MONEY
Money: any circulating meaning of exchange
--------------------
Origin of Money and Examples
Money is representative of resources used. The acceptance of money is a social compact that allows inter-individual debt of resources to be offered to another person regardless of relation to the original debt.
Money cannot exist without debt. For instance, if I go into the wild and obtain seeds for a vegetable garden. I then proceed to live alone in the wilderness producing my own sustenance without the aid or interaction of any other person. I am indebted to no one. Therefore there is no need to exchange money. Any exchange of currency or commodity without the need is useless. The need arises from owing a debt to another person.
The problem is that money represents debt due to the reception of a service provided which takes up resources unavailable to the person indebted. Money is not directly representative of the service only the debt owed. Money as the exchange of debt is agreed upon by society so that it may provide itself with justification of not owing towards expended resources. Money cannot be created without the expenditure of resources.
A direct representation of calling in debt can be illustrated as this. I have built a fence for you. This fence is meant to keep away animals that would otherwise eat your grain. You provided all apparent required resources to have the fence built. However, there were resources you could not supply; such as my time, and the wear and tear on my body. Since I have expended something of mine for you,
you are in debt to me. To represent this debt you give me money. This money represents the work I have done for you and the debt you then owe me. I can take this money and go purchase a sack of flour made from the grain in the field I fenced off, thereby keeping the animals out, to allow your grain to grow and be made into flour to be purchased by me. You debt is no longer to me. In this case
I have utilized the money provided to me as a representation of debt directly towards the source of the original debt.
An indirect representation would be if I then took the money you gave me and purchased any number of things that have nothing to do with the fence, your grain, the animals, or anything that had any amount of reasonable connection to the action I provided to you that put you in debt to me.
Debt is Representative of Resources Expended
Now, before the fence is ever built you and I have agreed upon what you will owe me. You will owe me a bushel of apples, or 10 otter skins, or $100. In the United States of America, in A.D. 2009, the agreed upon method of representation of debt is the dollar (or even less tangible the electronic representation of a dollar). This dollar represents nothing other than the promise of a society that it
(the dollar) is worth something; this is almost as good as Mr. Minuits beads. So I will inevitably take the $100 to build the fence, and in turn to give it for exchange of flour or whatever else.
For an accurate representation of debt to be presented the unreturnable resources that account for the debt must first be tallied and agreed upon. The task conducted is not what is being paid for, it is the resources that were used performing the task.
For the instance of building a fence we will look at the resource of time. If I have a long weekend, and on this weekend I have no plans or intentions to do anything particular with one of the days in this weekend, then this time may be less valuable than time I would have spent building my own fence with my son. If you want me to build your fence in the time allotted for building my own fence, then the time (the resource of that specific instant of time) could be much more valuable to me and therefore increase the amount of debt you owe me.
Each resource used accounts for an amount of debt owed, like when you bring your car to the mechanic and get charge for parts and service. Now let us think about that “part” you bought for your car. You don’t even know what it is, it is just a thingamajig that makes your car go. Why in the world does it cost $100? Well, remember you are then paying for its parts and services, from locating and
extracting the raw materials in the earth, to the gasoline it takes the plant worker to use to get to work to build the part on the conveyor system the company had to buy, etc., etc. You are paying for all of that because it all requires resources. You paid for these resources buy selling the grain you grew behind the fence I built. You sold the grain, instead of giving it away, because it cost you the
resources of time and land space to grow it. And so on and so forth as everything is connected in this way.
Circular Debt
Although money is circulated, it cannot travel in a redundant circular path. I cannot owe you $20, and then you borrow $20 from me without me first paying you back. In this case we would both owe each other $20 causing a grand total of $40 worth of debt. The original $20 that I owed you was for apples from your orchard that I was not able to pay you for, say I left my wallet at my house. Then
the $20 you come to owe me is for 5 fence posts you needed to complete your fence, I happened to have some extra with me in my truck and you said go ahead and use those for now; so that you wouldn’t have to spend your time and effort going back to town to get more fence posts, I just spent my posts for you. So even though there has been a total of $40 worth of resources utilized the debt we
have to each other is actually zero. But, since we use money to represent the debt, this creates a self-contradiction. There is now a representation of debt greater than the actual debt. To fix this we must sit and identify the amount of represented debt we owe each other and find the corresponding lost resources, if there are no resources lost then there is no debt incurred.
Trading Debt for the Benefit of More Debt (or Debt Lotteries)
Paying money for nothing creates the illusion of accrued debt. For instance when you buy life insurance, you are paying for the privilege to accrue debt. You are essentially exchanging your debt so that your family can become indebted to strangers. Every month you exchange money (money representing that somebody else owes you something) so that when you die the insurance group you were paying the money to can give your family a lot more money than you ever paid the insurance group (hopefully!?!). Now since your family received money from all these other people, they are indebted to them.
Life insurance is extremely spectacular in that everyone who pays into it will have the money they paid for paid out (probably), so that you in your living state are paying money to another dead persons family. You are in turn paid back by a living family paying the debt of the family you paid to die by paying your family when you die. Fantastic. In a situation like this the only method of sustainment
is for each generation of people paying into the group to be larger than the previous group of people. For these exchanges of money no resources are being spent, other than those created by the moving of money, which are self-fulfilling; since you cannot have one without the other. You cannot spend the resource of moving money if money is not moved.
