I have not yet finished reading all the papers (regarding the Chicago plan) linked up; but so far it passes the "Smell Test" and looks quite viable. I will come back on this comment (upon finishing everything in full) and opine on it more thoroughly.
The final point made (re: moving to Commodity Money from Equity Money being easier) is Correct as per Professor Michael Hudson's research (Historical & Economic) on various Human societies these past few millenia and the manner in which they organized Exchange in general:
Namely, the adoption of Gold &/or Silver has always been preceded by a "transitionary" period in which the King/Chieftain, etc decreed (by force of course) that *insert object here* has intrinsic value and is henceforth going to be doled out by the "state".
Fascinating! You need to get together with Alexandria Ocasio Cortez with this. You have described a synthesis of Austrian Economics and Modern Monetary Theory! Talk about a creative coalition!
This Chicago Plan looks like a very interesting way to pull off a jubilee, but that Chicago Plan 2 diagram bothers me. It has banks limited to lending treasury credit and equity. Why would a bank ever bother with deposits? Can checking fees justify the effort? And what of new banks? Where do they get money to lend?
A bank *can* make loans using deposits without maturity transformation iff the loan maturities match the deposit maturities. That is, lending demand deposits is a definite no-no. You have to put money in a CD in order to earn interest.
Financing mortgages gets tricky. Who is going to put money into a 30 year CD? One solution is to continue letting FANNIE MAE and FREDDIE MAC do the actual financing. Another possibility would be for banks to offer Individual Retirement Accounts and use the locked funds to finance mortgages.
Yet another possibility would be to break mortgages into time based tranches, as described here:
I would recommend you read the full paper as they address some, though not all, of your questions and give their reasoning for it.
I personally think it would work very well to "permit the bank to make loans using deposits if the loan maturities match the deposit maturities. That is, lending demand deposits is a definite no-no. You have to put money in a CD in order to earn interest." I agree. I believe the authors of CP2 think it would be better to restrict this to US Treasuries but it's possible I overlooked this.
> The privately owned nature of our central banking system is a big part of the world's problems.
People love to complain the our central banking system is "privately owned", whatever that means in practice. However, the reality is that putting the power to create money directly into the hands of politicians would lead to much more rampant money printing, since the politicians would use the money to fund their favored pork barrel projects.
I know that you are a strict libertarian and hence I am unlikely to persuade you. Because I used to believe what you believed, I want to make the effort.
I think you are dead wrong about the proposed system leading to much more rampant money printing, the wrongest it's possible to be. The current financial system makes it profitable for private banks to print money and it places no limit on their ability to do so. The cost of printing money (inflation) is widely distributed; the gain from printing money (bank profit) is concentrated into the controllers of the bank; and the risk of printing money (bank runs) is socialized by government insurance and "too big to fail" policies. We are experiencing money supply growth at an exponential rate.
As a libertarian I can understand your skepticism about transferring the power to print money to the government. But one thing I have learned, to my dismay, is that the same people who run the government are the ones who run the corporations, and there is no difference in moral virtue between a .com and .gov email owner. The only difference is one of incentives, checks, and balances.
I believe that the profit incentive in conjunction with competition much stronger than the incentives that motivate politicians - that is one of the major reasons why private enterprise outperforms government. And we know, as a matter of historical fact, that the profit incentive of money printing by banks in competition with other banks leads to more money printing - it's why things like FDIC were created, why bank runs used to occur, etc. We also know, as a matter of historical fact, that when the US government controlled the money supply, it did not engage in rampant inflation, and we know that the Federal Reserve did. And this has been true in many other historical cases.
It is no doubt true that under the system I have suggested, some pork barrel projects would get funded by inflationary money-printing. But we should not expect perfection from policy - that's a liberal pipedream. Under the gold standard, governments also engaged in all sorts of shenanigans such as debasement, confiscation, etc. Government evil is inevitable and will remain such until humans become angels.
As far as whether bitcoin is an asset that could be usefully deployed as the basis of a currency: Its stock-flow ratio suggests it certainly could be. Such wealth as I do not have in precious metals I have in bitcoin. I look forward to the day when either commodity becomes money. But I believe that the Federal Reserve system will collapse our country before that happens, and we need a plan for what to do that is currently feasible. I do not think switching to gold or bitcoin money is currently feasible. The Chicago Plan is.
>But I believe that the Federal Reserve system will collapse our country before that happens, and we need a plan for what to do that is currently feasible. I do not think switching to gold or bitcoin money is currently feasible. The Chicago Plan is.<
Well said, and agreed!
On the Chessboard (in many cases) one can only Play "Correctly" (as per Engine analyses) after some sequence of "Quiet" moves are made prior.
It makes perfect sense (given the predicament Murica is in at present) to pursue the "Quiet" / more Intermediary step of "Equity Money" first.
Simply jumping to "Commodity Money" is closed at the moment given the fact that (1) Murica is a Pariah and (2) It has burned far too many bridges.
My issue big with this, as it is with MMT, is who controls the money supply and by what method is this determined. You left this out so now I will need to scour the Chicago Plan 2 papers. Ideally, money creation should be driven by market forces, namely the demand for money by the economy. What I fear we will get is another board of "economists" like the FED determining the "correct" amount of money to add to the system. We all know where this type of central planning approach leads. Eventually Commodity money will be needed. Since the basis of every modern economy is energy, the preferred commodity should be energy or energy equivalent. For example, $1 should be backed by 1 KWhr equivalent.
I agree with your analysis; I love the idea of backing money with power! Brilliant.
But the system in the Chicago Plan is much better than our current system, and it will be much easier to get to commodity money once we have full-reserve money rather than an economy based on rentier finance. Our ancient enemies the Communists have never been afraid of transitional steps... we must learn from them! :D
> The current financial system makes it profitable for private banks to print money and it places no limit on their ability to do so.
There are reserve limits, or were before the government started bailing out banks that were "too big to fail". There's still the soft limit that comes from the uncertainty of whether any particular bank will be bailed out.
> The only difference is one of incentives, checks, and balances.
Correct, and the threat of bankruptcy is a check. Also appointing libertarians to the federal reserve helps. They inevitably stop acting libertarian under the incentives, but their prior convictions do moderate their behavior.
I wish I believed that. Alan Greenspan was Ayn Rand's economic apostle and he betrayed everything he believed in. The only way I can make sense of it is that Greenspan is a real-life D'anconia who purposefully blew up the system.
Have you ever had that kind of power? Do you have any idea the kind of pressures and temptations that entails? Most people inevitably end up compromising their ideals.
Well, my ideal is to be a tyrannical iron-fisted conqueror who spends his time hearing the lamentations of the women, so if I compromised my ideals I'd probably end up feeling guilty and try to do the right thing by my people. Also I think I just recreated the plotline of Conan's Phoenix on the Sword.
