Dec 24, 2012
Yes, you are right, God's laws simply describe what works and does not work as per the design specifications of man's being physical/mental/emotional/spiritual as it interacts with others, and within physical/spiritual universe. The challenge is to figure out what those laws are.
I know you believe that gold (or any commodity money that has reality) is the only money that is real, honest, and conforms to God's design for man's economic interaction. This may in fact be true.
Or not. You could have real and honest money that was not tangible. You could even have honesty, agreement, and proper respect for property rights using pretend numbers. You could have it, but there would be certain challenges to the start-up and shut-down of the project. Obviously, our system has "worked" for a long time. It has worked exceptionally well for the evil controllers, under Satan's domination, to increasingly control much social structure. You cannot practically buy or sell without using the imaginary dollar and bank accounts. You cannot open a bank account with out a Social Security number and signing on to that contract (whatever it is, who knows?). There are some objective idolatrous issues with obligating yourself in that agreement.
The flawed system has worked, you could say, to the degree that ordinary folks have been honest at the level they have control, and to the degree that the banker/controllers haven't been too greedy in their lying and the pace of the burglary.
I cannot from scripture confirm or deny that. I know that you have found Biblical reference where in fact money was defined in terms of physical substance (gold, silver...) This is certainly an example of how God illustrated economic implementation at one point in history.
Definition is something I think that is essential. Pretty sure, this is what I mean by substance. Think of me offering something to you in a paper bag. I declare what I think the contents is worth, I want you to trust me about what the contents are worth, and want to exchange those contents to you for something else you can give me, that is a known something. You are going to be nervous about this, because you want to know what is in the bag, so that you can make your independent decision about whether the contents of the bag will be directly useful to yourself, or indirectly valued by others for you to use in trade. If you are not clear about the contents of the bag, and most especially if there is nothing in the bag for you to discover -- future trades may have problems. That future is upon the world right now.
Your trade item has to be defined as something in order to be honest, real, and conforms to God's designs.
It must be verifiable, and falsifiable. You need to be able to tell if it is there, or not there.
What are you using as money? Are you honest about that? Who owns it? How did they come to own it? What does the Bible say about that?
Whether this in fact implies that man "must" use this same implementation of money, or not, is the question at hand. I'm afraid we can't know for certain, given that the scriptures you have presented me are examples, rather than commands in unequivocal terms.
There is an absolute: honesty about all the vectors/aspects of what you are trading. If you lie about the quantity: if you you want to give 3 and get 5 worth in credit in the trade, that is dishonest. If you want to use 1/2 cup measurements measuring out your substance to me, and require me to use 1 cup measurements to measure my substance back to you, it is dishonest to allow the implication that the Measures are the same when they are not. If you give me yellow hay, and want me to give you same measure in gold as if the two substances are equivalent - do you see the dishonesty there?
Is there another vector I am missing, or are you going to say there is "just another frame" and I don't understand?
Introduce all the new money you want as long as you are honest about what the new money is and who it belongs to.
Current US Dollar, when it is "created", does it belong to the Federal Reserve? Who else, if any?
I can certainly support your thesis that God hates unequal/uneven measures, and certainly men who pervert the money supply by introducing new money without introducing a correspondent contract to produce new consumable value, that is unquestionably evil/wrong/violation of God's way as He designed it.
Again, fiat money makes the use of unequal measures easy, and tempts man to steal.
You are saying it is easy to use unequal measures. What are those measures?
What is being measured?
Can you name two specific measures and how they differ from one another?
If they use these measures to steal, who are the old owners who are robbed? Who are the new owners from whom the civil magistrate should enforce double restitution back to the victim?
How should the rest of the community respond if the civil leaders are not punishing the criminals?
But, by itself, is it evil? no, just a poor method of doing absolutely accurate and accountable accounting.
How "poor" does it have to be before responsible men are required by God to punish the crime of theft with double restitution?
