We are talking about restoring honesty for all three factors, hereinafter abbreviated to QMS. Perhaps you can appreciate the difficulty of trying to count (Quantity) the units (Measure) of a Substance that does not exist?
Money is a symbol of value; it is not the value itself. All value is composed of physical substance; value can be in the form of goods or services. Goods are the more durable value, coming in various shapes, sizes, materials, assemblies, and complexity. Services are more transitory and possibly ephemeral, consisting of a sequence of actions by a physical agent.
I use the dual-purpose word: Substance, meaning something objective that is definable - doesn’t have to be touchable/tangible – just definable.
The units of value are called dollars.
Do you see that you have “switched frames” here? You just said money is not the value itself, that value is the stuff money represents – points to – stands-in for. Then you immediately say that the stuff being represented is measured by a unit of measure called the dollar. So you have put “dollar” on the right side of the defining equation.
[dollars of money] = thingsofvalue measured by dollars.
[dollars of money] = qty x dollars x thingsofvalue
I believe what I object to is that you are using “dollar” and/or “value” as a word that determines the meaning of both sides of your equation. In a way, a Definition takes the form of an equation: This equals This.
Unknown = expression of the unknown “thing” in terms that are known
UnKnown = Known + Known + known
And your problem is that you are trying to define “value” on the left side of the equation/definition, when you are also using it with a different meaning on the right side of the equation – as if it has already been defined as a known meaning useful to define the unknown meaning.
This is similar to my discovery of how FreeMasonry deceives and defrauds. It calls itself a religion (the oldest, most universal, comprehensive, fundamental, most-compatible-with-all-other-religions) in one breath, and then denies it in the next breath when it is saying it is a totally different kind of thing than all the other religions out there (Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hindu, Humanist).
When definitions get critical, you just have to keep all your unknowns on the right side of the definition until you establish your unknown by means of the known.
I see in the above two paragraphs, that you are saying Value is not in the same class as money, but it is in the class of things that are not money, things that are over here on the right side with the Substance we are talking about, the useful, definable things that people want.
You are using the “dollar” word the same way. This guarantees confusion.
So we are going to take a concrete example on the substance side/Value side/right side – lets take Rice. Rice has Value with People. They value it, which means they are willing to trade for it -- other things they own and also value – it is just that when they go to trade it for rice, they value the rice more than they value that other thing. But we cannot talk about Value as an objective thing about the Substance: Rice, because it does not tell us anything about how much rice we have. We may have complete agreement about Substance: this is White, Sweet, Basmati, Thai Rice – no question.
But, in order to trade, we have to know how MUCH rice we have. I like the word Measure, you like the word Value. I think value is confusing, because you are using the same word, but with conflicting meanings. I want to define the measure of the rice, and I want to use a weight-measure like Pound or KiloGram. I have 2.5 pounds of this kind of rice. That is objective, that communicates equally to everyone What it is that we want to trade.
But so far, we know nothing about the value or anything else that someone might trade for it, because that cannot be defined, objectified or used as a unit of account or a store of value. One person will not want to pay $4/lb for this stuff, because all rice is rice, and he knows he can get it for $0.39/lb at Waremart. Another person might snap it up immediately at $4/lb because he knows it is rare, hard to find, and it is the only kind of rice he can tolerate in his diet. So how much rice do we have to sell then? Would you say we had 0.39 or 4.00? No, you are not using value, or money to find out how much rice you have, you are using something else as a Measure in order to know what it is you have to offer in exchange for the Money of the Marketplace.
The exception would be, if we had a rice-standard for our money. We are using RiceMoney now. Now there is a possibility of defining our Unit of Account, because we are not using “value” on both sides of the equation. We are going to define our new money unit which will symbolize something, be a representative of something, point to a definitely-defined thing. Let’s call our new monetary unit a Dwolla. 1 Dwolla equals 1.7 Pounds of White, Sweet, Basmati, Thai Rice.
