaven Christ promised with
his LETS algorithm, "Their abundance should
at the present time be a
supply for your want so that your abundance
may later be a supply for
their want so that he who gathers much
doesn't have too much and he
who gathers little doesn't have too little."
LETS does that. LETS
delivers what the Muslims, the Christians
and Jewish saints all with
for and eliminates all the ugly financial
effects of inflation and
unemployment that they also decry of usury,
the enslavement device.
That is the dream
of a LETSystem software used on World Bank
computers. Abundance, machinery, experience
moving out to areas of the
world now ruled by accurate credit card
demand.
Again, I posit
that if the world's top 50 billionaires took it
into their minds to order their banks
to offer us a world Green or
Time dollar system, as an alternative
to the current model, the
acceleration to extinction would come
to halt and an acceleration to
survival would take over. Turning all
our tanks into tractors makes
for bigger crops.
Just imagine
that everybody tending a farm has an open credit
lime for the best of everything. Consider
safety. In order not to pay
inventory on stock, most businesses keep
lean inventories and order
when needed incurring inefficient delay.
If stock could be held
interest-free, all garages could have
many times the anticipated
demand. Yields would be great, service
would be great, share would be
great.
The current system
rewards the positives by taking from the
negatives. The effects of eliminating
this feedback should not be
underestimated. Just contemplate the industrial
explosion if everyone
had an interest-free credit card. But
also contemplate the natural
limits to credit creation. Can't issue
more Time dollars than the Time
everyone could work. Labor must be performed
before credit.
I wish everyone
could see the happy potential I see in the world
right now.
:: John Von
Neumann, the famous author of "The Theory of Games and
:: Economic Behavior," said that "important
questions in economics arise
:: in an elementary fashion in the theory
of games."
:[ ... ]
:: Insistence
on statistics boils down to wanting to use something
:: hard and esoteric to explain something
easy if modeled using a game.
:
:Econometric modelling gives evidence
to whether the correct game (a
:special case of an economic model) is
being used. Clearly, every game
:can be verified by a Monte Carlo experiment,
but is it verified in reality?
:
I think that
the Monte Carlo experiment is going on before your
very eyes and has been for 5,000 years.
And in all those 5,000 years,
no one's every been able to figure a way
to come up with 11 when they
only printed 10. Have you had any acquaintances
who've lost their
homes because of shortage of money? Have
you had any give up and
commit suicide because of a shortage of
money? I think this is great
empirical evidence that there is insufficient
money.
Of course, if
you're unaware that this experiment has been going
on for ages because your history course
doesn't go back that far, then
the "test-many-times" Monte Carlo methods
may not have been used. But
governments crying "broke," businesses
crying "broke, people crying
"broke" is not historically new. Examine
any system where things were
breaking down and you'll see that financial
debt existed to break them
down. That would not be happening if there
were too much money. So,
yes, it seems pretty verified in reality
that the problem is a
shortage of money.
:This post is already getting long and
my time has also run out. Again, I
:hope to be able to read the other parts
of Turmel's post and reply to any
:important points as time permits...
:
These posts may
be long but there are a lot of important points
being tackled here. The circuitous nature
of the objections to the
same points seems to indicate that there
is a lot of issues which have
difficulty in being retained. That "loans
are not from depositors'
savings" being the Numero Uno point economists
cannot remember.
And I often wonder
if it couldn't get the fly better with sugar
than vinegar. The problem is that spice
with the vinegar makes for fun
reading. And most economists who have
ever challenged The Engineer in
public have quietly slinked away. So I've
never felt too bad about not
using the sugar route when faced with
a recognizable condescending
tone.
Yet here's a
kid who I've made brutal fun of who has every reason
in the world not to want to help me but
who still has the integrity to
connect me up to those possible LETS allies.
Once he admits that the
"the loans pipe is connected to the tap"
and "loan payments pipe is
connected to the drain, I won't be brutal
again. Until then, if he
wants to dance among the pipes with me,
it'll stay rough.