Like the insurance problems, social programs used for the support of individuals are flawed in that there is an imbalance of debt owed to the individual and the amount of resources used to support that individual. In this case, like with insurance, each subsequent generation supports the generation that
precedes it and must therefore be larger than the generation it is supporting. This requires continual growth to continue. This growth may sometimes need to be forced and unnatural.
Paying health and similar insurances is like gambling for debt. These practices are intended to draw a large representation of debt, money, from many people by having each person turn over smaller amounts of money than the possible payout. The company managing the insurance then intends to pay out a single larger sum of money to a few individuals. These practices are simply debt lotteries.
Exchanging the representation of debt for other nothings, such as health insurance, only complicates matters further. In the instance of health insurance, you are paying for the probability of getting ill or injured. When you get ill or injured you go to the hospital and your insurance pays a certain amount of money. If everybody that paid into the insurance pool got ill, injured, or otherwise withdrew from the pool, then there would not be enough money to represent the amount of resources used to tend to the health needs of all the people. Therefore, the insurance group is hoping that people it owes money to do not claim the money they are owed. They hope that the debt they intentionally accrue is forgotten by those who are owed. Hope in one hand and spit in the other, see which fills up first. Though this problem can be corrected with the assurance, not insurance, that each individual requiring health care pay the debt themselves, and not through a group. All debts are redeemable from the individual whom causes the use of resources to occur.
Interest is a False Representation of Debt
Accruing interest on a sum of money (remember, money is only the representation of debt) is creating a false account of resources used. Interest is accrued by allowing an entity to use the debt you are owed to force other entities into creating more debt. This interest gained creates a false representation of the amount of resources owed to the person accruing interest. If you start off
being owed $20 worth of fence wire, then accrue .05% interest on the money representing the amount fence wire owed, then it appears as though you are owed $20.01 worth of fence wire. If the debt is called out and you must be paid back with the equivalent amount of fence wire owed, then you will only get the original $20 worth of fence wire. You will then be left with $.01 of imaginary debt owed to you that you will never rightfully obtain, because no resource has been expended to create that debt of $.01.
Resources can only truly be paid back in kind; silicone for silicon, 93% lean ground beef for 93% lean ground beef, time spent for time spent. No amount of gold can repay you a debt of wood when all you need is warmth from the cold air. Perhaps paper money may suffice in providing the flame that the wood would otherwise provide, but this would be a very highly inflated debt price of money to
produce the heat warmth equal to that of the owed measure of wood. If you exchange all the food you ever own in for money representing the debt of food owed to you, you will inevitably die of starvation.
How Profit is Made
Profit is having more people owe you than the amount of resources you have expended. This can be accomplished in two ways. When you control a resource that is more valuable to the person desiring it than it is to you, or to the majority of the society in which you live, then it may be possible to cause the person to owe you a disproportionate amount of debt to obtain the resource. In this process
the person paying a disproportionate amount of debt is forfeiting an amount of debt owed to them by another person to you. Since you are gaining more owed debt than the resources you have lost, you are gaining profit of debt. Somebody who never owed you anything now owes you something by way of the person wanting your resource passing the debt onto you to gain that resource. The origin
of profit is this third person whose debt to the second person is passed on to you (you are the first person).
However, profit from money debt is imaginary, until the resources owed are actually returned, there is no profit. So long as money is held, traded, and used; no profit is gained. If someone owes you 50 pounds of sand, and they pass profit of debt onto you in the form of 5 pounds of sand, then you will never make a profit until you obtain the 50 pounds of sand from them and to 5 pounds of sand from the origin of profit. Once all of your resources are obtained you now have 55 pounds of sand, which is 5 pounds more than the 50 you originally were owed by the second person.
The origin of the value of debt is decided on by whoever is in control of the expended resource. If you need a log of wood to keep warm right now, and I have the log of wood it is my choice on the value of the wood. I give you my log in exchange for any amount of debt that you agree to owe me. If the log is worth $10 then we agree on $10, if it is worth $50 then we will agree on $50. The provider of a resource is the final say in how much a resource is worth to them. It is they who will dictate what debt is owed to them by providing the resource. The balance of value comes from the desire to have someone owe debt to you rather than someone else. I would rather have you owe me $10 worth of debt than for you to owe someone else $15 worth of debt. Therefore I will lower the value of my $50 of wood to $10; thusly, you will choose to owe the debt to me since it is less debt than that of the $15 dollar man.
Value of Resources
Resources are only as valuable as the activity with which they can be utilized. Gold is worthless if it is not used. Gold is of value if it is used to perform a desired action. Gold is a natural occurring resource that has traditionally been used as a representation of monetary value. However, this is an intangible utilization of gold. A few tangible uses for gold are as jewelry or electronics. As jewelry gold can be pleasing to the eye and can increase overall joy in its observer, whether it be the owner or not, and thereby has tangible value by improving life through beauty. Gold is also a good conductor of electric current. When used to conduct electric current, the gold is performing a task and thereby
holds the value associated with that task. Gold is also an easy way to consolidate large quantities of debt into physically small areas. In this way gold is allowing the condensation of the physical space in which hard currency, money, takes up; thusly serving a purpose and being valuable for that. However, to have gold and to call it money without moving it is a false sense of holding debt. If it is not put to task or utilized for a job, then it is worthless.