So far, no value yet, only definition. We have no idea what this unit, 1 unit, consisting of qty=1.7, u/m=pound, substance=rice – is “worth”, no idea how people are going to value it – presumably everybody will value it a little differently. But we know what it is. And we can speak of it independently of value.
Now, to compare to your first phrase above, we could say that our Dwolla is a symbol of our money. Someone could make a covenant that says we will owe you a Dwolla, and at an agreed point in time, that 1.7 lbs of rice could be paid in lieu of “owing” you the Dwolla. So we might reckon credits and debits of Dwollas all day long in the course of business, without “settling”, but at some time, there could be a real settlement of the transaction of the real money that our ledger digits represent. This would be like real money, real covenant, real definition, and quantity of measurable substance. And though it is true people will value using the ledger digits, and they will value the actual thing that the money IS, there is no need to talk about “value” as such concerning the Dwolla. The MarketPlace automatically takes care of that. Our only responsibility is be honest about the quality of the substance, honest about the measurement and the counts of those measures that are owed, paid, and traded.
Money is not value, but money is used as a means of representing value. Value is subjective, with each consumer and producer ascribing value to each good/service in terms of dollar units for purpose of exchange in the market. The unit of value, the dollar, is an abstract concept, just as is honor and justice, the meter and second, and color and taste. Still, all abstract qualities have physical correlates. In the case of the dollar, the physical correlate, and standard by which these abstractions are given specificity, can be defined as a certain type and quantity of metal, size of stone, or quantity of commodity. In the case of the US Dollar, tokens are issued into circulation, with each token being composed of physical substance (paper, metal, or digits). The amount of value ascribed to each unit is based roughly upon the total number of units in circulation, and the amount of value that is available for immediate consumption (e.g. in inventory/production), and the amount of goods/services committed for production. The dollar was once defined in terms off a certain quantity of gold or silver, but law changed that definition; the dollar is now no longer defined in terms of a specified amount of metal, rather its definition has been substituted by a floating/ad hoc definition based on a near infinite number of individual market negotiations. The value associated with the dollar is established by a de facto process of exchange; the value of the dollar is defined by: 1) its use as a unit of value, 2) its denomination in the market to indicate the relative assessment of self-valuation of products compared with the valuation of consumable goods/service by other vendors, 3) the mutual agreement and acceptance of valuation in terms of dollars by producer as consumer, and consumer as producer, creates the de facto definition of the substance associated with the unit of value.
When the Fed issues new money, new value is not created or made available for consumption. If the Fed creates new money (symbols of value), the best possible scenario is that the recipient of that loan pledges/commits/contracts to produce more value than the value he could consume at current market prices. Obviously, if new money was printed/issued by the Fed, and the borrower consumed that amount of value from the marketplace, if the market was infinitely responsive to the ratio of value available for consumption to the number of dollars in circulation, then the value per unit in circulation would be diminished. But, there is not a 1:1 correlation between the diminishment of value/dollar and the number of dollars issued into circulation. The question is why, and the answer is that the market has taken into account the fact that the commitment to produce goods and services is a type of value. As long as the borrowers, who take the new money from the Fed, are actually committed to the multiplying value with that money they have borrowed, the new money will gradually have new value/goods/services arise in the market to associate with that new money.
The problem is that the Federal government has become one of the primary borrowers of this new money. The Fed is issuing some new money to support the welfare state to finance the Federal Debt. This is a commitment by the taxpayers to produce more goods and services to pay for this debt. No new capital goods were installed, no entrepreneurs willing to risk their fortune were involved, no new technology or market need was being implemented or pursued. Rather, an un-solicited debt was being laid on the people of a nation who had no commitment to produce more, or more efficiently, to meet the terms and payments of this debt. In other words, new money has been issued into the economy through the entitlement programs, and there has been no new products produced to associate with that new money, and there is no new goods and services in the commitment-pipeline. Thus, the fed has issued tokens, symbols of value, and has not properly vetted that money by insuring that the borrower is able and realistically capable of producing adequate value to support his life, and plus meet the added burden of interest and principle repayment.