But I acknowledge
an A-slab that someone will someday applaud
rather than bemoan his helping to Give
LETS a chance in Calgary.
---
TURMEL: Social Credit Stream
Tim, did you notice
how many times I said "Imagine what it would
be like with an interest-free credit card."
That's not so hard to
imagine as one might think. It was my
request to the Supreme Court of
Canada in 1982. I had charged the Governor
of the Bank of Canada with
genocide on the grounds interest rates
were resulting in the death of
the poor.
Basically, I
alleged that the failure of the economic system to
allocate the available abundance to the
needy resulted in the genocide
of poor was not an accidental malfunction
of the economic system but a
programmed malfunction within the software
of the control system at
the bank. I asked that the banks' computers
be restricted to only a
service charge sufficient to defray business
costs and the interest
charge on the mortgage deathgamble be
abolished.
How would your
life had been affected in 1982 had the Supreme
Court of Canada had restricted your bank
to charging you only service
charges on credit after ruling that interest
rate policies were in
fact reducing food production and increasing
statistical starvation by
putting farmers out of production. Suicides
too. Banks with use only a
service charge.
14 or 15 years
ago, you might have been in grade school. One day,
they might have come into class and handed
you your interest-free
credit card on the understanding that
all your academic, social and
physical needs will be paid for with your
own credit and that someday,
when you graduate and start to work, you
would have to pay it back.
With no interest. I know that if I'd been
loaned $5 to go on the rides
at the EX or $100 to buy a bicycle when
I was a child, I've have been
more than willing to honor that social
debt now.
This concept
of giving children their credit access to life-
support is not new. Since credit is good,
Isaiah 55: "You who are
hungry and have no money, come buy and
eat," and since children today
are hungry and have no money, credit should
be given to children so
they be able to come buy and eat independent
of how daddy's doing.
Junior's access to academic, social and
physical resources will remain
independent of daddy who might be a drunk
or a losing gambler.
So from now on,
how much for the best paper, pens, books becomes
an auxiliary consideration since it should
cost close to the same for
everyone.
I'm not hinting
that you won't be left with a large debt when you
graduate. If you've received 10,000 hours
worth of manpower for your
training, think of it as your first five
2,000 hour years of work
going towards your student debt. Today,
it might be all your years of
work to get out of debt with interest.
In the meantime,
you'll be incurring new adult debt. Machinery,
tools, capital start-up costs. All purchases
with your interest-free
credit and all earnings paid on that interest-free
credit card.
The real beauty
is that there is no repayment schedule. It
might take people 10 or 15 years to pay
off student debt and business
debt and get into the positive. 10 or
15 more years of positive time
earnings should leave plenty to retire
on.
Exploitation
of labor by capitalists cannot occur when every
laborer is a capitalist. the only real
issue then becomes
profitability of cooperative association.
Today, the contractor
who has been blessed by the bankers with
the access to the credit tap to buy supplies
take the gamble, buys the
time of the wage slaves and hope he's
successful or he suffers
foreclosure and loses it all.
And every wage
slave dreams of getting a banker's nod to access
to the credit tap so they can go out and
buy some slaves and take a
shot at the industrial of mort-gage. Imagine
the irony of slaves
remaining enslaved because each hoped
to someday get above the chains
and in on the free ride himself. Changes
the picture when you see that
the system helps those at the top stay
there.
So the general
contractor gets a loan from the credit tap and
puts together his project. With the skilled
carpenters, plumbers,
electricians merely selling their time
and having no share in the
industrial gamble, their hearts can rarely
be in their enterprise. If
the product is profitable, the contractor
of the deathgamble is the
one to benefit of it all.
That's why people
are so ready and willing to stick their heads
into the usury noose. As Tim so readily
pointed out, getting the loan
even with interest is more important than
not getting the loan at all.