I would like to make it clear that I am not depressed, not suicidal, love my life, and that any letter or note saying otherwise was written by my assassins.
> This looks like a solid plan, particularly as it can also function as a halfway house to returning to a commodity-based money supply.
Except it won't. Except in the sense that it might accelerate the collapse of the dollar after which a new commodity-based money system, likely based on bitcoin, can take over.
Treasury notes will have backing as long as the government accepts such notes for tax purposes. No commodity backing is necessary.
Libertarian propaganda to the contrary, government do perform some useful services. While I'd like to privatize many of those services, the remaining services constitute enough value that the federal government equivalent of Dave and Buster's video game tokens have more intrinsic value than all the gold in Fort Knox.
It's not a matter of government performing no useful services. It's a matter a government also wasting money on lots of useless things, and then using its ability to create arbitrary numbers of tokens to finance its spending.
And governments do lots of things which are useful which nonetheless could be done as well or better by the private sector.
But even if you strike these things from the budget, government will remain a big enough fraction of the economy that the intrinsic value of tax tokens can provide enough liquid currency.
And let us keep in mind that government bailouts of the fractional reserve banking system constitute a noticeable portion of the national debt. As Nassim Taleb likes to point out, the money spent on government bailouts of the banking system equals the entire profits of the banks over the past century.
Not really. The use of gold in electronics is a tiny fraction of the total supply and in any case, gold was valuable for centuries before electronics were invented.
As for the use of gold for jewelry and decorations, those are derive they're value from the value of gold, not the other way around.
Gold would have a boatload of modern uses if it wasn't so expensive. For example, gold bullets would be far superior to lead bullets. Higher density and no toxicity.
Or moving up the value chain, gold would be excellent for use in batteries, since gold both conducts electricity and doesn't corrode in the face of most chemicals.
I wonder if gold could replace lead for plumbing alloys. Gold is soft and corrosion resistant like lead. But gold has a much higher melting point.
This plan has my full support and I will endorse and even vooot for any candidate promising to enact such. I should also say that this third way is better than commodity money because it recognizes a truth that commodity money often fails to see through muddied waters of treating money as both means of exchange AND store of value.
Namely, Money Is Not Wealth. Money Is Only A Means of Wealth Exchange.
reserving for comment later, but this, singularly, makes me wish that I had some sort of local group who actually thought about things.
```
Today’s essay is therefore an exploration of the first plank of the physiocratic platform: ending the Federal Reserve System, escaping the petrodollar, and eliminating fractional-reserve banking.
```
I do not personally know anybody besides myself who has ever mentioned, in the last 10ish years since I thought it would be a good idea, in either casual or deep conversation, eliminating fractional-reserve banking. I'll be back after I finish reading the post. Blessings.
I am generally a commodity money guy, but I definitely would agree with your commodity rebuttal at the end, and I think this would be a wonderous first step. Who would oversee it and how would you keep them alive when the FR can literally print FU (liquidation/wetworks) money.
I also would normally agree that nobody wants deflation, but I currently DO want deflation... maybe it's the autist in me, but I want 1 cent to have a useful value since it exists. Is there any reason not to deflate to some target since we've inflated excessively in the last half century?
It would be a good first step; but the key is what happens next.
I for one don't see how the Muricans can re-integrate with the rest of the world and adopt "Commodity Money" &/or keep the Equity Money model (they successfully transitioned to) and reach agreements with BRICS+ (now with their Commodity Money adopted successfully) on Sound settlements that "talk" (i.e. Equity with Commodity & vice versa).
The Pariah mantle has to be completely shed by the Muricans... to which I say: "They do not have Enough TIME to do so".
Murica is still the largest single market in the world for exporters, and the high productivity of the population makes this possible. Pariah is a fleeting title. Fix our monetary system, release the world from using it, end our overseas adventures, and most nations will be happy to do business with us again. Avoiding collapse is not a matter of time, it's a matter of will.
Perhaps this was true 25-30 years ago. I would disagree that this is the case today. America is certainly no "pushover"; but it also not the Export-oriented colossus of decades past.
No doubt many nations (assuming these are all executed properly) will try & normalize with Murica; but the problem is that by then the Scapegoating drive will reach a fever pitch. Human Emotion is a very Dangerous thing:
The Biolabs in Ukraine for example (and the Human experiments run on Slavs by the Muricans there) cement Russian animosity. China meanwhile know very well who it is that kidnaps, tortures, necroph*****s, S*******s & R***s all the Chinese tourists, Chinese descent people, etc living in Southeast Asia.
So this is not an easy "overnight" fix. Murica's Elites signed a Pact with Demonkind long ago; and most of the rest of the World REFUSE to simply "sweep that under the rug" and forget about it.
"Revenge" is a very potent, illogical & destructive driver of peoples & nations. I do not see us "Modern" people being somehow immune to its Universal, Timeless Pull. Murica has to contend with said Animosity.
I think the animosity is overblown, a fire stoked by our leaders to maintain power. Populations at large do not hold such views. After the end of the Soviet Union, many Russian scientists joined my university. We all got along great with no recriminations. It's the bitter memories of hardship and slaughter, such as in wars, where that such attitudes fester.
Correct. It is "Overblown"... and that is done on purpose.
Crime & the most heinous sorts (I don't want to go non-PG here, but you can perhaps visualize 1% of the sort of things I am hinting at) are always committed by those whom we have known the longest and treasured the most.
So you are correct. The population at large (be it the Soviet diaspora or others) do not have it *actively* in their consciousness to "Slaughter the Murican, wherever you find them".
What is happening right now with them is the "Priming" phase. The irredeemable nature of Murica as a society & civilization is being *primed* into them at the subconscious level. The Elite are doing this on purpose.
Eventually, when the "trigger" comes, the Violence (from within) will be Crippling. Othello is probably a very good template for the sort of Tragedy we will be witnessing, except at the Macro level.
Ahnaf is mad the the West kicked his civilization's butt and wants revenge. Since his civilization is in no position to extract said revenge, he's had to settle for vicarious fantasies.
He also doesn't appear to know much if anything about finance. Hence, he changes the subject to sexual perversion whenever the subject comes up, conveniently glossing over his own civilization's rather dubious history with the subject.
In Murica: The females murder their offspring (and revel in doing so) whilst the males readily offer themselves (mind body and soul) to be violated by Demons. The latter thus "stab & shoot" at whim nationwide.
The Eurasians do not engage in said Demoncraft. So your "laughter" or whatnot is utterly Moot. The Score is well known by those paying attention.
well, you guys went off on another round of these currentcy/SDR discussions under my reply :), but mostly it's the "minorities" that do these things in what is called the USA. If there's any hope of "time" at all, there has to be mass repatriations.