If it is not "accurate" where is the lie? Is it in ownership, measure, substance, or quantity?
God will punish those who steal in this way. He may punish those who designed the system with the intent to steal.
Sure, God will do whatever He wants, the question is "what are we responsible to do to others if they commit crime?", and "What will God do to us if we are violating any of these principles?"
He may punish the designers. But are humans responsible to punish the designers? Are humans responsible to punish the users of the "system" who profit from using the system?
But, I do not believe God will punish those who use fiat money, nor will He punish those who sincerely try to bring equability into the trade by purposefully trading value for value as per the accepted measure of value as represented by the dollar/money-unit.
Sin is any transgression of- or want of conformity to- the Law of God. The only reason God would punish, is if someone violates His law. Do we understand the opportunities where men can violate His law? Covet, steal, false witness, adultery, murder? Or, to simplify in areas of social issues between man and man, we like to say offenses in life, liberty, property. Obviously we can offend God directly, as in the first Table of the 10 Commandments.
The main thing we are focusing in here in money issues is stealing through false witness. As long as using fiat money doesn't mislead, lie, or falsely accuse someone; and not steal property which belongs to another -- we have nothing to fear. If good men let bad men steal, God will afflict the entire community with every man stealing from his neighbor. Hello! If good men let bad men lie, and lazily believe those lies, without holding them responsible for perjury and libel, God afflicts the entire community with delusion, such that everyone starts believing lies. Such is the state in the world today in the area of money. There may have never been a time in human history before, where more men believed something was there when there is nothing there.
You mention "equability into the trade".
Equitable I think means to "equally" honor the property rights of both trading partners : and to equally disclose to both trading partners the quantity of measurable substances being traded. In the case of adding quantity to global money units, we are not treating both parties equally. Banks get to rent property (the new money quantities created by [open market operations, Branch-Reserve bolstering under the discount rate, or fractional-reserve loaning to bank clients]) that cost them virtually nothing, while the borrower/rent-payers have to give up "money" that costs them in that they had to trade time/money/goods in order to obtain. The banks give up nothing and obtain something. The borrow gives up something (interest/rent) and gets "something" consisting of the use of some "money", although it is really nothing in terms of its essence. In a way they give something and get nothing, although the use of the credit during the terms of the loan we consider as "something".
Next we treat with "value for value as per the accepted measure of value as represented by the dollar/money-unit."
Back to the old "value" argument. Is value something objective on it's own, or is value the subjective quality that a person "sets on" a quantity of a definable something (if you are getting tired of "quantity of measurable substance"). I am thinking you are using the word value for two different things, and pretending they are equal. Nobody is trading value. They are trading some thing that they value, which they either value a "whole bunch", or hardly at all; or some amount in between. We have to measure the difference between "much" and "little" by using a measure that we quantify by a unit of measure.
Do you see the difference between what it is you are trying to measure, and the measure you are using to measure it? Is "dollar" the value? Or is dollar the measure you are using to see how big the value is? It can't be both without violating the concept of definition and non-contradiction.
How much is in a dollar? Does it change? Has it changed since 1971 or 1968? Has the measure we use changed? Have the quantity of those measures changed? Has the substance, of which the dollar consists, changed since 1971? Do people generally value an equal amount of that substance, of which the dollar consists, today, as much as they did in 1968 -- even if the dollar might contain a different number of units of that substance, assuming we are using the same type of measure that we have used in years past.
Why is it they say the dollar has lost 95% (it's more now) since 1913. It remains to be seen whether the dollar will lose 100% of its value by 2013.
How many somethings are in a dollar, and what are those equivalent to? We know how many ounces are in a pound [unit= 16, Measure= ounces] and we have the double witness of how many tons are in a pound [unit= 1/2000, Measure= ton]. We have a double-witness vantage point of what we mean by "one pound". How many x in a dollar? It does not help us to say there is 1/100th of a dollar in a cent, since the definition of a cent is 1/100th of a dollar.