Faced with not getting the loan at all,
he would not accept the insist
on abolishing interest. It does make sense
if you are trying to
survive that taking the gamble on surviving
is better than barely
surviving if not often dying.
But on the same
day the students got their interest-free credit
cards to eliminate financial worries for
the rest of their education,
(never will you miss a concert or event
you want to see because you
have no money), on that very same day,
the carpenters, plumbers and
electricians all got their own interest-free
credit lines at Canadian
Tire. Now they could pool their own credit
and build a project in
which they share the capitalistic profit.
There's no more reason to
have to work for someone else unless there
be an added profit in that
association.
What a wonderful
kind of capitalism. Little guys jousting with
big guys in a new kind of musical chairs
where there are enough chairs
for all to survive. When everybody owes
11 but everybody borrowed 11
and not 10, changing it from a "kill-or-be-killed
deathgamble" to a
"all-survive" lifegamble. It's a paradigm
shift that eludes most
people.
This paradigm
shift in perception of the world around you can be
demonstrated to anyone who has ever played
musical chairs. Pushing and
elbowing are common characteristics in
this elimination death-gamble
of 10 people and 9 chairs. Just like 10
borrowers and 9 survivors in
the usury deathgamble, looking out for
Number One to the inconsequence
or detriment of other possible victims
is optimal strategy. A law of
the jungle where only the fittest survive.
When the butcher across
town goes under, you cheer. Not because
his kids are going to out in
the street but because yours won't.
Now eliminate
the imbalance so that 10 people have sufficient
chairs for all to survive and pushing
and elbowing will disappear as
what used to be an elimination gamble
to the death has now become a
much more civilized non-elimination competition
for the biggest chair.
Similarly, eliminate the demand for more
money than was loaned out and
the sufficiency will mean that you won't
mind the other butcher
serving the other side of town since you're
so busy serving yours.
So the trades
unions will dissolve as millions of mini-
capitalistic construction cooperatives
are formed by all the tradesmen
now armed with access to the resources
they need. Big ones will still
be needed for greater profitabilities.
What happens
to the down-and-out? Sure, most people capable of
using their credit lines in entrepreneurial
endeavor will get to work.
What about all the mentally handicapped
people recently-released from
shut-down government facilities.
Noting that these
people are the relatives of families on the
database who now have the credit to support
them, and families will
become important credit pools, I think
it would be quite fair to offer
them the same credit cards.
Pooling their
guaranteed credit could afford large groups the
services of medical staff, administrators.
Freeing the prisoners.
This is a big one. 90% are in prison for
poverty-induced crime, theft, robbery,
smuggling, violent reactions to
their poverty usually after consuming
government-sanctioned alcoholic
"mood amplifiers." Many are in prison
for avoiding government-
sanctioned alcohol and preferring the
escape of drugs from their
misery.
Free a convict
who did it for money, give him his interest-free
credit card with an explanation of the
new job and education options
now open to him and I doubt he'll ever
be back for stealing your TV.
It makes sense that when the Local Employment
Trading Software creates
very much employment, they're too busy
earning and spending to be
stealing.
Imagine being
a young doctor with special theories to examine. No
more spending 90% of your time looking
for funding. It's spending 100%
of your time looking for cure. And if
you don't find it and leave the
world with your credit card way in the
negative, it's a loss I won't
mind my government using my taxes to cover.
The volume of valuable
contributions will far outweigh the volume
of failing ones.
Imagine the horrible
search for investment money gone from your
lives. The house itself is the collateral
for a loan. Imagine gone
this horde of mortgage-brokers sticking
you with fees to find you
investment money. Imagine having all payments
go against only the
principal. That's financial heaven.
I can't think
of one sector of industry not benefiting from
complete access to whatever credit is
available. After all you can't
buy something that's not there but if
it is there and no one else is
bidding on it, you certainly get it as
a right.