As far as I know, in every nation of the world right now, money only consists of quantities that banks say they owe account holders — or that they say account-holders owe the bank. Yet those “quantities” can have no meaning with no measures to count.
These “owings” can be cancelled by contrary/opposite “owings”, but no “owing” can be paid. This imaginary “say-owe” debt we (in the USA) count in dollars.
What is owed are “dollars”.
What is a dollar? Nothing. No Thing.
No, the dollar is a unit, and the unit corresponds to an amount of value, and the value is defined by the de facto negotiation in themarket.
How do you pay no thing? You can’t.
You pay with symbols of value. You produce value, your consume value. You convert the value you produce into money/tokens/symbols of value, denominated in units of value, the dollar.
If there is nothing there, there is no way to falsify or verify what the banks say is “in” the account(s). This is too much freedom to give men. No men through history have proven worthy of such privilege without abusing the power of killing-, enslaving-, and stealing from- men.
The symbols/tokens of value/money exists, just as much as the value itself. The money/tokens in circulation are just contracts with the market to redeem value.
So can society return to honest money?
Money can associated by law with gold, and by law require the issuing agency to convert each token with gold. Such a money is more stable, since the only variable is the societal/market valuation of gold. The redeemability by a third party (government) for gold does not make the symbol more real (it’s real either way, consisting of paper/metal/electrons). Such a requirement simply puts a risk on the issuing bank to ensure that its policies produce only a small demand for redemption in gold. The possibility of demand for redemption in gold places the Fed in the position of risk/loss, where its existence and trust as an institution of monetary policy management is at risk. Such an organization puts the Fed inside the market, and subject to the will of the market. In such a scenario there is no king, no demi-god, no superior force unaccountable to humanity for its actions – such as we see now.
With the modern technology available, there could end up being a huge array of options available to us to facilitate trade. There could be a plurality of Substances, as well as various Units of Measures employed. Whether Metric or Decimal type, a standardized Unit of measurement (as the old definition of dollar was supposed to be) is beneficial, though not essential, to trade.
A system of competing currencies, with a conversion factor between the two, and an overhead associated with the interconversion, would be an incentive for the issuers of the competing currencies to engage in policies of market-appropriate expansions of their particular medium.
Factors to consider:
Coins/bars: Gold and silver (or lesser semi-precious metals), in coin or various other forms, could be carried or vaulted in banks or bank-like businesses. As now, we could carry token coins of base metal in our pockets which could represent any monetary unit a new banking system would support. The substance they represent could be near as our pocket/purse, or as far away as a vault in London or Hong Kong.
Such a system is essentially a gold standard system. There is no difference between carrying a base metal coin and a difficult-to-duplicate paper currency. Both are meaningful only to the extent that the market recognizes them as valid representations of value. The benefit of a 3 rd party storage and commitment to exchange for valuable metal/commodity, is only in the keeping of the money issuing agency (the Fed) honest in its rate of issuance of new money.
Bills/Notes/WarehouseReceipts: Like our old Silver & Gold Certificates, showing a defined note-type contractual promise (who pays who what when). Banks could honor the redemption of these pieces of paper we carried for whatever the money consisted of. We could write checks, as now, instructing our depository institution to transfer legal title of our QMS to another party. A clearinghouse could help with arranging transfers to cut down unnecessary shipping of Substances around the world.
The actual transfer of precious metal/commodities from one location to another is largely unnecessary. The actual value in such a system of having a precious metal redemption option, is the accountability and sobriety associated with such demands.
Electronic Account Number/Exp Date: Like we use our Debit/Credit cards on phone or internet — with the difference that real title to QMS would be transferred in this system. A BitCoin-type system, although set to be a limited-issue non-substance currency, may have technology that could be used to transfer title to securely-held substance.
f, as I suspect, God would be pleased by this motion of faithfulness — wouldn’t He show Himself strong to come to Her aid? If the Church says, “We work and sacrifice to utilize honesty in the substance we present to our God (tithes/offerings), and honesty in the way we measure it.” All of a sudden, we find that we have to move away from the US Dollar, since no one even knows its substance or how to measure it. See above explanation of the substance of both the symbol, and the value associated with the symbol. There is no system possible which has no substance except possibly the child’s game of “air banking” using hand gestures of dispensing imaginary money from cardboard boxes assembled to resemble cashier windows. Since men have primarily used silver and gold for money throughout recorded history, this would be an obvious place to start.
