Monetary Reform

I would be interested to see a country made up of nice little local co-ops, all very Shire-like, starting without any mega-corporations at all, no Wal-marts or anything, but just local co-ops and such things - but that country were to use the same money-as-debt that we use right now (only from nice local banks).

I would be immensely interested to see how quickly "Wal-mart" would spring up and all the co-ops get nationalized or federalized or some such thing in the above scenario.

Monetary reform is that part of the economics discussion where a few rather eccentric people find they cannot get very far past some very basic principles, and they say that if you do not fix the money itself (the "life-blood" of an economy) then there's no point in talking about the other stuff; but if you do fix the money itself (which is to say, the principles behind its creation and issuance), then a great deal of all that other stuff will start taking care of itself.

Many other people believe the opposite of this. They say that if we fix all this other stuff, then the money will fix itself - and that we shouldn't idolize money. In short, they treat it as it is treated in the market where, naturally, what it is does not need to be thought about.

We did not arrive at money the way one arrives at something at a remove - such as, say, a man will come upon a woodpile or a lake, or a mine of gold. There is no such thing as a static wealth object. Money comes from man, and it is corrupted by man. The very purpose of money is to benefit the common good. That's not a fancy or a welfare notion. That is the very reason man came up with money.

When it is corrupted, such as its very creation and issuance being the instrument of private profit (usury), it does not just cease to benefit the common good, but becomes the working device that drains and robs the productions and labours of man. Money as debt: for every amount that goes out, there is a back-syphoning.

We have to pay for our money? How absurd is that?

As James Roberston said,

If we were starting for a people just at the beginning of the constitution of a society, and someone suggested, 'Well, the best way of creating the money, and putting it in, is to combine it with the function of providing a competitive profit-making market for borrowing and lending' - it would be regarded as idiotic!

And that's just what we have.

"The good news is that the solution isn't new or radical. America used to do it...throughout American history politicians have fought with big bankers over it. But this aspect of our history has now been erased from history books." --Bill Still

Seriously, take the time to watch this phenomenal documentary, then come back to it later and watch it again.