The only sector
I'd think would worry are the clerks in the
financial boys doing it to us and the
clerks in government trying to
share out the pain. Clerks would have
the same opportunities that
students and newly-free prisoners have.
Jobs would be opening in
manufacturing everywhere or they could
train to get in on the rush.
And surely they would like to spend their
money tracking real
accomplishments rather than tracking dollars.
Remember that
there's a big difference between capitalism where a
few enslave the rest and capitalism where
everybody owns only himself.
The capitalism decried by the Communists
and Socialists is only the
one that enslaves the laborers. That they
haven't seen that the real
chains are financial and have not suggested
financial reforms
indicates that none of these isms are
dealing with our real chains.
Of course, the
mighty corporations will lose all their power when
surrounded by millions of worker bees
forming their own bigger and
bigger hives of honey. The mighty corporations
may not choose to lose
all their power to the e-money revolution
gracefully.
The mighty corporations
led by the banks use all the world's
intelligence agencies to keep the slaves
down. And it gets harder and
harder as the dying keep resorting to
rioting and guns. You just have
to read Noam Chomsky, one of the most
enlightening of the explainers
of how the mighty corporations operate
their slavery system, to
appreciate how easy it is to slip into
a police state including in
Canada. He also is so busy looking at
the military-police chains that
he doesn't dwell on the invisible financial
ones but the fact of a
mechanism which takes from the poor and
starving to give to the rich
is there. And taking from down-and-out
is an ugly business. Mike
Harris campaigned to win Ontario's election
on the promise of cutting
life-support to the poor. And he's doing
it. And it's ugly.
How the mighty
corporations have financed wars, caused market
collapses, hidden advances in energy to
maintain prices on oil, these
guys are pushing and tripping the sheeple
nations every which way and
profiting with every fall.
So if you owned
the world's military-police state, how would you
react when people started slipping their
debt nooses and surviving in
Greendollar life-boats on their own? How
would you feel about talk of
building one big Global Greendollar life-boat
where everyone would
have equal access to society's resources?
Unless you're
worried about how people will react when they
realize how the world money system could
have been fixed way back when
Major Douglas suggested his "Balance the
interest with new money"
solution. Throughout all the wars since
then, that's a lot of dead
people who probably wouldn't have ended
up dead if you'd not waited
until now to fix it.
This is the theory
of the K-slab I used in my indictment of the
Supreme Court of Canada! It's in my bankpoem.
People are on
a conveyor belt falling of to doom. If you have the
power to push the stop switch right now
but a few more will go over
due to momentum and you proceed to think
about it until tomorrow, the
difference between the number of people
who fall off today and those
who would have fallen off yesterday is
the number of people who fell
off during the delay. Pretty simple mechanics.
I told the 3
judges of the Supreme Court of Canada that the world
was losing 46,000 dead babies a day. Restricting
the international
networks of 7 Canadian Super banks to
a pure service charge would
start the comeback bringing the death
rate down. And down to zero.
That would still happen today, almost
15 years later.
Those judges
had the power to push the stop switch then and more
would have still gone over due to momentum
but when they thought about
it and said no, 15 years later, it's fair
to say that the number of
children who not have fallen off Earth's
killer conveyor belt is the
number who died during the delay. I called
it the judges' Equation of
Responsibility.
I love to say
"It's your judgment day is you see the solution,
have the power to work for it and don't:
Extra deaths
= 46,000t where t > 5000 days = 235 million.
Since 1981, the
death rate has gone down to 30,000 per day, down
almost 1000 a day for each of the last
15 years. 30,000 dead babies a
day still stinks as an economic performance.
I think that
if the judges had switched Earth's industrial engine
to full power by abolishing interest in
the large Canadian
international banking system, world production
would probably be
handled by now without the loss of at
least 200 million babies.