I am not really worried about "what happens afterward" until we are at the tipping point for a paradigm shift as describe in this post. I am also not concerned with "re-integrating" until the nation is back on track. Probably better to isolate and put additional pressure on the welfare recipients to leave.
Even if you are correct and "International Jewry" & others play the Key Role:
Responsibility cannot be absolved by the White population by merely deflecting onto "the evils of the Jewish race" or *insert other group here*. This is because for a significant part of the 20th century; Whites have been the supermajority in Murica overall.
So really; you get a repugnant conclusion:
1) They were too Stupid to do anything.
2) They were too Arrogant to fix things.
3) They were too Lazy to salvage the ship that is Murica.
4) Combo of (1) - (3) in various proportions.
Regardless of which one it is; "What happens afterwards" is quite clear... namely Total Destruction.
Simple reason being... if a population was guilty of (1) - (4) in the past... why on earth will it now "perform better" given the fact that it is (a) More Dilute than before and (b) Past Precedent indicates aforementioned maladies will continue into the future?
Maybe so. Although you should look into what the Chinese have been up to. In any case, none of that helps them get their supposed "commodity backed" currency up and running.
This is interesting because it is still a fiat currency (not backed by anything except the full faith and credit of the American government), but at least its no longer a fractional reserve fiat system, controlled by shadow-entities that are hostile to our way of life. Simply the act of being able to "audit the treasury" via FOIA requests would help keep the banks more honest.
Such a currency would be backed if the government accepted it for tax purposes. As long as we have real estate taxes, such currency would be backed by the value of the real estate -- just as fractional reserve currency is today.
And if the federal government were to continue having excise taxes, the currency would be backed by the value of the taxed goods. Want some booze? You need T-notes. Put tariffs and excises on crude oil and the notes become backed by the intrinsic value of oil.
Note the cognitive dissonance when libertarians say that Federal Reserve Notes aren't worth anything -- yet they won't hand them over to me, even for a delicious lollipop.
Commodity based money is based on the commodity used as money, but suffers the problem that the intrinsic value of the underlying money is insufficient for the desired liquidity. This leads to commodity money acting partially as fiat money, deriving its value from pure scarcity, much like bitcoin.
Commodity money inflated by fractional reserve banking has the upside of increasing the money supply while adding new intrinsic value -- the value of the collateral mortgaged. Banks don't create new money out of thin air; banks turn the intrinsic value of illiquid assets into liquid money. Alas, the arrangement is unstable.
Dave and Busters issue plastic tokens which have intrinsic value: the ability to play video games in a public venue which serves beer. Governments can issue similar tokens which have intrinsic value: protection from foreign enemies, enforcement of property deeds, roads, Lawrence Welk museums, etc. Treasury notes are thus first order derivatives -- of the intrinsic value produced and/or protected by government.
NO! That's the exact notion I want to dispense with. It is a fallacy that infects many libertarian (and other) circles.
Our money is backed by more than faith or the fact that you can trade with it. If Food Lion and Amazon decided to stop accepting Federal Reserve Notes tomorrow, I would still value such notes -- because my home is mortgaged, and the mortgage is denominated in dollars.
Since I don't want to become homeless, I am willing to provide useful work in return for Federal Reserve notes.
Since millions of other people are in a similar situation, millions of other people are also willing to provide goods and services in return for Federal Reserve Notes.
And that's why merchants -- even black market merchants -- accept Federal Reserve Notes. They are backed by real estate mortgages, among other debts. The gold in Fort Knox is a tiny fraction of the backing of today's dollars.
---
When the money printers go brrr, then you end up with more Fed Notes backed by the same amount of real estates. Go brrr too hard and people can just pay off their mortgages and now the backing is reduced dramatically. Hello hyperinflation.
The Chicago Plan offsets this money printing with a crackdown on maturity transformation. Whether this deflationary effect offsets the new Treasury notes is an interesting question.
The fractional reserve banking system has been around for a very long time, far before the Fed, Wilson, and other boogiemen. It emerged organically, not at the behest of some government diktat. Many other important institutions are connected to it in ways we can't understand. We should tread carefully here.
I disagree, obviously. The fractional reserve system emerged organically in the same way that crime emerged organically. It has always been a fraudulent deception and it has only been permitted because the people with power were the people who benefited from it.
Without the fractional reserve system, banks can't make loans. This basically shuts down all economic endeavors too big to be financed by private individuals (i.e. the vast majority of them). Everyone's quality of life would radically decrease.
Don't hate the banks. Hate the idiotic government regulations. They're the real problem.
Banks can make loans under full-reserve banking, they simply can't do so out of their demand deposits. They can loan against other assets they hold, such as certificates of deposit with long-term yields.
"Tread carefully", run out of *even MORE TIME* and watch the West getting Salted Brutally.
OR ... actually make an effort to "salvage the whole mess".
I will break character for a few seconds and say something "Optimistic": even though TIME has run out; billions of Humans exist today (and have yet to be sacrificed in the Nuclear Bonfire). So long as Humanity exists, the TIME disadvantage can be mitigated since "People" at the end of the day are primary solvers of Problems (Big & Small).
Hello fellow physiocrat. Your explanation does a great job in explaining the basics but it is also very succint. The Kumhof paper you link to is long and unintelligible. So...
Do you have any idea where one can find an explanation that is both longer than yours but shorter (and more intelligible) than the "Chicago Plan Revisited"? I am asking for a friend.
Hello! I wish I did, but unfortunately the Chicago Plan Revisited has not been widely discussed elsewhere. I don't even remember how I stumbled upon it all those years ago.
Correct, it has not, but it has allowed the US to print dollars excessively without making them worthless. Unfortunately for us, nothing lasts forever.
It's called "running on Empty" and it's available on Amazon. It's just a compilation of the blog posts with minor edits so if you've read the blog series you don't need the book.
Addendum: The main issue (assuming the "Equity Money" adoption goes through properly) is with regard to International Relations. Many nations have already begun the move to "Commodity Money" & have made it clear that the Muricans are persona non grata.
If you're sitting on "Equity Money" & the rest of the world are on "Commodity Money" AND they have made it clear "you're not welcome"... :
The Murican government would need tight controls of goods &/or services and their "flows" (in & out) otherwise the nations with "Commodity money" now adopted successfully will chip away & cause Havoc across the Economy. By "sheer numbers" they will prevail.
And therein lies the Achilles Heel of this whole matter... because this is a "highly probable outcome" (i.e. Murica being unwelcome & chipped away at in said manner) the "Elite" will use this as an excuse to not adopt the proposal AND "double down" on their "War with Everyone" plan.
