[p2p-research] What is the Origin of our Money Supply?

[Kevin Carson]

On 7/19/10, Ryan Lanham <rlanham1963 at gmail.com> wrote:

> You make good standard arguments that I respect...not just because you are
> making them, but because they are standard and well known.  There are many
> rebuttals and I have nothing new to say to them beyond those.
>
> I would point out a few things:
>
> 1. All social contracts of any sort are fiats.  They are commons.  All
> commons are fiat commons.  Money is an agreement.  No one forces you to use
> it.  Indeed, in the Old US West many people tried to survive without it and
> did so fairly well.  As far as I am concerned, money is a tool...a machine
> that is a social machine...a social contract.
>
> 2. All contracts are machines that make value.
>
> 3. Value is the point of all existence.
>
> 4. Value is defined as those things/ideas/cultures/desires people choose.
>
> 5. Money is a means of transferring a large but not complete set of value.
>
> 6. People who hold differing political views often think money IS the value.
>  It is not.  It is a machine for making value.  THAT is the moral conundrum.

Sure.  I'd agree with most of this.  My objection is to the "serious
thinkers" on CNBC and the WSJ who think that fiat money creation by
lending it into existence under the auspices of a central banking is
somehow the "responsible" thing to do, whereas Lincoln's Greenbacks or
Maj. Douglas's Social Credit is some sort of crankery -- and that the
folks who question their preference for the former or advocate the
latter should stop worrying their pretty little heads about stuff they
don't understand, and leave it to the grownups.

My point is that social credit is *no more* a fiat system than is the
current Federal Reserve system, and that we should be looking
seriously at the material interests being served by the choice of one
system over another.

The difference comes down to *whose* interests are being served, and
*who* has the ability in the present structure of power to "choose"
between those "machines for making value."

-- 
Kevin Carson
Center for a Stateless Society http://c4ss.org
Mutualist Blog:  Free Market Anti-Capitalism
http://mutualist.blogspot.com
The Homebrew Industrial Revolution:  A Low-Overhead Manifesto
http://homebrewindustrialrevolution.wordpress.com
Organization Theory:  A Libertarian Perspective
http://mutualist.blogspot.com/2005/12/studies-in-anarchist-theory-of.html