I said that this
question of genocide is bigger than anyone can
imagine and if you have the power to help
shut off the killer machine
and you don't or you wait, you're costing
lives you can never get
back. It compels devotion to the cause.
Any day today I can help speed
up the healing process is worth the saving
of 30,000. When I first
started my fight to abolish the death-gamble,
my stakes were 46,000 a
day.
I told one judge:
Just like in the movie 2001 where the killer
computer is finally beaten when the human
pulls his plug, here we sit
in front of the bank's killer computer
and I'm the engineer telling to
you to pull that plug and shut off the
interest. The judge said "Can't
this wait" and I said: "Not at 46,000
dead babies a day, it can't.
Some people are
going to want to have the International
Loansharks shot for what they've done.
With that attitude, they'll
never set us free.
Whenever I get
into the guilt of the genocidal international
loansharks, I always make sure to mention
that I'm in favor of Global
Amnesty for International Bankers too.
I say I can forgive, forget and
get on with Heaven on Earth leaving judgment
to the Father. I call it
ASA, global aspirin: Amnesty, Security
of your credit card, Anonymity
for crimes committed.
I can't think
of a better deal to offer those now atop the killer
banking system. They might have a tiger
by the tail. They might be
looking for a way to get of without having
the freed debt slaves turn
against them. And who can blame either
side while we were living under
the Law of the Jungle where some must
always be eliminated.
If we can just
change the financial game to allow all to survive
while retaining its capitalist entrepreneurial
spirit, most will be
too instantaneously preoccupied in self-enrichment
to really insist on
crimes committed under the Law of the
Jungle.
But if you've
got your interest-free credit card and you steal my
TV instead of taking credit for the TV
on your card, then you've got
problems. If you go to the point-of-sale
in a store and demand "This
is a stick-up. Credit my account," then
you've got problems but
problems better handled in a mental hospital
than a prison.
With Full Local
Employment (FLETS?) Trading going on through an
interest-free credit line, the base reason
for most crime, the
financial inducement, would be eliminated.
When they watch our current
TV shows in which virtually all criminal
plots are based on getting
the insurance or the inheritance or the
girl, people's continued
inability to see their predicament in
this deathgamble rat-race will
seem to our children's children quite
insane.
Imagine the whole
adult world not being able to perceive the
elimination nature of a game where you
owe 11 for borrowing 10.
Imagine players insisting it's normal
to keep trying to pay back more
because that's the way it's always been
done.
Oh what kind
of Hellish device can so affect the mind as to
compel its participants to play musical
chairs and dance their way to
their deaths without realizing the foolishness
of what they're doing.
Christ hit the
nail on the head when he said that when it comes
to interest, the theme affects the head:
They'll forever
be hearing without hearing and seeing without
seeing because their hearts have grown
cold.
Jesus was a great
loanshark-fighter. What a sharpie.
He defined the
differential equation for the interest system as:
"To those who
have abundance will more be given but from those
who have no abundance, even what they
have will be taken away."
He then defined
the differential equation for his LETSystem:
"Their abundance
should at the present time be a supply for your
want so that your abundance may later
be a supply for their want so
that he who gathers much doesn't have
too much and he who gathers
little doesn't have too little."
Socialistic
and Capitalistic at the same time! Christ. What a
winner.
I've always had
trouble trying to bring Christ into the
discussion with techies. Mention that
the algorithm behind the
LETSystem is Christ's differential equation
and they freak. But others
have seen that same differential equation
I do and it is the
differential equation behind the Green
and Time dollar systems.
So Tim, I'm shocked
when you say you like what the Greendollars
can do but you can't accept the evils
I ascribe to interest. You're
going to face a day when your municipality
asks you if you'd like them
to provide a Local Employment Trading
System and your vote will
determine whether you'll create for yourself
an interest-free source
of credit which will eventually eliminate
your need for any interest-
bearing source.