> Many nations have already begun the move to "Commodity Money"
Not really. El Salvador and a few others have.
The so-called BRICS have merely made propaganda noises in that direction. For example Russia has asked people to trade their gold for rubles and called it "a step towards a gold standard"; note, however, that is has not offered to provide gold for people's rubles.
So where can foreign countries get commodities for the SDRs? Because it sounds like this whole talk of SDRs being "backed by commodities" pure propaganda.
Once again: This question shows Illiteracy & Ignorance.
To use the IMF example-
Traditionally, they defined 1 SDR as deriving value from a basket of currencies. It used to be around 50% USD, 30% Euro and 20% "Others". (these ratios have since been updated to lessen the USD %).
For a Commodity-SDR system, you would have a similar concept. So something akin to 20% Crude Oil, 25% Gold and so on. (this is an example, nothing more)
The "Commodity-SDR" itself would be a unit of account used between nations and having "value" via said ratios of 20%, 25% and so on.
Just like the IMF, it would be used as a Unit of Account, not as "an interchangeable" entity which when Country A gives to Country B, you get 20% Oil, 25% Gold and so on.
Commerce is never conducted in this "purely interchangeable" way; especially at the "country to country" level.
We've been doing this for decades. It's called the petrodollar. The Commodity SDR is just the petrodollar shared between countries and commodities. The petrodollar was imposed and enforced, while the Commodity SDR is voluntary.
Once there was a group of mice who were tired of being ambushed and eaten by a cat. So the mice got together and brainstormed ideas. One of the mice had a brilliant idea. He said, "lets just put a loud bell on the cat so we always know where he is." The other mice cheered him, until 1 of the mice asked, "so who bells the cat?"
In the 'what should we do' thread I (and a few others) recommended talking about what we can actually do to make things happen IRL. This post is an excellent example of why.
I see such suggestions all the time, going back decades. They take the form of, "I have a brilliant idea! All it takes is to convince those with power to voluntarily give up some of that power!"
OK. It probably is a great idea. But who bells the cat?
Almost by definition, solutions to current problems require those in power to give up some power. Because those current problems were intentionally created by those in power to take advantage of; current problems aren't problems to our elites, they are opportunities. For example, you said:
"This time, this crisis, we must succeed in ending the Fed, because the alternative is the end of America in everything but name — the end of America as a First World country with a middle class."
I agree.
However, do you see any signs that those in charge want America to continue as a 1st world country? That they want anything other than the destruction of the middle class? The end-goal of those in charge is a global Soviet Union. A cohesive nation that might resolve not to be part of that, and have the ability to stay out of it, is exactly what they don't want.
You are recommending that we petition our leaders to abandon their reason for existence. That they give up power so that in the future they won't have even more power. Might as well try to convince a hungry cat to let mice tie a bell to it's neck.
I am not recommending we petition our leaders. I don't even consider them my leaders. I am simply explaining what *my* policies are, and hoping that when chaos comes, there'll be a chance to implement them.
> Once there was a group of mice who were tired of being ambushed and eaten by a cat. So the mice got together and brainstormed ideas. One of the mice had a brilliant idea. He said, "lets just put a loud bell on the cat so we always know where he is." The other mice cheered him, until 1 of the mice asked, "so who bells the cat?"
The irony is that cats are so agile they can quickly learn how to stalk prey without ringing the bell.
I suspect this article is pitched slightly above my IQ. Nonetheless I've got a couple of questions.
What would be your objection to CH Douglas and social credit? Do you think it would be incapable of expanding the money supply rapidly enough to meet the needs of mass society?
One for the libertarians: why not just fully nationalise the banks? Doing so would eliminate the profit motive, so that 'incentives' for banks to lend money would be a non-issue.
CH Douglas and social credit has been on my reading list for some time, but I am afraid I haven't gotten to it yet. My preliminary review suggested there was merit to what he described, so I am looking forward to learning more about it.
Government will exist so long as Humanity exists. It is Human Nature to centralise power. The only pathway left that is viable and non-utopic is to make sure during the centralisation; people with power are held back by standards, creeds, etc from engaging in their worst excesses. There will never be however a world of “no excesses” and pure “reason” (whatever that silly word means)
Correct. Human nature is to sin, which means amelioration is the way. Ameliorate the excesses of government, and centralise powers to make sure that enemies (from within and abroad) don’t triumph. Because really, “less or no government” just means “ripe target for Conquest & Slaughter”.
I have not yet finished reading all the papers (regarding the Chicago plan) linked up; but so far it passes the "Smell Test" and looks quite viable. I will come back on this comment (upon finishing everything in full) and opine on it more thoroughly.
The final point made (re: moving to Commodity Money from Equity Money being easier) is Correct as per Professor Michael Hudson's research (Historical & Economic) on various Human societies these past few millenia and the manner in which they organized Exchange in general:
Namely, the adoption of Gold &/or Silver has always been preceded by a "transitionary" period in which the King/Chieftain, etc decreed (by force of course) that *insert object here* has intrinsic value and is henceforth going to be doled out by the "state".
Fascinating! You need to get together with Alexandria Ocasio Cortez with this. You have described a synthesis of Austrian Economics and Modern Monetary Theory! Talk about a creative coalition!
This Chicago Plan looks like a very interesting way to pull off a jubilee, but that Chicago Plan 2 diagram bothers me. It has banks limited to lending treasury credit and equity. Why would a bank ever bother with deposits? Can checking fees justify the effort? And what of new banks? Where do they get money to lend?
A bank *can* make loans using deposits without maturity transformation iff the loan maturities match the deposit maturities. That is, lending demand deposits is a definite no-no. You have to put money in a CD in order to earn interest.
Financing mortgages gets tricky. Who is going to put money into a 30 year CD? One solution is to continue letting FANNIE MAE and FREDDIE MAC do the actual financing. Another possibility would be for banks to offer Individual Retirement Accounts and use the locked funds to finance mortgages.
Yet another possibility would be to break mortgages into time based tranches, as described here:
https://conntects.net/blogPosts/GreenandFree/68
I would recommend you read the full paper as they address some, though not all, of your questions and give their reasoning for it.
I personally think it would work very well to "permit the bank to make loans using deposits if the loan maturities match the deposit maturities. That is, lending demand deposits is a definite no-no. You have to put money in a CD in order to earn interest." I agree. I believe the authors of CP2 think it would be better to restrict this to US Treasuries but it's possible I overlooked this.