Church leaders can return to teaching the whole counsel of the Bible regarding honesty and how it relates to contracts, usury, debt, substances, measures, slavery, freedom, theft, perjury, and covetousness. Church leaders can call upon their congregations to return their tribute to their Savior and Master in the form of substance Christ created, instead of imaginary nothing that is not created or existent, but is, instead, the bitter fruit of faith in a lie, and the mother of all weapons of mass destruction of economies and nations. Again, the beginning stages of reformation of the system of money, is the de-authorization of government from forcing the transfer of wealth from one man to another by taxes, and by the inflation that comes from the Fed funding the inevitable shortfall.
Bojidar Marinov [Bulgarian] commenting on religious nature of the EU attempts at modern alchemy [John’s comments in brackets/red font]
The Philistines were smart people. It took them [only] two days to figure out that no idol could stand upright in the presence of God. The story is told in 1 Samuel 5. The Philistines captured the Ark of the Lord and brought it to their temple, the house of Dagon. The next morning, when they arose, the statue of Dagon was lying on its face on the ground before the Ark of the Lord. They took it up and put it back in its place; idols are known to need human help, every once in a while. The next morning they arose, and behold, Dagon was lying on his face again, and this time his head and the palms of his hands were cut off on the threshold of Dagon; only the trunk was left. The Philistine priests didn’t need a third warning. The text says after this incident, they never trod on the threshold of Dagon again. And then, when the whole land was afflicted with tumors, the Philistines realized it immediately: “The ark of the God of Israel must not remain with us, for His hand is severe on us and on Dagon our god.” This shows a population that is intelligent enough to put two and two together quite easy. The Philistines didn’t need much to figure out the cause-effect relationship between their religious practice and the curse on the land.
[This shows they were using the scientific method to figure out the cause-effect relationship better than our Moderns can manage. One definition of “fool” is, someone who does the same thing over and over again (cause), hoping for an eventual different effect. (related to alchemy? Let’s keep putting ink on paper, over and over, and see if eventually it turns to gold?]
The European leaders are not as smart. For several years now they wake up every morning, and the idol of the Euro is on its face down, broken into more and more pieces, unable to recover, or to become one piece again. But they don’t learn. They patiently go to the temple and patiently stick the pieces together with glue and duck tape, vowing to never allow the Euro to fail. The next morning the thing is broken into many more pieces, but don’t you worry, they gather together in their endless conferences, meetings, and sessions, and spend greater quantities of glue and duct tape.
As the new President of the European Central Bank Mario Draghi said, he will do “ whatever it takes ” to preserve the Euro. Imagine the logical consequences of such statement. If you can’t, I will help you: Imagine Europe in ruins, something like Berlin in May 1945, and Draghi going around offering freshly printed Euros. Whatever it takes. The collapse of Europe? Sure. Whatever it takes.
The Euro, of course, was created with one idea: As part of a greater project to prove to the world that Europe can replicate the economic growth of its past without the Biblical faith, the Biblical work ethic, and the Biblical monetary system – that is, the gold standard – that created the economic and technological growth in the first place. The European leaders in the last two generations exchanged the Biblical faith for a faith in the government, the Biblical work ethic for the ethic of welfare entitlements, and the Biblical monetary system for fiat money.
[Instead of faith in the power and authority of the Triune Creator God of the Bible, they preferred to trust in the sovereign power and authority of created Man;
Instead of the Biblical work ethic of “workman is worthy of his wage”, they replace with “from each according to government’s ability to coerce him to produce and surrender the fruits of his production to government - to each according to his desire”.