This explosion
to where everybody in town takes Green happens the
moment any municipality starts taking
Green for taxes. It's as almost
here as that. Your social activists who
are setting up LETS, often
with government support, just do not yet
see the advantage of giving
that government Account #1. But the moment
government spends a million
Green and we can pay our taxes in that
Green, everyone will take it
and everyone will now be available as
a new trading partner.
Just because
LETS organizers have always been preoccupied with
the Local in Local Employment Trading
System and have always thought
small doesn't mean that whole databases
can't turn on at the same
time.
I suggested that
my Freenet provide a Greendollar account, one
new field in my database record, and a
program to email Greendollars
transfers to other accounts. It's as trivial
as that to have a
database of millions. I predict that the
first major Internet provider
to offer Local Employment Trading Greendollars
will sweep the market
with all the others soon following suit.
We cannot allow
them to set up their e-money systems whereby we
have to pay interest on the electronic
credit we borrow. This is the
major impetus of the financial world:
getting people to pay interest
on e-money. It won't be an easy sell,
especially with use of
Greendollar software expanding on the
horizon. I think they will not
resist.
But how can it
be stopped? As long as Greendollars can operate
side by side with bank dollars, who is
going to be stupid enough to
keep using bank dollars? And Greendollar
accounts can be delivered to
whole databases overnight.
When he says
he is defending the right to take interest though
LETS is okay, it gives me a chance to
dwell on just how terrible
interest is. I tried to hint at it by
mentioning the capital nature of
the offence to many of history's most
sainted people.
I think I'll
repost the story of my genocide allegation about
interest rates at the Supreme Court of
Canada. See TURMEL: Genocide
charge in Supreme Court. I reprint my
arguments as they were written
for the court.
If a banker were
charged using the Criminal Code, they'd have to
go interest-free while it was being discussed.
I've always felt that
every court appearance was a shot on the
goal of getting us our
interest-free credit cards. And I've engineered
hundreds of court
challenges to interest rates before judges
with power to do something
about it.
So I'll argue
from now to the end that interest rates are evil
and are the only difference between the
Hell of the last millenium and
the Heaven of the next. Wouldn't it be
fluky if humanity could fling
off its debt chains before 2001, a date
which contains much potential
for much technological change. Too bad
about the K-slab of losers
we're going to lose to the Conveyor Belt
of death between now than
then but environmental catastrophes might
have passed the point of no
return by then and nobody survives anyway.
Interesting problem
for the Owners. The whole ship's decaying and
the longer we delay freeing the slaves
and going to full power, the
more dangerous it gets for them too.
I can only pray
the finesse is on-side and expect accordingly
that we won't be past the point of no
ecological return when the money
regulator is fixed.
I hope how you
can appreciate my emotions as we calmly discuss
whether the bad effects of interest are
necessary trade-off for the
necessary reward for parting with one's
savings when I count those
trade-offs in unnecessary misery and deaths.
As I tell the
rich man, if you have a bank-roll of 100 which buys
you 10 Buicks today and you bank it to
get 120 at 20%, the interest
caused the price of the Buicks to inflate
so that your 120 still only
buys you 10 Buicks. You can't get something
for nothing unless someone
else gets nothing for something.
But the government
took half your 20 in taxes leaving you with a
bankroll of 110 which buys you only 9
Buicks.
By taking the
interest increase, you suffer inflation of your
whole bankroll and lose after the taxes.
It's better to get no
interest from your casino cashier and
have your bankroll buy 10 Buicks
all the time.
Neat trick isn't
it? Getting the guy to want more which causes
him to lose in two ways. He thinks he's
winning but he's still losing.
It's a Rich man's delusion.
The smart gambler
knows it's better to break even than chase
fool's gold and end up broke. I couldn't
call myself a good gambler if
I couldn't see the two ways I'm losing
money by chasing interest.
I see no other
way to mobilize maximum industrial power in the
goal of saving our bioshpere without correcting
the usury malfunction
in the monetary system.