Hi Tree, very nice post. The privately owned nature of our central banking system is a big part of the world's problems. If you havn't already read it, I highly recommend Stephen Mitford Goodson's "The History of Central Banking and the Enslavement of Mankind." Goodson had impeccable establishment credentials as he was a director of the South African central bank, and his recommendations are very similar to yours. His wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Goodson . The book was banned on Amazon (which should be a mark of pride) but can be read here for free: https://ia801703.us.archive.org/26/items/a-history-of-central-banking-and-the-enslavement-of-mankind-pdfdrive/A_History_of_Central_Banking_and_the_Enslavement_of_Mankind__PDFDrive_.pdf
> The privately owned nature of our central banking system is a big part of the world's problems.
People love to complain the our central banking system is "privately owned", whatever that means in practice. However, the reality is that putting the power to create money directly into the hands of politicians would lead to much more rampant money printing, since the politicians would use the money to fund their favored pork barrel projects.
I know that you are a strict libertarian and hence I am unlikely to persuade you. Because I used to believe what you believed, I want to make the effort.
I think you are dead wrong about the proposed system leading to much more rampant money printing, the wrongest it's possible to be. The current financial system makes it profitable for private banks to print money and it places no limit on their ability to do so. The cost of printing money (inflation) is widely distributed; the gain from printing money (bank profit) is concentrated into the controllers of the bank; and the risk of printing money (bank runs) is socialized by government insurance and "too big to fail" policies. We are experiencing money supply growth at an exponential rate.
As a libertarian I can understand your skepticism about transferring the power to print money to the government. But one thing I have learned, to my dismay, is that the same people who run the government are the ones who run the corporations, and there is no difference in moral virtue between a .com and .gov email owner. The only difference is one of incentives, checks, and balances.
I believe that the profit incentive in conjunction with competition much stronger than the incentives that motivate politicians - that is one of the major reasons why private enterprise outperforms government. And we know, as a matter of historical fact, that the profit incentive of money printing by banks in competition with other banks leads to more money printing - it's why things like FDIC were created, why bank runs used to occur, etc. We also know, as a matter of historical fact, that when the US government controlled the money supply, it did not engage in rampant inflation, and we know that the Federal Reserve did. And this has been true in many other historical cases.
It is no doubt true that under the system I have suggested, some pork barrel projects would get funded by inflationary money-printing. But we should not expect perfection from policy - that's a liberal pipedream. Under the gold standard, governments also engaged in all sorts of shenanigans such as debasement, confiscation, etc. Government evil is inevitable and will remain such until humans become angels.
As far as whether bitcoin is an asset that could be usefully deployed as the basis of a currency: Its stock-flow ratio suggests it certainly could be. Such wealth as I do not have in precious metals I have in bitcoin. I look forward to the day when either commodity becomes money. But I believe that the Federal Reserve system will collapse our country before that happens, and we need a plan for what to do that is currently feasible. I do not think switching to gold or bitcoin money is currently feasible. The Chicago Plan is.
>But I believe that the Federal Reserve system will collapse our country before that happens, and we need a plan for what to do that is currently feasible. I do not think switching to gold or bitcoin money is currently feasible. The Chicago Plan is.<
Well said, and agreed!
On the Chessboard (in many cases) one can only Play "Correctly" (as per Engine analyses) after some sequence of "Quiet" moves are made prior.
It makes perfect sense (given the predicament Murica is in at present) to pursue the "Quiet" / more Intermediary step of "Equity Money" first.
Simply jumping to "Commodity Money" is closed at the moment given the fact that (1) Murica is a Pariah and (2) It has burned far too many bridges.
My issue big with this, as it is with MMT, is who controls the money supply and by what method is this determined. You left this out so now I will need to scour the Chicago Plan 2 papers. Ideally, money creation should be driven by market forces, namely the demand for money by the economy. What I fear we will get is another board of "economists" like the FED determining the "correct" amount of money to add to the system. We all know where this type of central planning approach leads. Eventually Commodity money will be needed. Since the basis of every modern economy is energy, the preferred commodity should be energy or energy equivalent. For example, $1 should be backed by 1 KWhr equivalent.
I agree with your analysis; I love the idea of backing money with power! Brilliant.
But the system in the Chicago Plan is much better than our current system, and it will be much easier to get to commodity money once we have full-reserve money rather than an economy based on rentier finance. Our ancient enemies the Communists have never been afraid of transitional steps... we must learn from them! :D
> The current financial system makes it profitable for private banks to print money and it places no limit on their ability to do so.
There are reserve limits, or were before the government started bailing out banks that were "too big to fail". There's still the soft limit that comes from the uncertainty of whether any particular bank will be bailed out.
> The only difference is one of incentives, checks, and balances.
Correct, and the threat of bankruptcy is a check. Also appointing libertarians to the federal reserve helps. They inevitably stop acting libertarian under the incentives, but their prior convictions do moderate their behavior.
I wish I believed that. Alan Greenspan was Ayn Rand's economic apostle and he betrayed everything he believed in. The only way I can make sense of it is that Greenspan is a real-life D'anconia who purposefully blew up the system.
Have you ever had that kind of power? Do you have any idea the kind of pressures and temptations that entails? Most people inevitably end up compromising their ideals.
Well, my ideal is to be a tyrannical iron-fisted conqueror who spends his time hearing the lamentations of the women, so if I compromised my ideals I'd probably end up feeling guilty and try to do the right thing by my people. Also I think I just recreated the plotline of Conan's Phoenix on the Sword.
This looks like a solid plan, particularly as it can also function as a halfway house to returning to a commodity-based money supply.
That said, having read this I never knew you had information that would lead to the arrest of Hillary Clinton.
I would like to make it clear that I am not depressed, not suicidal, love my life, and that any letter or note saying otherwise was written by my assassins.
You'll be fine. Unless they decide to use you as a cauldron/"medium" to carry a Demon.
In that case, you are F*****. It will be a 21st century rendering of "Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde".
At that point, they will just wait patiently till you willingly surrender to them yourself to make the agony "go away". Classic Entrapment!
> This looks like a solid plan, particularly as it can also function as a halfway house to returning to a commodity-based money supply.
Except it won't. Except in the sense that it might accelerate the collapse of the dollar after which a new commodity-based money system, likely based on bitcoin, can take over.
Treasury notes will have backing as long as the government accepts such notes for tax purposes. No commodity backing is necessary.
Libertarian propaganda to the contrary, government do perform some useful services. While I'd like to privatize many of those services, the remaining services constitute enough value that the federal government equivalent of Dave and Buster's video game tokens have more intrinsic value than all the gold in Fort Knox.
It's not a matter of government performing no useful services. It's a matter a government also wasting money on lots of useless things, and then using its ability to create arbitrary numbers of tokens to finance its spending.
Agreed.
And governments do lots of things which are useful which nonetheless could be done as well or better by the private sector.
But even if you strike these things from the budget, government will remain a big enough fraction of the economy that the intrinsic value of tax tokens can provide enough liquid currency.