Forced Inflation of Debt
Expenditure of resources without cause is forced inflation of debt. This type of resource expenditure is not sustainable and will cause a greater crush of debt. For example, without your direct consent I build you a fence on your property. When I am done with you I dictate that not only do you owe me for the resources used, but how valuable the resources are. You then owe me a debt. Not only do you owe me a debt but you now must spend resources keeping the fence up to local building codes in accordance with laws. I have just forced debt upon you.
Now, at such a micro level of two individuals this seems highly improbable However, at macro governmental levels this is very common. For instance, sometimes roadway are so damaged that they need to be repaired or replaced. This is very understandable and reasonable. However, sometimes roadways are replaced without the expressed need by the people who use the roadway. The local, state, or federal government will initiate a project that utilizes resources (such as manpower and roadway materials) to replace the roadway. Now the cost of this roadway falls on the population deemed responsible for the roadway. This populace now owes a debt to all those involved with replacing the roadway, and they never had any direct say in the process. This is forced debt inflation. An outside agent forces the utilization of resources on a populace causing the populace to owe debt, and causing an unnatural scarcity in the resources used in the project.
Social Agreement to Utilize Standard Debt Representation
Agreeing to use money is agreeing to allow the accumulation of debt unrelated to the resources required to perform the action for which the debt is owed. Because, we cannot all perform all tasks related to our needs and desires we have agreed to use money to represent what is owed to us in a larger arena than the locality of the individual who owes the debt. If you owe me $50 worth of medicine, and either of use leave the vicinity of the other there is no valid way of proving that a debt is owed to me or by you. By me holding onto your $50 bill I can represent to anyone that I have spent $50 worth of some resource. And by you no longer having the $50 shows that you are in debt, albeit indirectly by you not being able to further utilize the $50 in representation of owing debt for something else. And by the compact accepted by our society I can trade the debt you owe me for a debt I now owe somebody else.
A society agreeing that a form of money is representative of the debt agrees to not repay debt owed. Once the utilization of money is accepted in a society, all participating members of that society choose to forgo repaying resource debts. This way the representation of debt can be equally assessed by any member of the society to ensure equal value for the money which represents the debt. No matter what resource was used to gain $1 in debt that $1 is equal to any other $1 worth of debt. A debt of $1 worth or gold is equal to a debt worth $1 in fence posts; though the resources may be different in quantity or quality, the amount of debt is the same.
However, for members not participating in the society of money this does not hold true. If you are lost in the forest and you come across my home, where I live alone and sustain my own life, your money may not mean anything to me. Since you are lost, let’s assume that you are also hungry. You have a $10 bill and you offer me that $10 bill in exchange for 5 pounds of carrots that I have grown.
I will not accept your $10 because it is not an accurate or agreed upon representation of carrot debt to me. And since I am the original controller of the carrot resource, it is I who dictates the value of the resource. Now you are carrying a pack of cigarettes, which I desire since it has been a long time since I have had a smoke and it would be nice to have one. So, we can come to agree that for every half pound of carrots is worth 1 cigarette. Here we have traded a resource for a resource, and there is no debt.
A Statement on Original Resource Control
Since original control over a resource is where the value of the resource is identified it is prudent to identify this: Obtaining original control over a resource is a cyclical process which requires control of another resource that provides the ability to take over the resource in question. Simply put, you cannot gain something without first having the means with which to gain it. The true original owner of a resource date back to the farthest antiquity to the creation of ownership and to the one who created such an idea. It is from that point which original control over a given resource is transferred through trade or conquest. .
The Purpose of Exchanging Controlled Resources and the Value of Debt
The purpose of exchanging controlled resources are:
To accumulate an amount of debt owed to you so that when you are unable to maintain self-reliance you can call in those who owe you and be supported by their returning the necessary resources for you to continue to survive. Without the debt of resource owed to you, as proved by the amount of money you have, there may be no way to support your livelihood or life. This easily identifies the major
problem with the “living alone in the wilderness” scenario. It is that upon the time which you are no longer able to maintain survival on your own, there are no debts to call in and suffering will ensue. To maintain this method of life any resource thrift or exchange must be made with durable foodstuffs and shelters that will provide for your survival until your death.
To protect the remainder of one’s own resources from be taken by another person
To take another person’s resources for your own
To obtain any personal desire that requires the efforts of other people.
To cooperate with an established society in which the change of the society is of greater difficulty than the desire to change it provides; thereby, maintaining a status quo that requires the complex cooperation of a large number of resistant individuals.
A Statement on Charity and Goodwill
Goodwill and charity are not accounted for in this, as in their true form they do not cause debt to be counted. The giver of goodwill and charity, in their true forms, is simply sacrificing their resources for the return of no thing.
-A.J.B.