Instead of being honest about the substance they are using for money, honest about the unit of measure they were using to measure that substance, and honest about how they were counting those units – they abolished both substance and measure and pretended the Word of Man could create and annihilate Units they could count (without being honest about what those Units were). It was not so much a “gold standard” as it was an honesty-standard]
And since the individual nations were not producing the growth, a centralized system – especially in terms of the money supply – would certainly do the magic.
[Magic, as in alchemy? If none of us are producing more than we consume, the answer is easy, let’s just pool our debts together and they will magically become a big positive credit and we will all have more money.]
And the European Union would be the end of history, finally, the perfect system created without God, with the government promising everything people want, and the government supplying it through a centralized system of money printing.
[Technically, it is not money printing. Fractional-Reserve banking practice does not require printing redeemable certificates or debt-transfer certificates on paper in order to increase the reckoned quantity of dollars in the system. The legal authorization to [pretend units of money are increased because someone borrows them] would not have been accepted unless the paper bills that resembled the redeemable certificates were still in use. Then once people get used to just the “owing” of the numbers, domestic redeemability can be dropped (1933), then the precious-metal, silver, token coins could be withdrawn (1964, 1968), then foreign redeemability could be dropped as well (1971). Even during the rare instances when the Federal Treasury issued dollars outside of the banking system, the increase in dollars may not have been depended on more papers with ink on them. The paper is just used as a debt-transfer certificate. If there is no debt, there can be no transfer. If nothing is really being loaned, and nothing can be paid – there can be no debt.
The system started breaking down very early but no one paid attention to it: None of the original members of the Euro zone actually met any of the criteria – like debt-to-GDP ratio or government budget deficits – and none of them had any intention to meet those criteria. That would be good, if it stayed there. But there was no concerted effort to discipline the governments to not go deeper in debt; and how could anyone discipline a government which is desperately trying to play god. So, by the law of entropy, the governments promised more, and borrowed to fulfill these promises. That is, as I said above, every idol needs human help every once in a while, to maintain its upright position. This time the human help came from those who worked and saved, and were gullible enough to save their money in banks that finance governments.
Until those who saved money to support the idol through their savings said enough is enough. And the Greek government suddenly discovered that the idol is on its face, and the promises for salaries and pensions for its government employees and retirees can not be met. And then Ireland discovered it too. And then Portugal. And then Spain. And then Italy. The idol kept falling on its face, breaking into smaller and smaller pieces.
And the European leaders keep propping it up back again. Whatever it takes. They don’t have to be as smart as the Philistines of old. Whatever it takes.
This time, obviously, it took Timothy Geithner and the American taxpayer. Geithner went to visit the German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble in his vacation home on the island of Sylt in the North Sea. The reason for such prompt visit? To do “everything needed” to protect the Eurozone.
In other words, Europe is running out of glue and duct tape, and the American taxpayer is expected to provide these very important materials for the survival of the cult of the Euro. Whatever it takes. The fact that the Euro is collapsing so spectacularly can’t make those “leaders” stop for a moment and think, “Why, may be it was a bad idea in the first place, what do you say?” No. Tony Blair made sure he explained in an article in the German Bild , “To give up the euro now would be a catastrophe economically, not just politically.” And to stick to it won’t be, right? But scare tactics always works, especially on populations that prefer idols to the living God. “Don’t you dare abandon the euro, the economy will collapse.”
Timothy Geithner’s visit is in vain. The idol will keep falling and breaking. The problem has nothing to do with political decisions, it has everything to do with the false religion Europe has adopted: The religion of the state as god walking on earth. The religion of the state promising what only God can promise, and trying to deliver what only God can deliver. The political religion of Europe brought the current curse upon its head; and only a return to Christ will restore Europe as it has been in the past.
To Draghi’s promise to preserve the euro “whatever it takes,” God has an answer: “I will destroy that idol, whatever it takes.” If it takes the destruction of Europe, so be it. God won’t be mocked by a bunch of politicians that have less brains than those Philistine priests of old.