And let us keep in mind that government bailouts of the fractional reserve banking system constitute a noticeable portion of the national debt. As Nassim Taleb likes to point out, the money spent on government bailouts of the banking system equals the entire profits of the banks over the past century.
> And let us keep in mind that government bailouts of the fractional reserve banking system constitute a noticeable portion of the national debt.
Which is a large part of why governments can't be trusted to manage money.
"Bitcoin" is not a Commodity.
It is a purely speculative asset.
It's as much a commodity as gold.
Gold has actual *physical* uses.
Bitcoin meanwhile does not.
> Gold has actual uses.
Not really. The use of gold in electronics is a tiny fraction of the total supply and in any case, gold was valuable for centuries before electronics were invented.
As for the use of gold for jewelry and decorations, those are derive they're value from the value of gold, not the other way around.
Gold would have a boatload of modern uses if it wasn't so expensive. For example, gold bullets would be far superior to lead bullets. Higher density and no toxicity.
Or moving up the value chain, gold would be excellent for use in batteries, since gold both conducts electricity and doesn't corrode in the face of most chemicals.
I wonder if gold could replace lead for plumbing alloys. Gold is soft and corrosion resistant like lead. But gold has a much higher melting point.
"Not really"
> Goes on to contradict himself.
Practice your dialectic. "It's too small a fraction" is not a negation.
This plan has my full support and I will endorse and even vooot for any candidate promising to enact such. I should also say that this third way is better than commodity money because it recognizes a truth that commodity money often fails to see through muddied waters of treating money as both means of exchange AND store of value.
Namely, Money Is Not Wealth. Money Is Only A Means of Wealth Exchange.
reserving for comment later, but this, singularly, makes me wish that I had some sort of local group who actually thought about things.
```
Today’s essay is therefore an exploration of the first plank of the physiocratic platform: ending the Federal Reserve System, escaping the petrodollar, and eliminating fractional-reserve banking.
```
I do not personally know anybody besides myself who has ever mentioned, in the last 10ish years since I thought it would be a good idea, in either casual or deep conversation, eliminating fractional-reserve banking. I'll be back after I finish reading the post. Blessings.
I am generally a commodity money guy, but I definitely would agree with your commodity rebuttal at the end, and I think this would be a wonderous first step. Who would oversee it and how would you keep them alive when the FR can literally print FU (liquidation/wetworks) money.
I also would normally agree that nobody wants deflation, but I currently DO want deflation... maybe it's the autist in me, but I want 1 cent to have a useful value since it exists. Is there any reason not to deflate to some target since we've inflated excessively in the last half century?
It would be a good first step; but the key is what happens next.
I for one don't see how the Muricans can re-integrate with the rest of the world and adopt "Commodity Money" &/or keep the Equity Money model (they successfully transitioned to) and reach agreements with BRICS+ (now with their Commodity Money adopted successfully) on Sound settlements that "talk" (i.e. Equity with Commodity & vice versa).
The Pariah mantle has to be completely shed by the Muricans... to which I say: "They do not have Enough TIME to do so".
Murica is still the largest single market in the world for exporters, and the high productivity of the population makes this possible. Pariah is a fleeting title. Fix our monetary system, release the world from using it, end our overseas adventures, and most nations will be happy to do business with us again. Avoiding collapse is not a matter of time, it's a matter of will.
Perhaps this was true 25-30 years ago. I would disagree that this is the case today. America is certainly no "pushover"; but it also not the Export-oriented colossus of decades past.
No doubt many nations (assuming these are all executed properly) will try & normalize with Murica; but the problem is that by then the Scapegoating drive will reach a fever pitch. Human Emotion is a very Dangerous thing:
The Biolabs in Ukraine for example (and the Human experiments run on Slavs by the Muricans there) cement Russian animosity. China meanwhile know very well who it is that kidnaps, tortures, necroph*****s, S*******s & R***s all the Chinese tourists, Chinese descent people, etc living in Southeast Asia.
So this is not an easy "overnight" fix. Murica's Elites signed a Pact with Demonkind long ago; and most of the rest of the World REFUSE to simply "sweep that under the rug" and forget about it.
"Revenge" is a very potent, illogical & destructive driver of peoples & nations. I do not see us "Modern" people being somehow immune to its Universal, Timeless Pull. Murica has to contend with said Animosity.
I think the animosity is overblown, a fire stoked by our leaders to maintain power. Populations at large do not hold such views. After the end of the Soviet Union, many Russian scientists joined my university. We all got along great with no recriminations. It's the bitter memories of hardship and slaughter, such as in wars, where that such attitudes fester.
Correct. It is "Overblown"... and that is done on purpose.
Crime & the most heinous sorts (I don't want to go non-PG here, but you can perhaps visualize 1% of the sort of things I am hinting at) are always committed by those whom we have known the longest and treasured the most.
So you are correct. The population at large (be it the Soviet diaspora or others) do not have it *actively* in their consciousness to "Slaughter the Murican, wherever you find them".
What is happening right now with them is the "Priming" phase. The irredeemable nature of Murica as a society & civilization is being *primed* into them at the subconscious level. The Elite are doing this on purpose.
Eventually, when the "trigger" comes, the Violence (from within) will be Crippling. Othello is probably a very good template for the sort of Tragedy we will be witnessing, except at the Macro level.
Ahnaf is mad the the West kicked his civilization's butt and wants revenge. Since his civilization is in no position to extract said revenge, he's had to settle for vicarious fantasies.
He also doesn't appear to know much if anything about finance. Hence, he changes the subject to sexual perversion whenever the subject comes up, conveniently glossing over his own civilization's rather dubious history with the subject.
> reach agreements with BRICS+ (now with their Commodity Money adopted successfully)
Lol. And you're worried about the *Americans* having enough time.
In Murica: The females murder their offspring (and revel in doing so) whilst the males readily offer themselves (mind body and soul) to be violated by Demons. The latter thus "stab & shoot" at whim nationwide.
The Eurasians do not engage in said Demoncraft. So your "laughter" or whatnot is utterly Moot. The Score is well known by those paying attention.
well, you guys went off on another round of these currentcy/SDR discussions under my reply :), but mostly it's the "minorities" that do these things in what is called the USA. If there's any hope of "time" at all, there has to be mass repatriations.
I am not really worried about "what happens afterward" until we are at the tipping point for a paradigm shift as describe in this post. I am also not concerned with "re-integrating" until the nation is back on track. Probably better to isolate and put additional pressure on the welfare recipients to leave.
Even if you are correct and "International Jewry" & others play the Key Role:
Responsibility cannot be absolved by the White population by merely deflecting onto "the evils of the Jewish race" or *insert other group here*. This is because for a significant part of the 20th century; Whites have been the supermajority in Murica overall.
