[GJM] Is Money Obsolete?

[Dan Parker]

Money can be made obsolete by

a) a society so technologically advanced, that materialistic goods
can be created out of thin air, via nanotechnology or some such

or

b) through a return to the 90% self-produced consumption
and double coincidence barter system of the middle ages;
which would entail an early death for billions.

As it is, money eliminates the double coincidence needed
for a barter economy and makes possible wonderous
technology through the specialization that is only possible
where double coincidence is not a concern.

Money is strictly symbolic in nature, and can symbolize
whatever the system is designed for. If the poison
of compound interest math is put into the money system,
(or other injustices involving money's creation), then the
symbol will become a drag on what is really possible.
That is not the fault of money, or the symbol itself.

Imagine a tribe subsists on water from condensation and
struggles to survive ( as did *all* humans before the age
of specialization that money made possible). Now imagine
this tribe digs a well and can quench its thirst fairly easy.
Except that someone starts poisoning the well, causing
illness.

A wiseman of the village will look at the entire
history, at examples of unpoisoned wells (i.e. the Guesney
Island experiment for money, New Zealand's success in
climbing out of the depression before WWII ) and so on.
Shutting down the well and killing most of the populace
(i.e. eliminating the money system) would not enter into
the thought stream of anyone that understood the concept.

Regards
Dan Parker


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Steve Consilvio" <steve at behappyandfree.com>
To: <discussion at globaljusticemovement.net>
Sent: Thursday, March 08, 2007 9:18 AM
Subject: [GJM] Is Money Obsolete?


> Hi All,
>
> In watching the discussion here, there and everywhere, always the
> discussion is about money. The rich fear the poor, the poor fear the
> rich. Nobody can get their budget to balance. Corporations,
> governments, NGO's are all perpetually seeking more money to survive,
> the same as the individual and families.
>
> Maybe the time has come to recognize the obvious: Money itself is the
> problem. Not who has more of it, or who has less of it, but the
> intellectual idea that time and land should be "valued" by this third
> party we call "The Marketplace," and the concept of money.
>
> We need to have a Jubillee and move on. What you possess is what you
> own. The Charters are meaningless. In reading over some peace
> treaties of prior centuries yesterday, I was amazed at how the
> concept of debt endures even at the end of war and a cycle of
> destruction. Why is there so much fear in regard to forgiving debt
> and moving on? This is all indicative of an inability to trust one
> another, and a perpetuation of the idea that money is "real" and of
> primary importance.
>
> Until we recognize that money is meaningless, and that it is the
> relationship between people that is the most important, any attempt
> at reform is simply to recreate the problem anew. The marketplace of
> profit and interest is not about making fair exchanges (much less
> charity) it is about "regulating" unfair exchanges. What an oxymoron!
> Like "the rules of war," it simply makes no sense to regulate what is
> an insane behavior with "rules" to legitimize the insanity.
>
> Money is all the media and everyone talks about. Prices are good,
> bad, too rich, too poor, going up, going down, meeting expectations,
> passing expectations not meeting expectations, needing relief,
> underbudget, foreclose, bankruptcy, eviction, overpaid, underpaid,
> fines, penalty etc., and so on. All of these "financial
> relationships" are defined by the supremacy of money in the exchanges
> between men and institutions. The law creates money, but it is men
> that accept the concept.
>
> Rather than burning books, burning buildings, burning people, burning
> ships, burning bridges and burning our possessions, maybe what we
> need to burn is the currency. Forgive all debts, erase all the rules,
> and start over. All of those things that were just burned, however,
> belong to "other" people. We need to start locally, in our own
> community, and with ourself.
>
> The only promise that democracy ever offered was the ability to
> change the world without the need for blood being spilled. Thus far
> it is a failure because both the people and the leaders think alike
> regarding money. (Even Cromwell returned to the idea of tolerating
> Interest once victorious.) Democracy can only solve a political
> problem, it takes a change in economic behavior to solve an economic
> problem.  The politically ambitious do not have an economic analysis
> of what is wrong, only WHO is to blame. What I am describing is not a
> political action, it does not require political power; what it does
> require is a change in social mores regarding money. In essence, we
> need a divestiture movement from banking, insurance and the stock
> market. The promise of making wealth grow is the seduction that
> creates this ponzi scheme we are all trapped in. These institutions
> find it impossible to survive, too.
>
> In other words, by creating a PERSONAL DIVESTITURE MOVEMENT, the net
> effect is that the ponzi scheme will collapse. The ponzi scheme only
> works if new people are perpetually buying into the existing scheme.
> This should prevent an economic collapse, or war, because the net
> effect, as it is done slowly, will be to create a pricing
> equilibrium. As institutions follow suit, because they only do what
> everybody else does, too, we eventually end up with a society where
> people and relationships are valued more than money and objects. If
> the ponzi scheme cannot pay its dividends, then nobody will play, and
> there will be nobody working its ropes in a desperate attempt to
> survive. Mao's "paper tiger" will be slayed. At a minimum, the next
> generation will be warned not to play, whereas today they are
> indoctrinated into playing, and are taught the idea that stockholders
> are "owners" of the company.
>
> The world doesn't need more absentee "owners" it needs more people
> sharing and working together. That is true of both political and
> economic power. Our crisis can be understood as the economic
> mismanagement of surplus. People can only invest what they can afford
> to lose. Rather than using their surplus, what they are really doing
> is abusing their surplus, and devaluing it by creating inflation, the
> very thing they hoped to avoid. The more successfully money "grows"
> the less value it holds. The cure is worse than the disease. Our
> money, and our money system, is obsolete. A better world is possible.
>
> peace,
> steve consilvio
> www.behappyandfree.com
>
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