So really; you get a repugnant conclusion:
1) They were too Stupid to do anything.
2) They were too Arrogant to fix things.
3) They were too Lazy to salvage the ship that is Murica.
4) Combo of (1) - (3) in various proportions.
Regardless of which one it is; "What happens afterwards" is quite clear... namely Total Destruction.
Simple reason being... if a population was guilty of (1) - (4) in the past... why on earth will it now "perform better" given the fact that it is (a) More Dilute than before and (b) Past Precedent indicates aforementioned maladies will continue into the future?
Maybe so. Although you should look into what the Chinese have been up to. In any case, none of that helps them get their supposed "commodity backed" currency up and running.
Commodity-SDRs are inevitable. A "Commodity backed currency" is the next step after that. The former Alone is enough to Kill Murica.
You are simply ignorant about how Commerce works and how "full interchangeability" is unnecessary at the Macro level.
This is interesting because it is still a fiat currency (not backed by anything except the full faith and credit of the American government), but at least its no longer a fractional reserve fiat system, controlled by shadow-entities that are hostile to our way of life. Simply the act of being able to "audit the treasury" via FOIA requests would help keep the banks more honest.
Right. It's not the ideal system I would pick for us -- but it's a pretty good one and it seems actually doable.
Such a currency would be backed if the government accepted it for tax purposes. As long as we have real estate taxes, such currency would be backed by the value of the real estate -- just as fractional reserve currency is today.
And if the federal government were to continue having excise taxes, the currency would be backed by the value of the taxed goods. Want some booze? You need T-notes. Put tariffs and excises on crude oil and the notes become backed by the intrinsic value of oil.
> Such a currency would be backed if the government accepted it for tax purposes.
This is not what "being backed" commonly means. Notably it does nothing to limit money printing.
The commoners are sometimes wrong.
Note the cognitive dissonance when libertarians say that Federal Reserve Notes aren't worth anything -- yet they won't hand them over to me, even for a delicious lollipop.
Commodity based money is based on the commodity used as money, but suffers the problem that the intrinsic value of the underlying money is insufficient for the desired liquidity. This leads to commodity money acting partially as fiat money, deriving its value from pure scarcity, much like bitcoin.
Commodity money inflated by fractional reserve banking has the upside of increasing the money supply while adding new intrinsic value -- the value of the collateral mortgaged. Banks don't create new money out of thin air; banks turn the intrinsic value of illiquid assets into liquid money. Alas, the arrangement is unstable.
Dave and Busters issue plastic tokens which have intrinsic value: the ability to play video games in a public venue which serves beer. Governments can issue similar tokens which have intrinsic value: protection from foreign enemies, enforcement of property deeds, roads, Lawrence Welk museums, etc. Treasury notes are thus first order derivatives -- of the intrinsic value produced and/or protected by government.
If you're going to go with that notion of "backed", then all money is "backed" by the gains from the trades it helps facilitate.
https://nakamotoinstitute.org/shelling-out/
NO! That's the exact notion I want to dispense with. It is a fallacy that infects many libertarian (and other) circles.
Our money is backed by more than faith or the fact that you can trade with it. If Food Lion and Amazon decided to stop accepting Federal Reserve Notes tomorrow, I would still value such notes -- because my home is mortgaged, and the mortgage is denominated in dollars.
Since I don't want to become homeless, I am willing to provide useful work in return for Federal Reserve notes.
Since millions of other people are in a similar situation, millions of other people are also willing to provide goods and services in return for Federal Reserve Notes.
And that's why merchants -- even black market merchants -- accept Federal Reserve Notes. They are backed by real estate mortgages, among other debts. The gold in Fort Knox is a tiny fraction of the backing of today's dollars.
---
When the money printers go brrr, then you end up with more Fed Notes backed by the same amount of real estates. Go brrr too hard and people can just pay off their mortgages and now the backing is reduced dramatically. Hello hyperinflation.
The Chicago Plan offsets this money printing with a crackdown on maturity transformation. Whether this deflationary effect offsets the new Treasury notes is an interesting question.
As far as "Intermediate" Phases go; this proposal is quite convincing.
The fractional reserve banking system has been around for a very long time, far before the Fed, Wilson, and other boogiemen. It emerged organically, not at the behest of some government diktat. Many other important institutions are connected to it in ways we can't understand. We should tread carefully here.
I disagree, obviously. The fractional reserve system emerged organically in the same way that crime emerged organically. It has always been a fraudulent deception and it has only been permitted because the people with power were the people who benefited from it.
Without the fractional reserve system, banks can't make loans. This basically shuts down all economic endeavors too big to be financed by private individuals (i.e. the vast majority of them). Everyone's quality of life would radically decrease.
Don't hate the banks. Hate the idiotic government regulations. They're the real problem.
Banks can make loans under full-reserve banking, they simply can't do so out of their demand deposits. They can loan against other assets they hold, such as certificates of deposit with long-term yields.
Well, you can pick & choose:
"Tread carefully", run out of *even MORE TIME* and watch the West getting Salted Brutally.
OR ... actually make an effort to "salvage the whole mess".
I will break character for a few seconds and say something "Optimistic": even though TIME has run out; billions of Humans exist today (and have yet to be sacrificed in the Nuclear Bonfire). So long as Humanity exists, the TIME disadvantage can be mitigated since "People" at the end of the day are primary solvers of Problems (Big & Small).
Hello fellow physiocrat. Your explanation does a great job in explaining the basics but it is also very succint. The Kumhof paper you link to is long and unintelligible. So...
Do you have any idea where one can find an explanation that is both longer than yours but shorter (and more intelligible) than the "Chicago Plan Revisited"? I am asking for a friend.
Thank you
Hello! I wish I did, but unfortunately the Chicago Plan Revisited has not been widely discussed elsewhere. I don't even remember how I stumbled upon it all those years ago.
Thanks for this one and your running on empty series by the way
Glad you liked it! Cheers
Correct, it has not, but it has allowed the US to print dollars excessively without making them worthless. Unfortunately for us, nothing lasts forever.
In prior essays you mentioned “your book” - what is the title of your book? Is it on Amazon or other provider?
It's called "running on Empty" and it's available on Amazon. It's just a compilation of the blog posts with minor edits so if you've read the blog series you don't need the book.
https://www.amazon.com/Running-Empty-Imminent-Collapse-Petrodollar-ebook/dp/B0BS3N9ZNV
THANK YOU!
Addendum: The main issue (assuming the "Equity Money" adoption goes through properly) is with regard to International Relations. Many nations have already begun the move to "Commodity Money" & have made it clear that the Muricans are persona non grata.
If you're sitting on "Equity Money" & the rest of the world are on "Commodity Money" AND they have made it clear "you're not welcome"... :
The Murican government would need tight controls of goods &/or services and their "flows" (in & out) otherwise the nations with "Commodity money" now adopted successfully will chip away & cause Havoc across the Economy. By "sheer numbers" they will prevail.
And therein lies the Achilles Heel of this whole matter... because this is a "highly probable outcome" (i.e. Murica being unwelcome & chipped away at in said manner) the "Elite" will use this as an excuse to not adopt the proposal AND "double down" on their "War with Everyone" plan.
> Many nations have already begun the move to "Commodity Money"
Not really. El Salvador and a few others have.
The so-called BRICS have merely made propaganda noises in that direction. For example Russia has asked people to trade their gold for rubles and called it "a step towards a gold standard"; note, however, that is has not offered to provide gold for people's rubles.
As per Pepe Escobar's sources:
The first step is to get something akin to SDRs that are commodity derived & backed.
The objective is to settle all intra-BRICS+ trade with said SDRs.
The "Commodity Money" outcome will have to be worked out from there.
As for "Specifics"? Officially, the Public have not been informed as of yet.
But that "Commodity Money" is the objective and that the "Commodity SDR" is the intermediary step... that is quite certain.
So No: This is a mortal threat to the Murican Dollar, and the move has begun; albeit it will be toward aforementioned Intermediary step first.
> The first step is to get something akin to SDRs that are commodity derived & backed.
So where can I exchange SDRs for commodities, and which commodities?
The fact you ask such a question highlights Illiteracy & ignorance.
SDRs (as they exist today) are Monetary Units "between nations".
When the IMF devised them, that was (and is) their purpose.
SDRs are not "transactable" by the individual.
Study More!
So where can foreign countries get commodities for the SDRs? Because it sounds like this whole talk of SDRs being "backed by commodities" pure propaganda.
Once again: This question shows Illiteracy & Ignorance.
To use the IMF example-
Traditionally, they defined 1 SDR as deriving value from a basket of currencies. It used to be around 50% USD, 30% Euro and 20% "Others". (these ratios have since been updated to lessen the USD %).
For a Commodity-SDR system, you would have a similar concept. So something akin to 20% Crude Oil, 25% Gold and so on. (this is an example, nothing more)
The "Commodity-SDR" itself would be a unit of account used between nations and having "value" via said ratios of 20%, 25% and so on.
Just like the IMF, it would be used as a Unit of Account, not as "an interchangeable" entity which when Country A gives to Country B, you get 20% Oil, 25% Gold and so on.
Commerce is never conducted in this "purely interchangeable" way; especially at the "country to country" level.
We've been doing this for decades. It's called the petrodollar. The Commodity SDR is just the petrodollar shared between countries and commodities. The petrodollar was imposed and enforced, while the Commodity SDR is voluntary.
Once there was a group of mice who were tired of being ambushed and eaten by a cat. So the mice got together and brainstormed ideas. One of the mice had a brilliant idea. He said, "lets just put a loud bell on the cat so we always know where he is." The other mice cheered him, until 1 of the mice asked, "so who bells the cat?"
In the 'what should we do' thread I (and a few others) recommended talking about what we can actually do to make things happen IRL. This post is an excellent example of why.
I see such suggestions all the time, going back decades. They take the form of, "I have a brilliant idea! All it takes is to convince those with power to voluntarily give up some of that power!"
OK. It probably is a great idea. But who bells the cat?
Almost by definition, solutions to current problems require those in power to give up some power. Because those current problems were intentionally created by those in power to take advantage of; current problems aren't problems to our elites, they are opportunities. For example, you said:
"This time, this crisis, we must succeed in ending the Fed, because the alternative is the end of America in everything but name — the end of America as a First World country with a middle class."
I agree.
However, do you see any signs that those in charge want America to continue as a 1st world country? That they want anything other than the destruction of the middle class? The end-goal of those in charge is a global Soviet Union. A cohesive nation that might resolve not to be part of that, and have the ability to stay out of it, is exactly what they don't want.
You are recommending that we petition our leaders to abandon their reason for existence. That they give up power so that in the future they won't have even more power. Might as well try to convince a hungry cat to let mice tie a bell to it's neck.
I am not recommending we petition our leaders. I don't even consider them my leaders. I am simply explaining what *my* policies are, and hoping that when chaos comes, there'll be a chance to implement them.
"" The end-goal of those in charge is a global Soviet Union. ""
Too Optimistic.
The end goal is to summon their Demon Masters into the flesh. Having "world government" meanwhile assumes they want the Humans to continue existing.
Other than that; I agree with the overall critique. The Cat will not allow any such "Belling" however positively it is presented.
> Once there was a group of mice who were tired of being ambushed and eaten by a cat. So the mice got together and brainstormed ideas. One of the mice had a brilliant idea. He said, "lets just put a loud bell on the cat so we always know where he is." The other mice cheered him, until 1 of the mice asked, "so who bells the cat?"
The irony is that cats are so agile they can quickly learn how to stalk prey without ringing the bell.
I suspect this article is pitched slightly above my IQ. Nonetheless I've got a couple of questions.
What would be your objection to CH Douglas and social credit? Do you think it would be incapable of expanding the money supply rapidly enough to meet the needs of mass society?
One for the libertarians: why not just fully nationalise the banks? Doing so would eliminate the profit motive, so that 'incentives' for banks to lend money would be a non-issue.
CH Douglas and social credit has been on my reading list for some time, but I am afraid I haven't gotten to it yet. My preliminary review suggested there was merit to what he described, so I am looking forward to learning more about it.
> Doing so would eliminate the profit motive, so that 'incentives' for banks to lend money would be a non-issue.
Then getting loans would be decided entirely by politics, no thank you.
> Then getting loans would be decided entirely by politics…
This is already true in most Western vassals and the empire of lies itself (i.e Murica). Moot point.
That's because the banking system was already partially nationalized during the bailouts.
Also, the underlying logic of "the government has too much power, but giving it even more will solve the problem".
Government will exist so long as Humanity exists. It is Human Nature to centralise power. The only pathway left that is viable and non-utopic is to make sure during the centralisation; people with power are held back by standards, creeds, etc from engaging in their worst excesses. There will never be however a world of “no excesses” and pure “reason” (whatever that silly word means)
> Government will exist so long as Humanity exists.
True, but that's no reason to give it more power than is necessary.
> It is Human Nature to centralise power.
It is also human nature to sin.
Correct. Human nature is to sin, which means amelioration is the way. Ameliorate the excesses of government, and centralise powers to make sure that enemies (from within and abroad) don’t triumph. Because really, “less or no government” just means “ripe target for Conquest & Slaughter”.